AstraZeneca Psychometric Tests, Assessment Centre, Recruitment Process & Interviews Online Preparation – 2024
What Is AstraZeneca?
AstraZeneca is a pioneering, international biopharmaceutical company with more than 65,000 employees in over 100 countries. Every day they are working with new technology and advanced science. At AstraZeneca, employees have the chance to generate new treatments and be involved with improving the lives of many.
AstraZeneca offers a breadth of career opportunities in a variety of areas, including:
Clinical Development
Finance
Manufacturing
Supply Chain
Marketing
Graduate programmes
What Is AstraZeneca’s Hiring Process?
AstraZeneca’s recruitment process begins online. You can search for opportunities by country/region, city, category and job type to find the role you are looking for. When you find the opportunity that interests you, apply online. Once you have submitted your job application, you will receive an email acknowledgement and your application will be reviewed as quickly as possible. If you have applied for a graduate or placement opportunity, it could take up to eight weeks to review your application due to the number of applicants.
Pymetrics Test
Immediately after submitting your application, you will be invited to participate in a Pymetrics test. The Pymetrics test takes around half an hour to complete and includes a series of mini games for you to play. These mini games have been designed to evaluate your character as well as your general intelligence and problem-solving skills.
Whilst you play each game, the system is recording your choices and is painting a picture of your personality profile to understand how you fit in with the company.
Assessment Event
For many positions at AstraZeneca, including the graduate program, you will be invited to take part in an assessment event (assessment day) with other candidates. At the assessment event, you will complete the following pre-employment screening tasks:
Numerical Reasoning Test – Since many roles at AstraZeneca require numeracy skills and data analysis, AstraZeneca requires that these roles take a numerical reasoning test. This part of the test is used to evaluate the candidate’s capabilities to manage and translate numerical data, traits that are essential for many of the roles at AstraZeneca. Numerical reasoning tests are multiple-choice and do not require you to remember difficult formulae or show your workings out. However, you will be required to translate the data to find your answer.
Inductive Reasoning Test – The inductive reasoning portion of the exam on SHL’s general ability test has been designed to understand a candidate’s problem-solving skills. In this part of the test, candidates are presented with a series of patterns and shapes and will be required to work out which is next from a set of multiple answers. The logical reasoning test helps to show AstraZeneca how you solve problems and come to conclusions.
Deductive Reasoning Test – The deductive reasoning questions have been designed to understand how candidates draw logical conclusions based on a piece of information. There is a strict time limit on this test of 36 minutes, so working promptly and precisely is important. It is highly recommended that you spend some time taking practice tests before the test on the day to increase your chances of passing on the first go.
Presentation
For the graduate program and certain vacancies, you will be asked to give a presentation. AstraZeneca will deliver you the subject matter prior to your interview. When you present to the hiring manager, they are looking for how well you communicate information, your ability to research topics and your presentation style.
Individual and Group Exercises
The final step in the assessment event is the individual and group exercises. Depending on the role you have applied for, you might be asked to work alone or as part of a team. The group exercise will focus on problem solving and this will assess how well you work as a team to resolve a complex issue – traits that are incredibly important to AstraZeneca. The individual exercise usually involves candidates being given a case study which they need to look at and report back findings to the interview panel.
If you have impressed AstraZeneca during the assessment centre, the next step will be to attend an in-person interview.
The Interview
AstraZeneca’s interview is straightforward and involves competency-based questions as well as questions around your CV and work/university experience. With strength-based questions, you will need to give answers using the STAR method (Situation Task Action Resolution) to highlight to your recruiter how you handled certain situations.
AstraZeneca prides itself on coming up with the right solutions for the right challenges, and you should aim to show them in the interview that your values align with theirs. AstraZeneca’s values are:
We follow the science
We put patients first
We play to win
We do the right thing
We are entrepreneurial
How to Prepare for AstraZeneca’s Assessments?
When you are invited along to AstraZeneca’s assessment event, it is likely that you will be nervous as you want to succeed. One way of giving yourself the best chance of succeeding is to complete practice SHL sample tests. Preparation is key with these assessments as it will help you to feel confident when taking the real tests at the assessment centre.
When you are calm under pressure, it can help to improve your score and allows you to put your best foot forward throughout the recruitment process.
