Effective intray or e-tray exercise

A typical exercise requires you to deal with an inbox containing a series of e-mails. The assessment may require you to carry out any of the following tasks: Choose the most appropriate action to take in response to the e-mails that appear in your inbox. Write an e-mail communication about a particular issue in the exercise or engage in a one-to-one informal presentation and interview, based around the e-mail communication you have received. All the information you need to complete the e-tray assessment will be presented to you when you begin the exercise. During the exercise you may be interrupted with another ‘urgent message’.  Bear in mind that this could be a ‘red herring’ so our tip is to read the message and decide for yourself whether it is more important than the information you have already. Keep calm and ensure that you read all the information thoroughly. Use your judgement and experience to decide the priority of the actions.  You may be asked to justify your decisions so make notes throughout so you are clear. Keep your eye on the time: one of the things that is tested in this exercise is your ability to plan and organise so it doesn’t look good if you don’t finish. This exercise is likely to represent what the real job is like – so use this an opportunity to decide if it is for you.