Graduates First Consulting Assessment Preparation

What Is Graduates First?

Graduates First is rooted in psychometric assessment and occupational psychology. Its company background describes founders and assessment specialists with experience developing recruitment tools, including work at assessment publishers such as SHL and Kenexa. That background helps explain its emphasis on tests, workplace scenarios, and structured performance feedback.

The preparation model centers on completing exercises and reviewing performance rather than following a single consultant’s interview methodology. Reasoning practice includes timed tests, explanations, and reports that candidates can revisit independently. The provider’s FAQ also confirms that worked solutions are supplied for incorrectly answered questions.

What Does Graduates First Help Candidates Prepare For?

Numerical, Verbal, and Logical Reasoning

Reasoning assessments form a substantial part of the platform’s preparation materials. These exercises address different ways of processing information:

• Numerical reasoning: interpreting tables, charts, and figures, then using the supplied data to calculate an answer.
• Verbal reasoning: reading passages and deciding which conclusions or statements are supported by the text.
• Logical and diagrammatic reasoning: identifying patterns, relationships, and rules in sequences or diagrams.

The numerical practice materials combine full tests with additional questions and diagnostic support. Candidates can use these resources to examine particular weaknesses rather than relying only on an overall test score.

Situational Judgment and Game-Based Assessments

Situational judgment practice presents workplace scenarios and possible responses. The accompanying explanations give candidates a way to examine the reasoning behind different choices. This is preparation for evaluating a described situation, rather than rehearsing a personal experience story for an interview.

The game-based resources cover tasks involving areas such as attention, memory, arithmetic, and decision-making. They provide interactive practice with these assessment styles; they should not automatically be treated as replicas of a particular consulting firm’s proprietary assessment.

Recorded Video Interviews

The video interview tool allows candidates to practice and record answers. Its question categories include consulting, competency-based interviews, strengths-based interviews, business acumen, case-study questions, and market estimation. This creates opportunities to rehearse spoken responses and review delivery, although recording an answer is different from handling follow-up questions in a live interview.

Assessment-Center Exercises

Assessment-center materials include presentations, group discussions, in-tray tasks, case-study assignments, and role-play exercises. Model answers and assessor marking guidance support self-review. Candidates should distinguish studying these materials from participating in a live group exercise or receiving observation-based feedback from an assessor.

Technical Assessment Practice

Graduates First also provides coding-assessment practice covering programming fundamentals. This is a separate preparation area to consider when a technical or specialist role includes a coding test, rather than a task to assume every consulting applicant will face.

How Graduates First Works

The basic learning cycle is to attempt an assessment, inspect the results, and return to the underlying skill. Timed reasoning tests are accompanied by answers and worked explanations, allowing candidates to examine both their chosen answer and the method used to reach it.

Performance reporting includes progress tracking and comparisons with other test takers. A practical use of these reports is to decide what to revisit: for example, whether mistakes stem from misreading information, selecting the wrong calculation, or misunderstanding a pattern.

Access can also be organized through a participating university or business-school career service. Students should check their institution’s arrangements before creating a separate preparation plan, and confirm which resources their institutional account includes.

Who May Find Graduates First Useful?

The consulting resources identify internship applicants, graduate-scheme candidates, and applicants for professional roles as their audience. Relevance therefore depends more on the assessment stage than on whether someone has recently graduated.

Based on its self-directed format, potential use cases include:

• Candidates encountering recruitment reasoning tests for the first time.
• Applicants who want to examine errors through worked solutions.
• Candidates seeking practice with timed questions between other preparation activities.
• Applicants preparing recorded responses or reviewing assessment-center tasks.

For candidates whose main challenge is an interactive consulting case, the distinction between assessment exercises and interviewer-led problem-solving deserves particular attention. Consulting interviews can require discussion, explanation, and responses to another person’s questions, not simply selecting a correct answer.

How Graduates First Can Fit Into Consulting Interview Preparation

Start with the employer’s instructions rather than assuming that every available practice category is relevant. Official guidance may identify sample questions, technical requirements, or an assessment for which no advance preparation is expected. A paid preparation resource should not be assumed necessary.

One way to incorporate Graduates First into a broader plan is to:

• Identify the immediate task. Separate an upcoming reasoning test, recorded interview, or assessment-center exercise from later interview preparation.
• Establish a starting point. Attempt relevant practice and note which questions caused difficulty.
• Review before repeating. Work through explanations, identify the mistaken step, and then practice the same underlying skill again.
• Maintain separate interview practice. Allocate time to explaining case reasoning aloud and discussing genuine examples from personal experience.

Official firm cases and practice with another person can serve a different role from individual test preparation. McKinsey’s preparation guidance, for example, separates assessment information from case and personal-experience interview preparation and encourages practicing cases with a friend.

What to Consider When Using Graduates First

• Match the assessment. Graduates First states that its practice materials may not reflect the appearance of specific employer tests. Use the assessment named in the invitation to guide preparation choices.
• Interpret benchmarks cautiously. The platform compares performance with other users. Treat this as practice feedback, not as an employer’s pass threshold or a prediction of a recruiting outcome.
• Distinguish automated and human feedback. The video tool includes AI-based feedback. Use it as one input for reviewing a recording, rather than as a substitute for feedback on live communication or an indication of how an employer will evaluate an answer.
• Check the scope of access. Confirm that the relevant exercises are included in the individual or institutional access being considered. A description of the wider platform does not establish what a particular account includes.

Frequently Asked Questions About Graduates First

Does Graduates First focus only on consulting?

No. Consulting is one part of its wider recruitment-preparation offering. The platform also addresses assessment preparation for candidates pursuing other industries and professional career paths.

Does it include case-interview preparation?

Its materials include case-study assignments and interview-question categories involving cases, business acumen, and market estimation. These formats should be distinguished from a structured program of live consulting case interviews with an individual coach.

Can it help with behavioral interviews?

The video interview resources include competency-based and strengths-based questions. Candidates can use recordings to rehearse and review answers, while arranging separate practice for conversational follow-up questions if needed.

Does Graduates First explain incorrect answers?

Yes. The provider’s FAQ confirms that answers and worked solutions are available for questions answered incorrectly. These explanations support reviewing the reasoning process rather than only checking a final score.

Are its consulting practice tests official employer assessments?

No. They are third-party preparation materials. The consulting page disclaims association with the employers it names and warns that its practice assessments may differ from specific employer tests.

Can candidates access it through a university?

Graduates First works with university and business-school career services to provide institutional access. Candidates should ask their own career service about eligibility, registration, and the resources included in its arrangement.