Paradine (UK) interview questions

Initial short teams call followed, where they gave some info about the company and just asked me typical interview questions. This was followed by an in person interview in their offices in Leeds. Basic SQL test. Really nice people and great experience.

The interview process is fairly bizzare - but essentially being a two step process. Firstly, I had a phone call interview with a recruitment partner, this was mainly behavioural asking the typical questions about motivations and experience. Once passing this round, everyone was invited to the Leeds office for an assessment centre, which lasted the majority of the day. The assessment centre was broken down into a few sections - introductions, interview, market making games, group and invididual presentations. Overall the process was handled quite poorly with a lot of waiting around before and after the interview. The interview consisted of a mixture of behavioural and technical questions, and was reasonable. However, the presentations were the most pointless part of the whole process. We were tasked with individually giving a presentation on anything interesting, and also a group presentation on pitching a stock that investors should purchase. I would love to know how any of this is relevant to someone's motivation and competency in software engineering. It is also worth noting that the assessment centres consist of ~20 people, with around 2 people getting an offer.