Job Hunting: Toyota Assessment Center

Toyota AC was my last assessment center I have been to. I took place in Brussels in the European Headquarters of Toyota. I did not like it much - poorly organised, some of the activities were too difficult and worst food ever - I stayed in toyota for 5 hours and I got one lousy baguette. They should at least offer decent lunch. So what did the activities look like?

• Interview with HR - typical competency based interview with young HR girl. It is easy to prepare and tell them what they want to hear. I had to 'pass' this one to get to the next stage. Important! If they ask you what do you want to do in 5 years do not tell them you want be managers. HR girl told me that in japanese companies it takes lot of time to become manager and if you tell them you want become one in 5 years they consider you overambitious and so. Tell them some stuff that you want to improve your theoretical knowledge and practical experience...
  
• Tests - I was told to retake those online tests. Easy.
• Meeting with the managers - I have met 5! managers (I guess the managers only hire people, they actually do not work...why there has to be 5 of them to hire one graduate? If you imagine that toyota europe hire about 200 graduates and AC lasts for at least 5 hours, than the managers really do not do anything else but talk to gradutes.) This meeting consisted from 2 parts. The first one were basically questions by the managers - mixture of competency based questions and questions about IT (what is important for page rank in google etc.). This was pretty ok. However, the second part was difficult. I was supposed to show the managers how I would deal with preparing party for people from toyota. I could use whiteboard. I did not get any time to prepare. What they wanted to hear is that preparing party is a project, which means there are several aspects (time scale, people, money and other resources). I do not think I did well.

I found this AC badly prepared and managed. I was not successful, but I would not like to work for Toyota - people were not friendly there.