Following a fairly general application I was invited to do a telephone interview which lasted roughly 45 mins. It was the best interview I had had over the course of the application season and found that the HR team were extremely welcoming and easy to build rapport with. I was told there and then on my telephone interview that I had been successful and was invited to attend an assessment day in the head office in Oxford; which turned out to be a pretty amazing place. The assessment centre again was the best I had attended and operated a more unorthodox operation than most companies, which can often be very generic. This involved an Ice breaker activity, group exercise, presentation, written task, networking lunch and an interview. In each exercise you had different assessors, including current graduates which were all extremely encouraging and positive throughout the day. The networking lunch particularly was very relaxed.

Began with an online application form which was fairly straight forward and not particularly time consuming. Followed up with a phone based interview which contained a number of curve ball questions. After spending 30 minutes on the phone I was told I had secured a place at the assessment centre. At this point everything seemed normal and the people I was dealing with seemed pleasant. The assessment centre takes place in a giant mansion called Ashorne Hill - some kind of privately rented "management training college" near Warwick. Funny thing is that there is absolutely no reason for it to take place here as only a few small rooms of the mansion are used and nothing is done that necessitates the scale of the venue. If anything it is a great annoyance travelling up from London to this place which seems to have been chosen for the arbitrary reason of it being an impressive location, bound to stun and amaze new graduates. Herein lies the problem with Amey The assessment day consists of what you would expect, a group exercise, an introductions session a one on one interview a role play exercise and so on, throughout this the staff at amey who appear friendly are busy ticking boxes, you are supposed to act a certain way in a certain scenario, there is very little scope for independence of thought or independence of mind here. When challenged about the company's performance in 2003 the staff simply revert to the party line and move on as quickly as possible. This is despite the fact that their stagnant profits over the past few years are only rising because of their consistent restatement at the end of each financial year, which from an investors point of view is a joke. Anyhow, this is a touchy subject for them and it is best to avoid it. Instead tell them how great they are and how inspiring they are, major sucking up is necessary here, it appears that what they are after is somebody who will not only become a corporate robot like them but also stroke the enormous egos of Amey and Group Ferrovial their corporate daddy. My advice, - do as you're told and be really enthusiastic. As the box tickers settle into their seats you'll find that the interview process at Amey is not really a 2 way street, you are not given a chance to assess your assessors and your potential colleagues. Instead you will be asked to perform and then graded via box ticking. Amey fails to realise that interviews are 2 way streets, not all applicants are desperate jobless grads who will say anything to be hired and some of them actually need to be "sold" the Amey experience. Really odd bunch, I must say.