Spent days writing a cover letter and adjusting my CV, only to find out that the initial screening was an online screening. You just upload your CV and cover letter to the online database, and then it is formatted. Immediately received an e-mail saying that they had ‘reviewed my application’ and would like to invite me to fill out an online ‘culture questionnaire’. Prior to this, I spent hours looking into the values and culture of BAT, since it was suggested in the beginning of the questionnaire that I did this. The questionnaire was about ranking different statements according to what was most important to you in a work context. I found myself trying to figure out what answers they wanted me to give, due to the implicit suggestion in the beginning of the test. I found the whole questionnaire to be very basic and weird, and almost a bit pseudoscientific. Upon finishing it, I didn’t hear from them for a week, until finally I received an automatic e-mail response on a bank holiday, saying that they wouldn’t take my application further.

After successfully completing the stage with verbal and numerical tests, I was invited to an online interview. The interview started in Russian (mother tongue) and smoothly switched to English. It lasted 20 minutes.