Your OCS Story! Tell us what led to your success!!

Hi,

I passed with 75% on first attempt.

My advice would be, when studying for your OT exam, make sure you understand well, however, I realise people reading this will have already passed operational OT and studying for the OCS so may be too late.

My advice for OCS in that case would:
1. Know the preseen well. However, contrary to usual advice, you don’t need to know it back to front, word to word. It’s provided in the exam!!

2. Look online, somewhere you will find potential questions that could come up based on the preseen and also think of some using common sense.
In the Nov 19 OCS chokolate box was the pre-seen.
So scenarios that could come up would be, opening of a new shop, plantation disaster. E.g burning down etc.

3. Relate it to the real world. Imagine this was your work place, and answer as if a senior member at your workplace had asked the questions

4. Know your audience. E.g if exam says marketing manager asked a question,
You know they probably do not have any financial background so write as if you were writing a dummy guide.

5. Again, relate it to the real world. Think about the times we are in. Everything happening at fast rates, easily accessible, mobile phones, social media etc

6. Refer your answers back to the preseen
– very important!! E.g choosing a better quality product because the company is known for its premium quality. Use what the preseen says to show your point.

7. The numbers in the preseen are important. Know your working capital days, receivable days etc memorise those!

9. Example – a question on relevant costs by email

I started with:
a: Dear (whoever asked the question) or Hi (any introduction),

Sometimes the exam won’t ask “what is a relevant cost” you will just know from what they are asking that it is referring to that.
Like if they say “what should be included in a accept or reject decision” – it’s a good indicators you can bring up relevant/non relevant costs.

b: explanation of relevant and non relevant costs (bold and underline) – even when the question didn’t ask to explain that. Personally I think you should give an explanation of it.
– explain what it is. What is classed as relevant or not

c: answer actual questions –
Point
Explain
Apply

d:
To finish off: “Please let me know if you have any further questions

My rule of thumb was that if 45mins / 1.8 = 25marks and if all equal difficult questions, divide by the number of questions. So if 4 questions = 6.25 (7marks) per question. I always gave about 8 answers.

Don’t spend too long on one question!

10. you will need to know P1, E1 and F1 pretty well
P1 – OCS is heavily based on this. So learn things like decision criteria, linear regression graphs etc
E1 – personally would say questions asked are common sense in the exam. Like CSR etc
F1 – yep, you guessed it. You need to know your IASs and the rules 🙁 not the IAS numbers though, although that could potentially come up.

You get no marks for calculations!

Honestly, the best advice I could give overall is make sure when they provide you with figures or graphs etc, you’re able to explain how they got to it or what it means.
Make sure you state the obvious!!! E.g “revenue has decreased meaning we have sold less that last year/offered too much discount”

HTFT 50 question pack is good!
Past papers!!! Use them and look at answers!

Good luck!

Hi Sophie,

Thanks for sharing you experience.

Can you advise what HTFT 50 is?

how accurat were the 50 question pack form htft. Did you have to interpret graphs in your exam ?

thanks for sharing your sucess experience. this is realy helpfull