I applied on the Thales careers website, pretty difficult to navigate the site though. I did the usual online tests and then I was put straight through to the assessment centre, I don't think they do telephone interviews. It was a half day assessment centre in Crawley. I was supposed to be going at 1pm but they phoned me the day before when I was at another assessment centre saying they wanted me to come in at 8am instead, a little bit unprofessional if you ask me to change at the last minute but I willingly obliged. There was a written exercise which felt like an exam but wasn't difficult, a group exercise with people applying for different schemes, so in mine there were 2 of us for finance, 2 for procurement and one for engineering. Then there were two interviews, one technical (which included the presentation I was asked to prepare) and one competency based. The technical one was with the department director, but it wasn't actually that technical and he didn't mind if you got the questions wrong as he said I would be taught everything anyway. The director was very nice and made me feel at ease so that interview was actually quite enjoyable. The competency based one, I felt, was difficult. I felt very grilled but looking back on it, the HR guy who took the interview was probably just trying to get as much out of me as possible. I was offered the job two hours after leaving the assessment centre when I was on a train back home. I was very impressed with the turnaround and correspondence with them has been a pleasure. I decided not to take the job but it was a very difficult decision since I felt very welcome at Thales and it seemed like a great employer.