Third Secretary Competition - 2024

Mine was "what was the average number of business miles driven." No qualifier. Is it per car, per year, per category of cars? Who knows. I wasted time then had to guess it.

looking at the thread and seeing other people talk about doing questions that weren't on my numerical/verbal assessment and I know this is probably cope but surely its not fair if people are being getting asked different questions but being placed in the same OOM? adds further fuel to the AI shithousery that Sova provided

Just for reference guys and girls - there were a little over 1,600 applicants for this years competition. I have no idea how many they will take to the next stage, but I would guess that at-least 50% will be eliminated in stage 1.

So don't **** yourself by being invited for stage 2 and not being prepared. Start studying for the précis now and hope that you will be called, and if you are, you will be ready. That's what I'm doing anyway.

It doesn't matter, but I can tell you for certain that there were that many.

I have no idea how many they will take to the next stage, I don't even know how many jobs there will be available.

Is stage 1 results based solely on the psychometric? If that's the case, I wonder why they can't just push a button and rank us as a result? I know the AO comp I did for my current role only took 2 weeks for psychometric results to come out :(

Perhaps, although it isn't entirely clear there. The familiarisation booklet says:

For candidates passing all three assessments, a total score will be formed by taking thecandidate’s score from the Verbal Reasoning Assessment and adding this to their scoreon the Assessment Questionnaire for Third Secretary – the combined score from bothof these tests will determine each candidates ranking on the Order of Merit (only forcandidates who pass). The Numerical Reasoning Assessment is only used as aqualifier – therefore, while candidates do need to meet a minimum mark on the NumericalReasoning Assessment, a candidates Numerical Reasoning score will not contribute to theirfinal total score or the subsequent ranking of candidates.

This sounds like Stage 1 is exclusively drawn from Order of Merit rankings. This doesn't account for why it would take so long, although there are obviously many applications and perhaps some checking of candidates video footage takes place.

Hello,

Does anyone know of any good resource or have any practical suggestions of how we can practice for the précis? Are there specific types of articles that they ask you to summarize? Is there any specific format expected?

With the results taking so long to come out, I see no other option than starting to prepare for it already.

Thanks for any hints and good luck to everyone!

Stage I results out - qualified in the 150s on OOM, and it says up to and including 340 on OOM are moving forward to Stage II. They also give a breakdown of the qualifying scores for each assessment which is handy.

That's a much bigger intake than the previous time!

My understanding that each stage is independent from the last, and only the final OOM will matter. Ultimately these stages are used to whittle down applicants to a group of people worth interviewing, at which point they will finally look at the applications themselves. (Not 100% sure though!)

“My understanding that each stage is independent from the last, and only the final OOM will matter. Ultimately these stages are used to whittle down applicants to a group of people worth interviewing, at which point they will finally look at the applications themselves. (Not 100% sure though!)”

Tbh that’s probably fair, the testing software didn’t strike me as the best designed particularly for the verbal reasoning, but maybe it’s the best currently available what do I know

I think that’s it. I also felt confused about the “pleased to inform you” - poor choice of wording, if somebody has not passed it would be better to say “regret to inform”.

wdym 2nd and 3rd batches ?

Seconding this question please, if someone could provide a quick general overview of what the Precis exercise entails for those of us who have never been through a competition like this before that would be much appreciated.

I gather it is summarising a text against the clock? Multiple texts? How is it scored and what have your past experiences been? And indeed any resources or practical suggestions to prepare for it 🙏

I'm confused as to why the proctoring hasn't been done yet.