Smith & Williamson Interview Questions

Smith & Williamson Interview Questions

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(see also Smith & Williamson application process)

• Online Application
• Online Assessments
• Telephone interview
• Open Day
• Assessment Day
• Personality test
• Director Interview

Online Application

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All graduate applicants are required to complete a standardised online application form.

Once you’ve completed your application form, you’ll be contacted by one Smith & Williamson's graduate recruitment team within one week and asked to complete some online tests verbal and numerical reasoning tests.

Online Assessments

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The online assessments will be SHL tests that will test both verbal and numerical reasoning ability.

After successfully completing the online tests, you will either be invited to join the next available assessment day or invited to arrange a telephone interview with a view to inviting you to an assessment day.

Before the assessment day you will be given the opportunity to attend an open day at the firm.

Telephone interview

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The Smith & Williamson telephone interview is a fairly straight forward discussion conversation with a member of the HR team from the firm. This will last about 30 minutes, with time for you to ask questions at the end. The interview is designed to allow Smith & Williamson to find out if you are someone they feel would be suitable to call for an assessment day.

The interview will basically be a competency based interview. It will consist of competency based questions and questions about your education (school and university), career aspirations and why you have chosen to apply to Smith & Williamson and why you have applied to your desired business area.

Previous candidates have been asked the following questions:

• How would you deal with the pressures of study/exams and the working environment?
• What can you tell me about the ACA?
• What challenges are facing businesses at the moment, local and globally?
• Where do you see yourself after training?
• What other areas of accountancy interest you?

The interview is more conversational than those at other firms and you will be given a decent opportunity to find out about the firm itself.

Assessment day

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The Smith & Williamson assessment day starts at 9.45am and finishes at 3pm. It consists of:

• group exercise/case study
• lunch (including opportunity to meet other candidates and current graduate trainees)
• numerical and verbal psychometric tests (paper based)
• one competency based interview
• a written exercise

Group exercise/case study

After the initial company introductions you will be asked to start a group exercise. This will be a case study. You will have five minutes to come up with three business ideas individually before the group exercise starts properly. You will then discuss your ideas as a group, choose one idea and make a business plan. You will be given 20-25 minutes to do this.

You will then have ten minutes to present to the board (which is two interviewers from HR).

Lunch

During your lunch you will meet the firm's current trainees. Lunch lasts approximately one hour.

Psychometric tests

After lunch you will sit a paper based psychometric test. You will be given two tests, one verbal and one numerical.

Competency based interview

This interview will be with a member of the Smith & Williamson recruitment team. The interview will focus on you, your application/CV and your motivations for joining S&W. You may be asked competency questions about teamwork, leadership and commercial awareness.

Written exercise

For the written exercise you will be given three questions and asked to write a two page report. Previous candidate's questions have included:

• Tell us about a company you have worked with in the past (or a company that you know of) and how you would improve their business.
• How would you invest one million pounds?

Personality test

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If you successfully pass the assessment day you will be invited to a director interview. Before you attend this, you will receive a personality test called the Occupational Personality Questionnaire. You must complete this online before your interview.

Director Interview

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If you pass the assessment day, you will be invited to attend a director interview with either one or two directors. This interview with last about 60 minutes.

It's worth noting that Smith & Williamson is an Ltd (a limited company with shareholders, although not listed) rather than an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership) so officially there are no partners at the firm, just directors.

Previous candidates who have experienced director interviews at Smith & Williamson have been asked several general questions, such as: "why do you want to work for Smith & Williamson" and "why have you chosen your specific service line (e.g. audit)". After these initial questions partners seem to spend time discussing the firm themselves, particularly its relationship to, and difference from, the big 4.

On their website Smith & Williamson state that they have a "two way" interview process, which may explain why partners talk for a greater amount of time at Smith & Williamson interviews than at other firms.

If you receive an offer you will be invited to return to Smith & Williamson to meet staff on an informal basis and explore the office where you may decide to work.

Now see - Smith & Williamson application process.