Written exercise
Fit & BehaviouralA timed task at a final stage: read a short pack and produce a recommendation, note or summary that will be marked on judgement rather than length.
Also written: written case, written assessment
The written exercise gives you a pack, typically an hour or less, and a required output: a recommendation to a partner, a note to a client, a short summary of a situation. The pack is deliberately larger than the time allows and frequently contains an inconsistency that cannot be resolved within it.
What is being marked is prioritising and written clarity, not comprehension. The output is a decision document. Summarising every exhibit shows that you read the pack rather than that you can decide from it, and it consumes the time the recommendation needed.
The clock is where these are won and lost, and the loss happens at the end rather than at the start. Reading feels productive and writing feels risky, so candidates read until they feel confident and then write in a rush. A marker cannot score a conclusion that never arrives, so the writing time has to be protected as though it were the exercise itself.
Two habits raise the mark reliably. Lead with the recommendation and support it underneath, so the marker has the answer before they have the reasoning. And name what you could not check, in one line, saying which figure you used and why. That reads as judgement about materiality, not as an apology for incomplete work.
Worked example
A pack contains a management forecast in one exhibit and a broker estimate in another, and they disagree on next year's revenue.
The weak answer resolves neither and quietly picks one. The strong answer says which it used, why that source is more defensible for this decision, and what it would change about the recommendation if the other figure turned out to be right.