The
in-tray exercise
is frequently used to assess your ability to prioritise, evaluate
and organise your time effectively. It is also a key way in which
organisations will assess your problem solving abilities and how
well your decision making skills match their needs. You are being
assessed on how you deal with the items and it is very unlikely
you will be asked to compose emails, letters or memos as part of
this exercise.
Your assessors will score you on the following:
- How well you identify the
‘Key’ issue of the item.
- Your interpretation of the
information provided.
- Ease and speed with which you
arrive at your decision.
- The way in which you evaluate
the information.
- How effective your
actions/decisions are in dealing with the presented
problem.
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The assessors will be identifying how well you manage your own
time and whether or not you spend your time on key issues that
have a significant impact on the organisation or become distracted
with urgent, yet trivial items. You will be judged on how well you
prioritise the in-tray exercise items, your willingness and
appropriateness to delegate and whether or not you set a deadline
for the activity.
Sticking to the point is vital especially during your
justification as it is easy to get side-tracked and run out of
time. You need to address all the major issues raised in order to
achieve your objective of maximising your score.
An in-tray exercise may also be assessing your skills and
knowledge in respect of commercial insight, your use of creativity
in problem resolution and decision making. Of course it will be
scoring you on the way you display your management style –
- Supervisory
- Mentor
- Delegator
- Customer orientated
- Organisationally orientated
- People orientated
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Frequently there is a central theme to the in-tray exercise
items. This could be an impending take over, potential merger,
management buy-out, re-organisation with redundancies or poor
financial performance. Whilst you are reading through the overview
and the items provided be mindful for this re-occurring theme. You
will not be expected to have specific market or product knowledge,
although being up-to-date on current industry issues may be useful
it’s important to focus on how you deal with issues, how you
manage the information and what actions you subsequently take, as
this is what you will be scored on.
During the justification they will want to see your reasoning
behind these decisions and actions and you scored on how well you
make the specification. If the in-tray exercise does not have this
aspect then make sure your notes are readable (if you need to
print in capitals) by anyone so they can see the thread of your
reasoning.
Any organisation will also want to assess how well your ethos
matches their own. They will score you on the way you use, and the
importance you place on, the company goals and objectives in your
decision making process. Your assessors will want to see how you
gauge the impact on the organisation of your decision, or action,
and also the implications this could have on resources and other
projects. They will be looking to see what your initial planning
stages consist of and how you will monitor and measure its
success.
Some assessors will also judge what you do with an item once read
(file/circulate/copy/discard/shred) as part of your overall score.
You will be able to judge the importance of this aspect of your
in-tray exercise depending on the nature of the organisation.
As the average number of multiple choice questions is slightly
higher than those asked during a justification or discussion, you
must be concise and decisive in your answers as you’ll only have
about 5 minutes per question if you are asked a dozen during an
hour.
If the
in-tray exercise
involves a discussion of your answers and the opportunity to
explain your decisions then you must remember that during this
discussion you are also being assessed in terms of how you handle
yourself under ‘interrogation’ of your work. The Assessor will be
observing how you respond to criticism and how easily you can be
persuaded to alter your decision.
The justification provides you with an excellent opportunity to
explain why you prioritised things in the way you did. This may be
because of your experience or the type of environment you
currently work in. You will also have the opportunity to bring
into the discussion your knowledge gained from your research into
the organisation, its ethos and mission statement. If you can also
show how your reasoning matches the values and beliefs of the
organisation you will be able to increase marks for this exercise.
See In-Tray Exercise > Introduction
See In-Tray Exercise > Maximizing Your Score
See In-Tray Exercise > Working Through the Items
See
In-Tray Exercise > Justifying Your Decisions
See
In-Tray Exercise > Explaining Your Answers
Everything you need to pass
psychometric tests
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