I started off by applying online, and completing the usual online ability testing that most large companies use. After a month or so, I heard back inviting me to a video interview. The video interview was over Skype, and was mainly competency, situational based questions, as well as the obvious why the company and why the scheme questions. I was invited for an assessment centre in December 2016. The company pay for you to stay in a rather fancy hotel the night before the assessment centre, in which you have dinner with a couple of current graduates and the rest of the candidates. This is not assessed, and helps with the tension for the next day. The next day starts early, and consists of firstly preparation for an individual case study. Mine was on expanding business for a small baby clothing manufacturer that is currently operating at maximum capacity. Be prepared do run a few calculations. Once you have finished preparing, you then go for the group exercise. In this exercise, we worked for a leisure company, which produced a toy that a TV show was about to launch a report on, claiming that we were using poisonous paint on the toy. We had to plan our short term and long term strategy as a group. Once this is done, you then deliver your case study presentation that you prepared earlier to two assessors. After this we have lunch, which is followed by a pretty brutal cull of the candidates. About half of the candidates in my assessment centre were sent home, including myself at this time. The rest of the candidates are given an interview. My advice for the day is to take a leadership position, both in the group exercise and in the case study. This is a leadership programme. Whereas other companies may be looking for people who can produce good ideas or innovate, the feedback that I got from MARS was that they were looking for candidates who could lead the group. This is different to other assessment centres that I have been too which have told me that taking on being group leader isn't always the best idea. I have given this a negative review because of the pretty brutal cull at half time that I still believe was unnecessary. The people were friendly on the day, but to me it makes no sense paying for candidates to have a fancy hotel the night before, just to send them home at half time before they have had a chance to even be interviewed. it wouldn't hurt keeping us for another hour or so to interview us, there was certainly enough assessors there to do it, and it would have given them a chance to learn more about our experience and background. One of the candidates at the assessment centre was already working for MARS, and he went forward to interview stage. So that was one position pretty much taken from the start. The difficulty of the process is average. I have been to assessment centres that have asked much more than just two exercises and an interview, so this seemed like a reasonable ask of us as candidates.