[On-Demand] The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience: Part One
Heading into 2023, employers continue to face a challenging talent market. Beyond a shortage of qualified applicants, candidate expectations for the recruitment process have never been higher. Our latest research shows that fewer than two in ten candidates rate their experience as excellent, which means engaging top talent in the new year will require a new approach.
Make 2023 the year you focus on how you interact with job seekers. Join PeopleScout Global Head of Talent Consulting Simon Wright for the newest Talking Talent webinar, The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience available on-demand.
This bite-sized 30-minute webinar is part one of a two-part series that makes a case for the importance of a stellar candidate experience and provides the data to back up our recommendations for creating one.
In our world of e-commerce and online banking, consumers want slick digital experiences. But they still want the human touch when they run into a problem. Despite the growth of digital channels, excellent customer service is still a must-have in a business landscape where companies compete on customer experience. High-volume hiring in the contact center has never been more important or more challenging.
Customer queries are more complex and high-value, and contact center agents are now expected to not only answer calls, but interact with customers through chats, emails and social media. Contact centers need highly-skilled talent who are comfortable working in a myriad of technology platforms. Customer service representatives (CSRs) must also exhibit strong soft skills like listening and empathy—especially as consumers are experiencing more financial hardships and mental health struggles post-pandemic.
Indeed, 84% of contact center leaders—whether part of a BPO or an internal contact center—believe the pandemic permanently elevated the importance of the contact center for their business. But, it’s hard to deliver against your service levels when you’re struggling to hire or when you’re losing staff amidst the Great Resignation. Since 2019, the number of vacancies has increased, while the number of applicants per opening has dropped by 50%.
(Source: Indeed)
So, how can a contact center director and talent acquisition leader team up to tackle today’s tough landscape? Here are three top recruitment challenges in the contact center and tips for overcoming them.
1. Use Your Employer Brand to Attract the Right Kind of Talent
ContactBabel’s Contact Center Decision Maker’s Guide states that contact center attrition reached 23% in 2022, with 1 in 6 operations experiencing annual attrition of over 30%. This results in contact centers making over 212,000 hires annually. With turnover like this, how to make high-volume hiring more effective is always on the minds of contact center directors.
As consumer behavior has changed, a different set of skills is needed in customer service. Contact center agents need to exercise problem solving and analytical skills while also displaying empathy to customers who may be upset or emotional. Agents who lack these skills are more likely to struggle to resolve customer issues and to suffer from increased stress levels.
By honing your employer value proposition and attraction messaging, you can stand out amongst your competition but also zero in the characteristics you need for your contact center. By shifting your mindset from focusing on getting the most applications, or even those with customer service experience, to getting applications with the right profile, you can reduce attrition by increase the likelihood of your new hires being successful.
Case Study: Finding Candidates with Problem Solving Skills
We helped Direct Line, a British insurance provider, improve their recruitment outcomes in the contact center through employer branding and recruitment marketing. We found their ideal candidate profile was someone with strong analytical skills and who could proactively problem solve—rather than those with past experience in customer service.
We then expanded our search efforts, looking for candidates who would have honed these skills in non-customer service roles who would be interested in making a career change. Not only did this open the doors for Direct Line to access a new pool of talent, but it also helped to increase the quality of their hires and reduce attrition.
2. Rethink Your Assessment Center to Reduce Drop-Off Rate
With growing complexity in customer service, organizations need contact center agents with strong listening skills and written communication skills (for chat, email and social media enquiries) as well as the ability to self-manage and multitask. Leveraging candidate assessment tools to find candidates with the right combination of skills and behaviors is imperative to the success of your contact center.
One of our longest standing clients, tasked us with high-volume recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) for their financial services customer contact centers. The bank needed to recruit more staff to meet their service levels and create a great experience for their customers. We designed the customer contact recruitment process from scratch, including a recruitment marketing campaign.
As part of this new process, we advised the client to introduce an online test immediately after the candidate applied using an automated email. This caught them while the application was still front of mind and also ensured that only best-fit candidates progressed. This meant that hiring managers were committing their time to top talent and helped to reduce the overall time to hire. As a result of identifying high quality candidates sooner, we were able to reduce the attrition rate to just 11%, well below the industry average.
More Assessment Center Tips to Reduce Drop Off
Here are some more assessment center tips:
Try introducing assessment tasks earlier in the process or combining assessment stages. This helps increase hiring speed and keep candidates engaged.
Rather than traditional multiple-choice tests, try a role play scenario or an interactive experience that gives the candidates a real-life feel of what their day-to-day job will look like. The benefits are two-fold—you get a better idea of how candidates will perform in the role, and they get a better idea of what to expect before they accept the offer.
Ensure candidates are prepared for the assessment center by offering webinars, instruction videos and even practices tests. This helps to eliminate nervousness and boost confidence amongst candidates—reducing candidate drop-off before the assessment center phase.
Following the tips above on finding the ideal candidate profile and assessing for the right skills to start with, will help reduce ghosting on day one. In addition, you can also work to speed up the recruitment process and improve communications to keep candidates engaged after offer acceptance.
Speeding Up the Recruitment Process
With so many contact centers vying for customer service talent, employer response time is crucial as you want to beat the by being the first to move the candidate through the recruitment process. About a quarter of candidates state the reason for their ghosting was because the hiring process was too long or too slow. So, take a look at your recruitment process. Are there any steps you could eliminate or combine? Are there ways you could reduce the time between steps?
If it’s feasible for your organization, you might consider moving to same-day offers, even if they’re contingent upon reference verification, background checks or drug testing. Also, moving the start date up will reduce the likelihood of a competing offer turning your candidate’s head. Waiting for your next training class could be risky, so think about running smaller training classes more frequently to accelerate hiring.
Staying Connected with Regular Communication
Communication is also a key part of combatting ghosting during the crucial period offer and onboarding. Staying in touch with candidates is imperative to keep them interested. If you ghost your brand-new hire by forgetting to check in, they’re more likely to ghost you in turn. The same Indeed study found that 77% of jobseekers saying they’ve been ghosted by an employer.
Assessing the touchpoints between your organization and the offer holder is an important way for employers to ensure they keep the lines of communication open and increase engagement with candidates. Are you using your CRM to the fullest? Investing in creating content that showcases your employer value proposition (EVP) and sending it out regularly to your candidates via engaging emails will ensure they are reminded regularly of the value you offer—whether through benefits, flexibility, growth opportunities, diversity and inclusion initiatives and more.
Personal touchpoints are another way to stay connected. Check-in emails from the recruiter or even messages of congratulations from the hiring manager will help candidates feel valued and special. You might consider asking existing employees to act as an ambassador and share some onboarding materials with more information about your organization, your culture and values or your employee resource groups (ERGs) so they start feeling like a part of the team.
These small gestures can help your candidate feel connected to the organization before they start—and could end up being what keeps them from changing their mind when they receive a competing offer.
RPO for the Contact Center
Facing a recruitment landscape in which you need high-volume hiring to support your contact center operations? Learn strategies to speed up your hiring process and deliver on customer service quality by downloading our 9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges.
School’s out for the summer, but in the world of our RPO partnerships this is the time of year where we focus on early careers recruitment, in anticipation of entering apprentice, undergraduate and graduate markets in the autumn. Right now, we’re talking with clients both established and prospective about their needs in this area and, as ever, the focus on using EC programs to correct or balance diversity of workforce and (future) leadership remains a priority.
Most organisations will not necessarily view themselves as having a “diversity crisis” of the kind described in a recent article highlighting research into consulting and finance hiring in the City of London. However, many will benefit from accepting its key takeaway that, “employers are more likely to hire black candidates if they rely on anonymised, ‘skills-based’ assessments in the hiring process”.
In my experience, employers have long moved on from the most “traditional methods”. It’s certainly been a decade or more since I’ve heard of an early careers program requiring a cover letter or making space on an application form for candidates to list all the University societies of which they were definitely the President.
But my experience is not universal. I’m not a graduate looking to start my career, and I’m lucky enough to work in a recruitment business with an award-winning assessment consultancy arm, partnering with clients who take hiring for true potential seriously. That doesn’t mean there’s not more work for us to do within these partnerships—even for those who’ve taken positive steps in this area. Each year brings a new implementation cycle, and new opportunities to improve.
Here are some solutions we’ve developed, launched or refined in our early careers RPO partnerships:
Assessing for Skills & Strengths in Early Careers Recruitment
Over time, many employers have reduced focus on abilities in favour of strengths- or behaviour-based testing, which is considered more conducive to measuring potential. Organisationally we broadly agree, but, where appropriate, we continue to recommend reasoning tests covering verbal, numerical and cognitive ability.
The key here is not to use them in isolation as a blunt tool. Benchmark or cut off scores should be set only within the parameters of adverse impact analysis using anonymised candidate diversity data, and ability tests should be followed up with strengths or behavioural assessments. The link RPO expertise can create between recruitment technology, recruiters, and business psychologists is critical in this space.
Recruiting for Role Fit to Enhance Diversity
Predicting workplace performance and potential through behavioural assessment is often seen by early careers talent acquisition leaders as a smarter approach to hiring. Experiential tests, backed by data and research, producing personal interview guides for final stage assessment often leads to better outcomes and maintains diversity in the process.
This approach highlights candidate suitability against role fit over culture fit, the latter being a potential barrier to creating a more diverse workforce (the concept of aligning new recruits with a prevailing culture or mindset being an obvious denial of the need for organisational change).
Focusing on Culture Add Rather than Culture Fit
I am not yet aware of any early careers programs where assessment is now 100% anonymised. Whether online via video, as part of a wider virtual assessment experience, or in a traditional face-to-face meeting, an interview is going to happen before a hire is made. Removing anonymity can introduce bias, and we promote two key mitigations.
Firstly, design and deliver structured interviews which are competency-based and/or focused on culture add (what the candidate can contribute to your organisation’s culture) over culture fit. Our teams often partner with hiring managers on best practice in this area, even facilitating or assessing directly where needed. This helps maintain consistency and relevance, avoiding questions on personal interests or previous experience—instead asking specific questions on working styles and preferences.
Secondly, put candidate experience first and learn from feedback to provide support and guidance, setting the stage for success. By hearing the candidates’ voice, and measuring their experience across, we’ve been able to improve outcomes for employers.
We’re looking forward to seeing how these solutions progress, and what improvements they bring as we take early careers RPO from now to next, supporting the diverse workforces of the future—identifying and unlocking true potential wherever it exists.
HMRC: Creating a New Virtual Assessment Center for Greater Diversity
Every year, His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) hires 40 lawyers in an annual campaign. Ahead of their annual hiring effort, they turned to PeopleScout to help them modernize their assessment center to secure more qualified talent.
56Qualified Candidates Found for 40 Vacancies
40%of Offers Made Were to Candidates Who Identified as an Ethnic Minority
33%of Offers Made Were to Candidates Who Identified as Being from a Lower Socioeconomic Background
Situation
The HMRC team was concerned that their current assessment center was no longer a good predictor of performance in the role. They had also received feedback from a number of candidates who said they’d experienced functionality and formatting limitations while completing the written exercise.
The HMRC wanted PeopleScout to evaluate their assessment strategy to ensure they were evaluating for the right traits, to improve the candidate experience, and to reduce potential hidden bias within the process since diversity was a critical goal for their recruitment program.
Solution
Reassessing the Assessment Center
Our tech team and assessments experts had several sessions with the HMRC team. The HMRC team was able to share the skill and behavior requirements for the legal roles. Each skill and behavior was weighted to ensure the online assessment was tailored to their specific needs. This collaborative approach gave the HMRC team opportunities to provide direct input into the direction of the assessment center and develop trust in the outcomes as well as PeopleScout.
The new assessment center consisted of a behavioral test which also assessed for verbal and cognitive aptitude. This combination gave HMRC the opportunity to evaluate a broader skillset to better judge a candidate’s fit for the role. The new assessment was accompanied by tweaks to the technology platform which created a smoother experience for candidates.
Our PeopleScout team trained HMRC’s internal teams on administering the new assessment center as well as a new video interviewing tool. In addition to the training session, each interview panel member received a detailed guide to minimize the likelihood of any disruption for the candidate.
Creating an Excellent Candidate Experience
We designed and delivered a webinar to engage candidates and educate them about the new virtual assessment center. This gave them the opportunity to ask questions and feel confident going into the testing stage.
A PeopleScout assessor was present during all virtual assessments to support the HMRC team with their assessment expertise and ensure a consistent experience for all candidates.
Results
Of the applications received, 62% were passed to HMRC for sifting and to complete the assessment center. Just under half passed and completed a virtual interview with HMRC. Ultimately, 56 qualified candidates were identified against 40 vacancies, giving HMRC a talent pool to draw upon for future openings.
Great strides were made against HMRC’s diversity recruitment efforts. Of the offers made:
7% of candidates identified as having a disability
60% of candidates identified as female
40% of candidates identified as minority ethnic
33% of candidates identified as being from a lower socio-economic background
Feedback from candidates was positive with many saying they felt the new platform was easier to navigate.
At a Glance
COMPANY His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
INDUSTRY Government & Public Sector
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
ABOUT HMRC His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is a department of the UK Government responsible for administration of taxes, national insurance contributions, the national minimum wage and more.
How a Custom Behavioral Assessment Framework Created a £24M Savings for a Leading British Bank
PeopleScout’s talent advisory team created a new candidate assessment center for a large British bank, resulting in a 58% reduction in recruitment costs totalling £24M.
58%Reduction in Recruitment Costs
resulting in a £24M savings
55%Reduction in Attrition
in the first year
50%Reduction in Application-to-Hire Ratio
from 32:1 to 16:1
Situation
Arriving at the right assessment solution for a complex, multi-billion-pound contemporary business is a major challenge. But, this was a challenge that PeopleScout’s team of psychologists was built for when our banking client came to us with a big brief. The banking group had just launched a crucial new set of values. They wanted us to create a custom behavioral assessment framework, along side a full suite of candidate assessment tools to support hiring into core customer-facing roles across the bank.
Solution
Insight
We began by carrying out a comprehensive job analysis, involving focus groups with over 300 colleagues as well as one-on-one interviews with job incumbents, senior stakeholders and transformation stakeholders. We identified synergies and differences between role requirements and complexity across the financial services organization. The detailed research and analysis revealed three job families across all roles, each with four levels of complexity. We developed definitions and behavioral indicators for each group and each level in the framework.
Design
Following sign-off on the new behavioral framework, we developed the assessment matrix and recommended key assessment methods. We streamlined and simplified the existing multi-stage process, bringing both the process and tools into alignment with the new values. This made it easy to understand and implement across the bank. We recommended a three-stage process across the framework, allowing for tailoring to job family and complexity levels, using specific skills assessments and assessment center micro-exercises.
We recommended a two-stage application, with a short form at the beginning to reduce early candidate drop out. We followed this with a more comprehensive data collection form, completed after candidates were more engaged with the job opportunity.
Pre-Screening: Situational Judgement Test
The pre-screening stage comprised an online scenario-based behavioral assessment or Situational Judgement Test (SJT). SJTs are strong predictors of future job success, and it gave the bank an opportunity to provide deep insight into the brand culture and their values. It also created a positive candidate experience, while increasing diversity and reducing both time-to-hire and recruiter effort.
Mid-Screening: Motivational Fit
The mid-screening stage took place through video or telephone interviews, dependent on the role. The interview provided the client with deep insight into motivational fit and communication skills and enabled them to evaluate numerous critical behaviors for the roles. Plus, it ensure only the best applicants reached the most time-intensive, face-to-face final stage.
Final Screening: Assessment Center
This final screening stage was an assessment center for the more complex roles, incorporating interviews, role-plays and group exercises. We introduced a series of inclusive and realistic micro-exercises, assessing the candidate’s values, potential and mindset as they correlated to the job family and level. For example, to assess for a growth mindset, we created a micro-exercise in which the candidate was provided with feedback on their previous performance and given the opportunity to reflect and learn from it. They were then asked to demonstrate how they would incorporate that feedback.
We significantly upgraded the bank’s assessment center capability by increasing the use of behavioral exercises for primary evidence gathering, combining scores across assessment tools to triangulate data and providing robust final evaluations.
Informed Choices
Candidates shared appreciation for the chance to demonstrate the breadth of their skills and that they felt fairly assessed. They also gained sufficient insight to make informed decisions about whether the organization was offering the environment they were seeking, and whether its values and purpose were aligned with their own.
Our solution showcased the bank’s brand and culture, and the built-in job preview features ensured candidates were given sufficient knowledge at the automated pre-screening stage to make an informed self-assessment of their own match to the organization. This meant that poor-fit candidates withdrew before resources were unnecessarily committed in the higher-touch, mid-screening stage of the process. It also supported the client in creating a respectful, two-way selection process, which is expected by modern job seekers.
Results
We built-in various ways of measuring the cost-efficiencies and overall return-on-investment of the end-to-end assessment solution. The client was delighted with the results:
A reduction in the classroom-based training time required as the caliber of candidates was improved.
Improved conversion at every stage of the assessment process, meaning less business time was required for assessment.
The application-to-hire ratio was cut by half, from 32:1 to 16:1.
There was a 55% reduction in first-year attrition.
There was a 58% reduction in recruitment cost, saving £24M.
At a Glance
COMPANY Leading UK bank
INDUSTRY Financial Services
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
ABOUT THE CLIENT This client is a leading UK financial services group that includes several retail banking brand. The company has been partnering with PeopleScout for over 20 years, making it one of our longest-standing client relationships.
Co-Op: How We Significantly Reduced Time-To-Hire for a Leading UK Insurer
Co-op Insurance came to PeopleScout for a new assessment center and streamlined recruitment process, resulting in a reduced time-to-hire and quality new talent.
Reduction in Time-to-Hire
73%Assessment Center Pass Rate
up from 41%
Positive Candidate Feedback
Employing 70,000 people, the Co-op is known across the UK as a leader in socially conscious, community-led business. As well as being the country’s fifth largest food retailer, it is also a major general insurer. Co-op Insurance came to PeopleScout with a problem. They were having big issues recruiting the voices of the organisation: high-quality, productive, right-fit Claims Advisors who would stay. Also, the time-to-hire was very slow and a drag on the time of the resourcing team. Their recruitment process needed a complete overhaul.
SITUATION
The process we were presented started with a manual-intensive résumé screen. Because of the volumes that were coming through, the Co-op resourcing team was conducting daily résumé screens. This ate up immense amounts of time and resulted in the team screening candidates based on experience. That meant they were inconsistent in the way they were screening candidates (about 70% passed the screen). Those who passed this stage then had a qualifying call. This was not a formal telephone interview, but an introductory call to check the experience on their résumé, discuss any gaps and make sure they were eligible to work in the UK (85–95% passed this stage). Finally there was a face-to-face assessment centre—consisting of a computer-based assessment and interview. Following this, was the offer and induction.
SOLUTION
The right solution meant two considerations: what to assess and how.
WHAT – We conducted a period of job analysis to understand what good looked like in the role.
HOW – We needed to identify a solution which would support progressing candidates at speed through the process, providing a realistic job preview and automatically screening candidates so there was less manual intervention by the resourcing team.
We suggested removing the résumé screening step which meant there was less reliance on experience only. This allowed us to assess the whole person, progressing candidates who had no experience but great potential. We developed an online tool that incorporated a situational judgement test which tested for attention to detail and a video interview. Candidates completed this in one sitting, further reducing the time-to-hire. We also supported in the design of an assessment center.
RESULTS
The Co-op’s resourcing team was delighted with the new process. It’s easy to use and gives them back invaluable time to work on other projects. The assessment center significantly reduced time-to-hire, owing to the speed and efficiency of the new process. The pass rate at the assessment center stage is 73%—a big increase on the previous rate of 41%. This means that a much higher proportion of the best-fit candidates are going further in the process. In addition, new hires have been identified by the business as individuals who are motivated to succeed, with a propensity for learning and a growth mindset. Candidate feedback has been very positive, with many saying it gave them a proper understanding of the role.
At a Glance
COMPANY Co-op Insurance
INDUSTRY Financial Services
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
ABOUT CO-OP Co-op Insurance is part of Co-op Group, one of the world’s largest consumer co-operatives, owned by millions of members. As a leading UK insurer, the organization offers coverage for business, home, life, motor, travel and pets.
Talent Assessment: Bringing in Better with Passion, Purpose & Mindset
Most employers are still using legacy assessment processes that are ineffective in today’s competitive recruitment landscape. With the cost of one bad hire reaching as high as $50,000, it’s imperative that organizations ensure they’ve assessed candidates’ current skills, future potential and cultural fit.
So, how can you adjust your assessment process to bring in talent that will support their business now and into the future? In this book, Talent Assessment: Bringing in Better with Passion, Purpose and Mindset, we explore how employers can rethink their assessments to hire talent that will thrive.
In this ebook you will learn:
Why assessing only for knowledge and skills puts you at risk
How investing in technology helped one retailer modernize their assessments and improve the candidate experience
How to customize your assessments to find the right passion, purpose and mindset
As one of the world’s largest life sciences and healthcare companies, McKesson required a high-volume hiring solution to fill positions across multiple departments. PeopleScout delivered an RPO solution with a special emphasis on boosting diversity and the client’s veteran hiring initiatives.
10+Year Partnership
95%of All Requisitions Have Diverse Candidates
8%Over 8% Veteran Hiring Achieved, Up from 3.3%
McKesson has engaged with PeopleScout for 10 years. Over the course of our partnership, PeopleScout has managed hiring for a variety of positions including professional, managerial, sales, finance and administrative roles. PeopleScout’s engagement includes a specific focus on hiring veterans in all positions to support McKesson’s goal to become known as a top employer for veterans and military spouses.
Solution
VETERAN TALENT COMMUNITY
PeopleScout created a Veteran Talent Community which provides McKesson with access to thousands of active and passive veteran job candidates and opens the door to additional job opportunities for veterans.
IMPROVED WEB DESIGN
PeopleScout helped to administer a customized McKesson veteran careers webpage to attract and process veteran candidates.
RECRUITMENT MARKETING
Veteran-targeted marketing and sourcing strategies were developed including improving relationships with more than 800 military organizations, posting jobs on veteran job boards and social media marketing.
ONGOING TRAINING
PeopleScout provides ongoing training and education for members of the recruiting team to ensure military resumes are matched with civilian job requirements.
SCREENING PROCESSES
A veteran priority screening process was created to identify and prioritize veteran candidates.
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
PeopleScout hired a Navy veteran to lead the D&I initiative on the recruiting team.
Results
HIRING SUPPORT
In 2019, PeopleScout managed more than 3,000 hires across North America.
DIVERSITY IMPROVEMENT
PeopleScout provides a diverse slate of candidates on 95% of all requisitions.
INCREASED VETERAN HIRING
Veteran hiring improved from 3.3% to 8.6%.
STRONGER EMPLOYER BRAND
Targeted veteran recruitment and marketing strengthens McKesson’s veteran employment brand, resulting in McKesson being recognized as a leader in veteran hiring by national media outlets.
McKesson’s Veteran Talent Community, veteran landing page and recruitment marketing strategy are supported by PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology, Affinix.
At a Glance
COMPANY McKesson Corporation
INDUSTRY Life Sciences, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory, Affinix
ANNUAL HIRES 3,000
ABOUT MCKESSON McKesson Corporation is a diversified life sciences and healthcare services leader dedicated to advancing health outcomes for patients everywhere. The organizaiton partners with biopharma companies, care providers, pharmacies, manufacturers, governments and others to deliver insights, products and services to help make quality care more accessible and affordable.
Scottish Police: Securing the Future of Policing with Talent Assessment
PeopleScout developed a bespoke assessment process for the Scottish Police Authority to identify top leadership talent.
Situation
The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) was faced with the challenge of hiring an elite group of leaders into the roles of Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) and Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) for Police Scotland. Police Scotland had undergone a wave of change, instability and uncertainty, and they needed a strong leadership team to work collectively and deliver a significant transformational agenda.
They wanted candidates who not only had the operational policing experience, but also the leadership capability to drive a challenging journey of accelerated growth, intense scrutiny and accountability.
The SPA engaged PeopleScout as a strategic talent assessment partner to help them do it.
Solution
A Robust Process
The SPA wanted our Assessment Team to design and deliver a robust process to recruit a number of ACCs and DCCs into Police Scotland. We measured each candidate’s strengths and potential areas of development against indicators from the College of Policing Competency and Values Framework.
A Two-Staged Approach
In stage one, candidates completed an online critical reasoning test and a series of personality assessments. This was followed by an in-depth validation interview with a highly experienced organizational psychologist.
For the second stage, all candidates were invited to attend an assessment center. They were tested by a team of independent, highly experienced assessors across four exercises.
Bespoke Reports
Our assessors collated all the candidate performance information and developed detailed reports on each individual. These also included a set of unique questions that the interview panel could use in the final stage interview to dig deeper and give candidates a final opportunity to demonstrate their capability in a specific competency.
Results
Successfully Appointed Leaders
This robust approach enabled the SPA to successfully appoint three individuals into ACC roles and two individuals into DCC roles as key players in the Police Scotland leadership team.
Confidence in the Future
Our tailored, best practice-based assessment process gave the SPA confidence that the selected individuals would make a significant contribution to the development of policing in Scotland in the years ahead.
At a Glance
COMPANY Scottish Police Authority (SPA)
INDUSTRY Government & Public Sector
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Recruitment Process Outsourcing
ABOUT SPA Scottish Police Authority (SPA) is the independent governing body for policing in Scotland, created to promote, support and oversee improvement in policing.
HM Treasury: Building Inclusion into the Early Careers Candidate Experience
PeopleScout boosted inclusion in the HM Treasury early careers recruitment process to improve diversity.
Situation
Every year His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) recruits up to 150 graduates for their Graduate Policy Adviser program, offering the chance to shape policies that affect a nation. A popular proposition, they sought PeopleScout’s help to identify the very best candidates from almost 2,500 applications. While well-subscribed, delivering a satisfactory candidate journey had historically proved to be a challenge, and they were keen for our help to improve the application experience.
A key objective was to attract a more diverse range of candidates, reflecting the the UK population they serve. Specifically, they wanted to engage a wider socio-economic, gender, ethnic and disability community. Understanding—and addressing—any adverse impacts on these groups was essential.
Solution
Our goal was to shift the perception that HMT roles are primarily financial when, in fact, communication and analytical skills are the most important abilities. Understanding this helped us to broaden the sweep of our attraction strategy while also developing a strategy to target specific talent groups.
We reviewed all of HMT’s assessment materials to establish their fairness and to ensure they represented best practice. We also monitored every stage of the recruitment process for any adverse impact.
We established a structured schedule of nurture emails, regularly updating candidates on their application status. Our recruitment team supported candidates throughout their entire recruitment journey.
We also applied a reasonable adjustment process, making sure that every candidate with a disability-related request was personally contacted to assess their requirements. For example, a disabled candidate was unable to complete the online test, so we worked with the test provider to replicate the evaluation in Microsoft Excel, and allowed the candidate to complete the test at our offices in London. The candidate was successful and progressed to the next stage.
“The attraction campaign generated 49% of all applications and increased applications from key target audiences—particularly women, those from underrepresented groups and state schools.”
Results
All hiring targets were achieved. The attraction campaign generated 49% of all applications and increased applications from key target audiences—particularly women, those from underrepresented groups and state schools.
HMT was thrilled with the results—so much so that they have asked us to take on further campaigns.
At a Glance
COMPANY His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT)
INDUSTRY Government & Public Sector
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Recruitment Process Outsourcing
ABOUT HMT HM Treasury is the UK government’s economic and finance ministry, maintaining control over public spending and setting the direction of economic policy.
