Top tips for the e-tray
“What on earth is an e-tray exercise?” we hear you cry.
Don’t worry — we’ve got a few tips for you that will help clear things up…
What to expect
The e-tray is designed to test how you cope with real-world scenarios.
A typical scenario is that you have just started a new job (or maybe just come back from holiday) and need to get up to speed with what’s going on.
The e-tray is a timed exercise that lasts 80 minutes.
You will have some time to read the background info — then you will need to start answering ‘emails’ that come up.
For each ‘email’, you’ll be given multiple responses options. You need to choose the responses that you’d be most likely and least likely to respond with in that scenario.
There isn’t a practice e-tray but you’ll be able to try an example scenario to learn how it works.
How to prepare
E-tray exercises are used by a lot of employers in their large recruitment drives.
You can find example tests online. These will be similar to the Fast Stream e-tray exercise (but not exactly the same). For example: https://www.assessmentday.co.uk/free/e-tray/index.html
E-tray exercises are not designed to test prior knowledge — no revision is necessary.
Of course, you should get a good night’s sleep!
On the day
You will be given time to read some background information (presented in files and folders like a desktop). You won’t have time to read everything in detail at this point so skim-read it to get an understanding of your role, your team and the ongoing projects/work. You might want to jot down key points and where files are located so you have this to hand later on.
You can refer back to the background information throughout the exercise — so you should do this! If you’ve skimmed through all the documents in the reading time, you should have an idea if/where there are relevant documents that will help you to make your decision.
Remember you are empowered to make decisions — so don’t be afraid to! At the same time, you are likely to be a small cog in a big organisation so think about where you might need someone more senior make a decision.
You need to balance speed and accuracy. Read the instructions, questions and all the options carefully to avoid making silly mistakes.
Don’t be alarmed if the emails appear with increasing frequency as you answer them and particularly towards the end of the time limit. It is important to stay calm and keep a clear head.
We hope that helps! Drop us a line if you have any questions: faststreamkcl@gmail.com
