British Gas Assessment Centre, Psychometric Tests & Interview Process Online Preparation – 2024

What Is British Gas?

British Gas is a home service and energy company that is a subsidy of Centrica. Headquartered in Windsor, United Kingdom, British Gas has over thirty thousand employees who enjoy benefits like paid volunteering days and annual bonuses. They have opportunities in an array of areas such as:

• Marketing & Branding
• Engineering
• Technology
• Customer Service

 

What Is British Gas’s Hiring Process?

British Gas utilises a standard hiring process for applicants. Throughout four stages, British Gas will be evaluating intelligence, competency, and behaviour. Job seekers can expect the following outline during the month-long hiring process:

• Application
• Online Assessments
• Telephone Interview
• Assessment Day

 

British Gas Application

The application asks of the basic information from applicants such as job history and education, but British Gas also asks a series of competency-based questions as well. Common questions are “Talk about a failure you have learned from” or “How have you gone above and beyond for a customer?”.

 

British Gas Online Assessments

British Gas uses online assessments to measure the bare intelligence of their candidates and to gain insight into how they behave. The company uses a variety of assessments and chooses specific assessments depending on the role that being interviewed for. For example, candidates for finance-related positions will be asked to take a numerical reasoning test while candidates for customer service positions will be asked to take more behavioural-based tests.

The British Gas assessments are first administered online after an application has been submitted. Then, the results are verified with a retake at the final stage of the interview process. Applicants can expect one or more of the following assessments during this stage:

• Mechanical Reasoning
  The mechanical reasoning test is a twenty-minute assessment covering mechanical principles. This includes pulleys, levers, and gears among other things. The test is multiple-choice and typically includes diagrams followed by a handful of questions. The test is meant to assess the candidate’s understanding and application of these principles regarding real-world problems.
• Numerical Reasoning
  The numerical reasoning exam consists of multiple-choice questions that evaluate the candidate’s grasp of basic math, algebra, statistics, and data analysis. The test will present a graph or table with numerous subsequent questions. The questions inquire about trends in the data among other specifics and there will usually be about three to five questions per figure. Each question is timed.
• Personality Questionnaire
  The main objective of the personality questionnaire is for British Airways to get an idea of how candidates act under stress in a workplace environment. The questionnaire lays out a series of short situations and actions reacting to the situation. The candidate must select on a five-point-scale from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” how likely they are to take the action mentioned above.
• Situational Judgment Test (SJT)
  The situational judgment test is similar to the personality questionnaire with a few key differences. The SJT discusses a handful of common workplace scenarios or uncomfortable conflicts and asks the test taker to choose a response to the scenario. This test analyses communication, teamwork, and leadership skills.
• Verbal Reasoning
  The verbal reasoning test appraises reading comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar. This assessment is administered for jobs requiring frequent presentations and written correspondence. The test taker will be provided a short passage discussing a completely random topic. The topic is random to highlight the candidate’s ability to work with and understand novel information. After the passage is a series of questions concerning the subject that the candidate must answer “True”, “False”, or “Cannot Say”.

 

Telephone Interview

Some positions at British Gas are asked to participate in a phone screening. The type of interview and a few of the questions will be given to the candidate beforehand. British Gas’s two types of interviews are competency-based and role play.

Key competencies that are job-specific will be listed on the job posting. The candidate is asked to provide real-life examples of how they exhibit these traits from their personal or professional life.

Overall, the telephone interview will take anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes.

 

British Gas Assessment Day

The assessment day (centre) is the final stage of British Gas’s interview process. Candidates are invited to one of the main offices for four to six hours to participate in various activities. These activities include:

• Assessments
  The same assessments that have been taken in the second stage will be retaken at assessment day to ensure that the results were genuine. A member of the British Gas team will proctor this exam.
• Competency-Based Interview
  A competency-based interview is essentially a form of questioning that uses past experiences to predict how someone will behave in the future. The questions typically ask the candidate to name a time when they did something and how they reacted to the situation.
• Role-Play Activity
  The role-play activity is a ten-minute exercise that allows the candidate to demonstrate how they would act in certain, possibly stressful, situations. A common scenario is dealing with an agitated customer or resolving a workplace conflict.
• Final Presentation
  The final presentation is for engineering positions only. The candidate is asked a series of technical questions that they must solve for the interviewers. Each candidate is given fifteen minutes for their presentation and ten minutes to prepare.

 

How to Prepare for the British Gas Online Assessments?

The British Gas online aptitude tests are one of the most important steps in the interview process. Many find themselves underprepared and stressed out due to the pressure of the time limits. This is why properly preparing yourself can go a long way in helping you become successful in this stage.

There are plenty of resources online to help you study for the online assessments. These include sample questions and practice tests. The practice tests are extremely popular because they create an identical testing environment. From the time constraint to the questions, the simulated assessment allows you to make silly mistakes and navigate the test before the points genuinely count against you. You will also be given your score, so you can estimate how well you will do on the test and how much more you need to practice.

The sample questions are more beneficial if you find the test questions to be difficult. They are commonly used to help explain problems or to slow down the problem-solving approach. While they are helpful, online practice tests are usually better for preparing.

 

Interview Tips for British Gas

During your interviews with British Gas, you will be asked a handful of times about the company’s competencies and how you align with them. There are two sets of competencies: the job-specific ones and the company-wide ones. The job-specific competencies, as stated earlier, are listed on the job posting. Below are the company’s competencies, which are talked about multiple times during the British Gas interviews:

• Agility
• Delivery
• Collaboration
• Care
• Courage

Prepare a few examples from your personal or professional life about how you embody these values. Next, are the interview questions which may vary depending on the role you have applied for. Some common British Gas interview questions are:

• What is your leadership style?
• Why British Gas?
• What strengths do you have that make you an asset to the British Gas team?
• What makes you a good candidate for this role?
• What do you know about British Gas?