The Art Of Using Assessment Tools To Transform Your Recruitment Delivery.

Transcription

1 The Art Of Using Assessment Tools To Transform Your Recruitment Delivery.

2 Introduction. The Art of Using Assessment Tools to Transform Your Recruitment Delivery was an intimate speaker and round-table networking breakfast event for 30 management-level in-house recruitment professionals, all interested in finding out more about assessment tools and how to use them effectively as part of their recruitment processes. There s no questioning that the effectiveness of certain assessment tools is helping to revolutionise the recruitment process on a global scale, but with the vast level of choice available, it s difficult to work out which tools would suit your organisation best. Throughout the course of the morning we heard from two specialist guest speakers who shared their insights to help our in-house recruiters understand the world of assessment tools better and ultimately improve their recruitment delivery. Who spoke? Ben Hawkes Head of Assessment Shell International Lucy Beaumont Principle Korn Ferry Hay Group Ben Hawkes is Assessment Lead for Shell International, where he oversees the use of assessments, interviews and other selection techniques throughout Shell s global operations. He has worked in the field of talent assessment in Europe and the US for almost 20 years. Prior to joining Shell Ben was employed by IBM Kenexa as Global Head of Content for their assessment product portfolio and worked on projects developing new approaches to talent assessment including machine learning, text analytics and simulations. Ben is a regular presenter at conferences in the UK and US, and is the author of numerous articles and chapters on the use of technology to assess and predict workplace behaviour. Lucy is responsible for supporting partners to grow and develop their business, with a focus on creating and delivering solution based training. Prior to her role in the International team, Lucy worked as a Senior Research and Development Consultant at Korn Ferry Hay Group where she was heavily involved with delivering client solutions including customised projects. This included mapping client competencies to Talent Q assessments, client validations to identify what predicts success within different populations and group analysis projects to understand the profiles of groups and where training and development might be best deployed. Lucy worked closely with UK and International clients including Royal Bank of Scotland, STA Travel and Carlsberg.

3 Korn Ferry Hay Group. Korn Ferry is the preeminent global people and organizational advisory firm. We help leaders, organizations, and societies succeed by releasing the full power and potential of people. Our nearly 7,000 colleagues deliver services through our Executive Search, Hay Group and Futurestep divisions. The In-house Recruitment Network. This breakfast event was attended by around 30 members of the In-house Recruitment Network. The In-house Recruitment network is the fastest growing community for In-house Recruiters and HR professionals in the industry. Members benefit from helpful and informative online forums, specialist breakfast events, high value conferences and of course the official In-house Recruitment Awards. With almost 10,000 members, the In-house Recruitment Network is the largest, most active professional network of In-house Recruiters in the industry, hosting over 25 high calibre events and meetups a year, the In-house Recruitment Network is the perfect place for intimate peer-to-peer networking and knowledge sharing. In this document, you ll find collected research from our conferences and advice from Korn Ferry Hay Group on how to use assessment tools to transform your recruitment delivery.

4 What is the single most important question or challenge you d like this event to answer? 01

5 The Conversation. Throughout the course of the morning we took part in one intimate roundtable discussion and a competency exercise. The following couple of pages provide you with the event notes from the morning, allowing you to be privy to multiple conversations and to gain a good understanding of how your peers currently view assessments.

6 What are the main challenges you are experiencing? Fast-paced environment versus short time to fill roles Gaining internal advocacy to trial assessments Changing traditions methods Language an international workforce Increase in volume Talent attraction High number of interviews Hiring and retaining Engaging employees High attrition What tools to use and where Culture fit Use of tech Improving the candidate experience Competitive market Too many jobs too few people What are the short, medium and long term objectives and how are you looking to achieve them? Launch a brand awareness project Implement new assessments Implementing video interviewing conscious of the candidate experience Gamification of assessment Graduate population Candidate experience global assessment processes Implement metrics Streamline and improve the recruitment process Revisit job analysis Unconscious bias training Undertake leaver interviews Buy-in from managers Managers reluctant to drop competencies this needs to change More alignment between job descriptions and roles Quicker recruitment reactions Differentiation Less reliance on the hiring manager Building a talentpool and database Protecting and maintaining the brand

7 What are the 3 most important points that have been raised in this roundtable discussion? Are assessment tools right for positions across the board (in terms of seniority level)? This was something we hadn t thought of before but is worth considering. Different types of assessment may suit different types of hire. Skype as a tool was an interesting point. In a business with little to no budget, using Skype is a free way to indulge in video interviewing and assess candidates from a virtual face-to-face level. Video interviewing. Many platforms now offer a wide range of interview formats. Prerecorded interviews are particularly attractive especially for graduate hires. We were also intrigued to discover that some video technology is so advanced that it can assess a candidate s mannerisms and traits automatically, making our jobs much easier. Use of technology at screening stage and beyond. How technology enhances candidate experience. This is something we hadn t considered before but for many candidates this can dramatically improve their perception of our business, especially millennials. Consistency with managers is key, as is communication. How to get buy in from senior management on the use of assessments. We now have several incredibly good points to help us get sign off for the budget we need for new processes within recruitment. Communicating with candidates at every stage. Support is a must when you re using an alien technology as part of your interview process and it benefits both the in-house recruiter and the candidate in the end. The transfer of recruitment data to learning and development and figuring out the types of competencies we need within the business. What have you learned from this event and what are your next steps? We are already on the right tracks, we just need to confidence to implement new things now. It s vital to get current performance measurements and work from there when considering assessment methods. The next step for us now is a huge audit process to identify all the competencies we need for each role and at each level within the business. We can then make decisions on which software we will need to invest in to facilitate our assessment process.

8 Top questions answered. We asked which questions had remained unanswered from the event. The following pages are aimed at answering those questions.

9 6 Top Tips for Introducing Video Interviewing to Your Process Virtually everyone who took part in our breakfast event was questioning video interviewing as an effective form of assessment. We ve done a lot of research on video interviewing and there are plenty of resources on the In-house Recruitment Network website, but here we ve pulled together our 6 top tips on where to start:

10 The Top 5 Most Common Types of Assessments One question that was commonly asked on both our survey of in-house recruiters and during the event was what kind of assessments are available?. In his presentation, Head of Assessment at Shell International, Ben Hawkes, listed the most popular. For some of us, the thought of assessment is typically an online test in Maths and English, but the truth is, assessment has come so much further than that in recent years. You can assess most things and in such a wide variety of ways. You can even create interactive gaming experiences for this very purpose. So, in basic terms, what can do you to assess and what should you be assessing? Interview We all know about the interview so we won t go into much detail here. Probably the most traditional form of candidate assessment, you can gather a lot of information from an interview although much of it may be based on instinct rather than hard data. Assessment Centre An assessment centre is an intense experience for a candidate which involves an extended period of interviews, tasks and assessment exercises. These are organised and held by recruiters for small groups of candidates and are a great way to compare candidates at the final stage of the process. Most commonly used for graduate recruitment, the assessment centre typically involves a mix of HR recruitment specialists and line managers who are tasking with scoring candidates against competency and culture frameworks. Cognitive Ability Assessments Cognitive ability is said to have a 25 50% relationship with job performance, so if cognitive ability is important to your organisation and indeed to your specific role, you must not rule it out. A cognitive ability test is just another word for aptitude test, or IQ test. Personality Personality has a 30% relationship with job performance per Ben s research so it s not worth ignoring. Whilst interviews give you a live preview, candidates might not always act naturally in an interview or assessment centre situation. Both are stressful for candidates to endure so an alternative assessment to measure key traits is a great way of finding out whether candidates have the personality to undertake their specific role. Culture Fit Workplace culture is becoming more and more important because the way that employees work together and the way that they gel has shown extremely positive results for businesses. If your organisation identifies with a strong employer brand, it is important that you assess people based on the types of values you desire in your workforce.

11 Gaining Management Buy-in Gaining crucial management buy-in is vital for every new process you decide to bring into the business, especially if it involves a budget. Assessments are no different. Some methods are more expensive than others, but in almost every case you ll need to get senior management on side. Buy-in came up very frequently during this breakfast. Check out our top tips: Great delivery You need to prove the impact of assessments before you can apply for that final and all important sign-off. Do your research. Do A LOT of it. Gather up case studies that represent the data and proof that assessments and profiling can make a real difference to the quality of hire within a business. Yes, it is admin, but if you can show that introducing new methods of assessing candidates can make huge improvements to the business overall, you re onto a winner. Build the right business case Potential savings, reduced time to hire and improved quality of hire are the in-house recruitment phrases of the decade and each one contributes towards a successful function. This comes as a result of your research. If you can demonstrate how you ll make savings, reduce time to hire and increase quality, how can anybody deny you? It is essential to exhibit tangible results. Meet with senior management team You can t expect to get buy-in over an . Wherever possible, meet with the people in the business who have the power to say yes and present the benefits of additional assessment tools for the recruitment function. The ability to demonstrate successful hiring outcomes to your key stakeholders, will result in increased trust in your team s capabilities and allow you to make the changes you need to make. Get advocates onboard The more people you have on your side in the business, the better, and the more likely you re going to end up with the buy-in you need to transform the way you do recruitment. Getting advocates on board is not just about the senior management team. There may be key influencers at all levels who can really help you, so get them excited and the message will travel fast.

12 The Presentations. On the morning of the breakfast event, we had the pleasure of hearing from two specialist guest speakers. Check out their presentations for yourself and look forward to even more in-depth information on assessment how you can integrate this into your process.

13 Special Guest speaker: Ben Hawkes, Assessment Lead, Shell International Special Guest speaker: Lucy Beaumont, Principle, Korn Ferry Hay Group

14 The Conclusion. How has this event enlightened us on the topic of assessment tools and what can we do now? It seems that everyone can see the value of candidate assessment and that assessments themselves aren t as academic as they sound. With personality profiling, culture fit testing and situational judgement tests we now can assess the entire spectrum of a candidate s capabilities from aptitude all the way down to how they deal with conflict in the workplace. This breakfast event has shown us that assessment doesn t need to be daunting and indeed, does not need to be a drag. You can be as creative as you like in how you decide to assess your candidates from the use of virtual reality gaming through to interactive video interviewing situations. It seems that the only thing currently stopping in-house recruiters from investing further in assessment and indeed, using it within their process is a lack of knowledge on what to assess in the first place. We hope that the presentations, advice and conversations in this document give you a good starting point where assessment within the recruitment process is concerned. We d like to extend a huge thank you to Korn Ferry Hay Group for partnering with us for this event and for their expertise on assessment tools.