The final two chapters in this section focus on two “yeses” all of us want at some point:

• A “yes” from an interviewer – the next chapter describes how to write a résumé that stands out amongst all the others out there.
• A “yes” from an examiner – this one shows the most effective, simplest, quickest way of passing an exam.

Before I started doing what I do now, I used to teach accountants how to pass their professional exams (bit of a career change, I know). And these exams aren’t easy. Many students, who’d sailed through exams all their lives, suddenly came unstuck with these, despite working harder than ever before.

I found that they almost always had enough knowledge to pass. But they didn’t know how to maximize their marks given the knowledge they had.

I wanted to make it easier for them, so I spent years working out the best way to maximize marks. And it worked very well: I taught national prize winners; and my pass rates were much higher than national averages.

Here’s what I found to be the best way to approach exams (I’m assuming here that they’re written exams, not multi-choice ones).

Focus on the Marker

Many students believe markers think of them as individuals. They don’t.

I used to mark for one of the accountancy exams. It was hard work. I had 400 identical papers to mark, to a very high standard, with a very tight timeline, during the Christmas vacation.

I never once thought “I hope this particular person passes more than I wanted the others to.” I just rigorously, fairly, dispassionately applied the marking guide to what was in front of me.

Given this, you have to help the marker give you as many marks as possible, by doing such things as:

• Use sub-headings that contain the same words as the requirement. This makes it easy for him to tie your answers to his marking guide.
• Ensure your writing is legible. If it isn’t, you won’t get marks. This means you have to practise writing neatly quickly. Believe me, the skill of speedy neatness doesn’t suddenly appear in the exam room.
• Start a new paragraph every time you make a new point. Use short paragraphs with a blank line in between them. Bite-sized chunks are easier to mark quickly.

Read the Requirement First

The requirement shows what the examiner wants. Nothing else does. Therefore, read it first, before all the paragraphs of information they give. There are lots of benefits in doing this:

• A common examiner complaint is that people don’t answer the question that was asked. Reading the requirement first helps stop this happening.
• You can often answer some requirements without having to read the text (see the next point for how to do this).
• When you do read the text, you know which bits are relevant to the requirement, so spot them more quickly.

A lot of students struggle with this, saying “but I want to read top to bottom, not bottom first.”

I found the best way to persuade them was by setting a 10 Minute Power Test. I gave them five pages packed with detailed statistics, complex charts, lengthy paragraphs and unfathomable phrases, and 10 minutes to answer the question.

The room would go quiet for a few minutes, as they worked through this com­plicated mass of tedium. I swear I could sometimes feel their hatred building toward me.

And then someone would laugh, and say “oh this is easy”. They’d seen the requirement at the bottom of Page 5 said “Write your name (100 marks)”.

Get Easy Marks First

The dispassionate marker doesn’t care what you find easy or hard. If you write something that’s on the marking scheme, you’ll get the marks. Therefore, always do the easy questions first. For example, imagine a question with this requirement:

Here, you would do part (c) without even reading the detailed paragraphs. Do this well, you might score the 50% you need to pass this entire question.

This approach means that you pick up most marks per minute at the beginning:

Break the Requirement Down into Bits

Another common examiner complaint is that people don’t answer all the questions asked. In the above example, where I suggested doing part (c) first, this actually had two elements to it:

• List four things a company may spend money on.
• And why.

It would be very easy to not see “And why”, and throw away half the marks.

Maximize Your Marks by Seeing Things from Different Viewpoints

Exams often ask you to comment on something. These questions can be tricky to answer well, so I devised this approach that my students said helped them pick up lots of marks very quickly:

• Define it
• Give an example
• Say a good thing about it
• Say a bad thing about it
• Mention people affected by it
• Say how they’re affected – good and bad

So, in answer to “Why is marketing important to a business?”, the answer might start like this:

See how this approach helps you score marks quickly? This is because you now have black and white steps to answering gray, hard-to-start questions.

Stop on Time

One of the most common reasons people failed accountancy exams was because they got their timing wrong. Note that 20% of the marks should take 20% of the time. Put another way: if you spend 90% of your time on 5% of the marks, you won’t have enough time left to get sufficient marks to pass.

Imagine that someone stopped doing their question on time, but you didn’t. Look at the disastrous shaded area below . . . 

Preparing in the Right Way

Three quick tips about preparing: