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Financial Management Development Scheme

The Financial Management Development Scheme is a government run cross-departmental finance based graduate scheme. Candidates may choose a preferred government department when they submit their application form. If they are successful at interview, it is likely candidates will be placed at the government department of preference.

Government departments involved in the scheme: DfT (Department for Transport), Home Office and DWP (Department for Work and Pensions), DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), ECGD (Export Credits Guarantee Department), MoJ (Ministry of Justice), TSOL (Treasury Solicitor's Department), HMT (Her Majesty's Treasury), Foreign & Commonwealth Office, DCLG (Department of Communities and Local Government)

Interview & Assessment Process

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The Financial Management Development Scheme interview and assessment process is the same for whichever government department you apply for. The process is as follows:

Online Aptitude Tests

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If you online application si successful, you will be asked to complete three online aptitude tests.

SiftAbility Test

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This test puts you in real life situations and asks what you would do in these situations. Each question is multiple-choice, and will be followed by several options.

For example, questions may be similar to the following: "You are an event manager who is managing a huge corporate event. One of your client's staff is overseeing how the event is being run. During the event one of the staff working under you gets into a heated argument with the client's staff. What would you do?"

Questions will be followed by about seven or eight statements and possible actions. You have to decide which options you would decide on in such situations. The idea is to answer these questions honestly, avoiding the obviously incorrect actions, e.g. "Sack your staff in front of the client to make a statement that you value the clients".

Assessment Centre

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The Financial Management Development Scheme assessment centre consists of:

Group Exercise

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This exercise is conducted in groups of five. Each candidate is asked to pretend to be from a different government department - the scenario involves the government giving a £70 million pound grant to one of the departments for a project, to deal with a specific problem caused by global warming.

You will have to argue a case for your department to get the funding and then decide between the group which department should get the grant based on certain criteria, e.g. economic benefits, social benefits, etc.

Briefing Exercise

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This exercise is challenging. The scenario involves two local Job Centres that need to be relocated because there is not enough space available in either of them, and they are both no longer able to conform to minimum health and safety standards.

You will have three options: - Close down both centres and open one new larger centre; - Open a third centre; or, - Expand both existing Job Centres.

The main problem with this exercise is that 11 pages of information will be provided for you to read, and candidates must pick out the advantage and disadvantages from this material. This 11 page document includes numerical figures - some calculations will be necessary. There is only 30 minutes to complete the whole exercise.

At the end of the exercise you will have to present your findings to two assessors and recommend one option.

Written Exercise

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In this task, candidates will be given 16 pages of information, covering two companies who have been bought out by a third company. The purchasing company is looking to introduce new training software to train its staff on the services they provide. Four companies were tendering to provide the company with the training software. You role will be to analyse the four tenders and make a recommendation on which is the best option, based on certain criteria. Candidates will be given just one and a half hours to read and write this report.

Interview

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This interview is fairly straight-forward. It is unlikely there will be any commercial awareness questions. Candidates will almost certainly be asked three competency based questions concerned with: teamwork, planning & organising and drive/motivation. It is also very likely you will be asked why you want to work in the public sector.