The initial application involved submitting a CV and a cover letter. This then led to a phone interview, it was fairly simple and it involved questions about the role, the company and my aspirations. The final stage was an assessment centre, but the evening before we had a Graduate dinner to meet the other candidates, as well as Gripple Graduates and other Gripple employees. Finally, the assessment centre, we had to prepare for 2 presentations beforehand, but on the day we got told we had to just do 1 of them, which was quite disappointing as a lot of time and effort was spent preparing for both presentations. There were 10 candidates in total, and we had to watch through each person's presentation. We were told beforehand that each presentation was meant to be 5 minutes, they even told us this on the day and said they'd raise their hand when 4 minutes is up for us to wrap things up. They only did that for one candidate and some candidate's presentations ending up lasting for 15/20 minutes each, none of the Gripple staff even mentioned it and this led us to become very behind on the other tasks. The one thing that was weird was Ed Stubbs (The Managing Director), was when one of the candidates finished her presentation and it was now time for questions, for some reason, he seemed really annoyed at her and his questions towards her were very targeted, very rude and it seemed like now he had a personal vendetta against her, he was literally being a bully to her. And this was all done for absolutely no reason at all. I could see everyone was shocked including the Gripple staff and the assessors. Us (the candidates) felt really sorry for her at the end of it all, and you could see how upset she was, but we didn't know what to say or how to react as we were under an interview situation. This instantly put me off from the company, especially as the boss, the Managing Director, acted like that, it made me wonder how he treats his staff. Ed Stubbs also did make sarcastic comments when questioning another candidate's presentation. He wasn't just being unprofessional, but this was very rude, especially when you're trying to attract people to work for your company. We were over an hour behind schedule now until we finished the presentations. We then did an individual financial analysis and had to present and discuss it to one of the Gripple staff, on a one-to-one basis, this task was fairly simple. We had lunch, and the next stages involved a site tour and a Belbin Test. The final shortlisted candidates would then have a group task and then a final interview. Because we were so behind on time they had to exclude some candidates from not doing the site tour and also the test which was seen as unfair. This was embarrassing for the company, as it does show they're not good at time management and being organised especially for such a large company. Overall, the initial screening part was okay, and the person who conducted my phone interview was really lovely and they sold the company well, especially when they mentioned the people-oriented aspect of company. The Graduate dinner helped us all to get to know each other and break the ice before the assessment centre day. It’s a shame that the Managing Director was VERY RUDE, as well as the poor time management and organisation of the company was the downside of it all. My advice would be to split the candidates into at least two groups for the presentations, that’s what most graduate assessment centres do, especially as there were at least 7 Gripple assessors in total, so they had more than enough people to do this split. Also having a buzzer or stopwatch to keep on top of the time would be very useful. Finally, someone should really tell Ed Stubbs not to personally target candidates or literally bully them, for no reason whatsoever especially if you want talented Graduates to work for Gripple and not end up choosing other companies.