The assessment center is the final stage of the UBS recruitment process, and it is where the hiring decision is made. By the time you are invited you have already cleared the application form and the online assessment stage, so everyone attending can do the job on paper. What is being measured now is how you work: how you handle information you have not seen before, how you behave in a group, and whether you can reach a decision and defend it under questioning.
UBS is a Swiss headquartered financial services company and investment bank, and it recruits apprentices, interns and graduates across areas including wealth management, investment banking, asset management and technology. The exact shape of the process varies by program and by location, and your invitation email is the authority on what your own day will involve. What follows is the shape candidates most commonly meet, and how to prepare for each part of it.
The UBS application process
Roles are advertised on the UBS careers site, and the job description is your best guide to what assessors will be looking for. Read it closely, because the skills it lists tend to be the ones you are scored against later.
The application form asks for contact details, education, qualifications, previous experience, languages and relevant skills. Applications that meet the basic criteria move on to an online assessment stage, and candidates who pass that are invited to interview and to an assessment center. Technical and IT applicants may also be asked to complete a coding exercise. Some stages are run live and some are recorded, so check your invitation rather than assuming.
UBS online assessments: what to practice
The online stage at a large bank usually combines timed ability tests with a questionnaire about how you work. You will not know the exact format until you are invited, but the underlying question types are standard across the sector, and practicing them is the part of your preparation with the clearest payoff.
Work through numerical reasoning, which uses the tables and charts you would meet in a financial role, verbal reasoning, which tests how accurately you read a passage under time pressure, and logical reasoning, which tests pattern recognition without language.
Alongside the ability tests, banks commonly use a situational judgement test, which puts you in a workplace scenario and asks how you would respond, and a personality questionnaire, which builds a picture of your working style and how it fits the culture. There are no right answers in a personality questionnaire, so answer consistently and as you actually are rather than as you imagine a bank wants you to be. What practice buys you here is familiarity with the timing and the format, not a script.
The final stage is the assessment center itself, which may combine exercises and interviews across part or all of a day.
Why does UBS use an assessment center?
An assessment center gives recruiters and hiring managers something the earlier stages cannot, which is the chance to watch you work alongside other people. Communication, collaboration and leadership are hard to measure through a form or a timed test, and straightforward to observe in a room.
It works in both directions. The exercises are normally based on the work the job actually involves, so the day is also your best opportunity to decide whether you want it, and to meet the candidates, colleagues and managers you would be working with.
What UBS is looking for
Start with the job description, because the skills it lists are the ones you will be assessed against, and they differ between programs.
Beyond the requirements of the specific role, UBS sets out the values it expects of employees as pillars, principles and behaviors:
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Pillars: capital strength, simplification and efficiency, risk management
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Principles: client centricity, connectivity, sustainable impact
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Behaviors: accountability with integrity, collaboration, innovation
Check the current wording on the UBS site, then prepare an example for each of the behaviors, because competency questions at interview are usually written against them. Knowing the words is worth little on its own. Having a story that shows you working that way is what scores.
UBS assessment center format
What you are asked to do depends on the role and the program, and the exercises are chosen to resemble the work itself. Most candidates meet some combination of the following.
Presentation
A presentation may be individual or part of a group exercise. You are given a topic and a set of supporting information, asked to reach a recommendation, often framed as advice to a client, and then asked to present it.
Assessors are watching how you arrive at the recommendation more than whether you choose the answer they had in mind. State your conclusion early, show the reasoning and the numbers behind it, name the main risk or the strongest argument against you, and keep to time. Expect questions afterwards, and expect at least one designed to find out whether you defend or abandon your position under pressure.
Group exercise
The group exercise assesses communication, collaboration and leadership. The group is given a topic or a problem, has to discuss it, and has to reach a shared conclusion inside a set time.
The trap is treating it as a competition. Assessors mark individuals, but what they mark is the behavior that helps the group succeed: bringing in someone who has not spoken, summarizing where the discussion has reached, watching the clock, and changing your position when the argument against it is better. Dominating the discussion and saying nothing both score badly.
Interviews
The assessment center normally includes one or more interviews, which may be with recruiters, with managers, or with a panel. The questions tend to fall into three groups.
Motivation, meaning your reasons for applying and how the role fits your plans:
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What attracted you to this role?
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Where do you want your career to go?
Commercial awareness, meaning what you know about the business and the market it works in:
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Who do you see as the main competitors for UBS?
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What is happening in financial markets at the moment that would affect this business?
Competency questions, meaning evidence drawn from your own experience:
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Describe a time when you had to lead a team.
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Tell us about a time when you had to give someone bad news.
Competency answers need a structure. Set out the situation briefly, the task you owned, the actions you personally took, and the result, adding what you would do differently where that is relevant. Prepare a handful of examples you can adapt rather than one story per question, and make sure at least one of them involves something going wrong.
How to prepare for the UBS assessment center
1. Do the commercial reading
You are expected to know what the business does and to have a view on the market it operates in. Read the UBS site, then follow financial news in the weeks before your assessment so that you can talk about something current rather than something you memorized. One well understood story you can discuss properly is worth more than a list of headlines.
2. Practice the test formats before you are invited
The online assessments are timed, and most of the difficulty is pace rather than difficulty of content. Work through numerical reasoning and situational judgement questions under a clock until the format itself stops costing you time.
3. Prepare your examples, not your answers
Build a small set of experiences you know well, each covering a different behavior: leading something, handling a disagreement, recovering from a mistake, working to a deadline. Practice telling each one in about two minutes. Prepared examples adapt to unexpected questions. Memorized answers do not.
4. Check the logistics the day before
Confirm whether your assessment center is in person or virtual, because that changes everything about how you prepare for the morning. If it is in person, plan the journey with time to spare, since start times often fall in rush hour. If it is virtual, test the platform, the camera and the connection in advance, and make sure you will not be interrupted.
5. Turn up rested and dress for the room
Tired candidates make careless errors in exactly the exercises that are designed to catch them. Protect your sleep the night before rather than cramming. On dress, business formal remains the safe choice for a bank unless your invitation says otherwise, and if it does say otherwise, follow it.
