Assessment centre
Fit & BehaviouralThe final interview stage: several back to back interviews plus group and case exercises, assessed together in one decision.
Also written: superday, final stage, assessment center
An assessment centre, called a superday in US practice, gathers the final stage into one day: multiple interviews with bankers of different seniority, usually a group exercise, and often a case or written task.
The crucial thing to understand is that it is one assessment with several inputs, not several independent interviews. Interviewers meet afterwards and compare notes, and what survives that conversation is a small number of specific, memorable observations rather than an average score.
Two consequences follow. Consistency matters more than peaks, because a single dismissive interaction with a junior colleague is more memorable and more actionable than a strong answer. And repetition is fine: you will be asked why banking several times, and giving four different versions reads as having no real motivation.
It is also the first stage where the people assessing you are the people you would actually work for, so the question shifts from whether you can do the job to whether the team wants you doing it alongside them at two in the morning.
Worked example
A candidate is strong in three interviews and visibly impatient with a junior analyst in the fourth.
In the calibration discussion, the observation that carries is the impatience, because it is specific, memorable and speaks directly to whether people want to work with them at two in the morning.
Consistency across every interaction, including the ones that feel like they do not count, is worth more than a peak performance in one room.