One year on
Combined assessment In August 2015, one of the Big Four professional services firm, EY, hit the headlines with its announcement that it was removing the minimum academic requirements to apply for student roles with the firm.
EY’s decision was driven by a fundamental business commitment to identify and recruit the best talent, from whatever background, and to drive the enhanced diversity and social mobility of their workforce.
This recruitment process was delivered using an EY Situational Strengths Test, an EY Business Behaviours Test, a Technology Mindset Assessment, and the Capp Numerical Reasoning Test. These were then combined using a weighted algorithm approach, with all assessments shown to be predictive of subsequent performance, while demonstrating no adverse impact across gender, diversity or ethnic group background.
Importantly, EY adopted the approach of enabling all candidates to complete all online assessments as part of their process. This combined assessment approach, as distinct from a more traditional stepped assessment approach, meant that candidates were able to demonstrate their ability and match to the role across a range of criteria, rather than being excluded on the basis of a single assessment.
EY also worked with Capp to measure the social background of candidates, using this information to drive greater insight and assessment evaluation for continuous improvement of the student recruitment process.
EY further demonstrated their commitment to providing every candidate with every opportunity to succeed, through the provision of candidate feedback reports to every candidate, and a recommendation to join Jobmi (
www.jobmi.com), the job matching platform, for every candidate who was not a match for them.
This focus on social mobility and diversity within the student recruitment process, through the removal of arbitrary
academic screening criteria and the use of better assessment, led EY to be runners-up for the Target Jobs Social Mobility Award in April 2016.
Balanced scorecard Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) were looking for a way to balance the need to avoid penalising people for a less than perfect academic background, while also recognising and rewarding those who had performed well in their academic studies. The solution was the balanced scorecard approach.
Using this approach, candidates completed the Lloyds Banking Group Situational Strengths Test and the Capp Numerical Reasoning Test.
These scores were combined with the candidate’s degree performance, and scored as part of a weighted algorithm to determine the candidates who would best match the role requirements at LBG.
This balanced scorecard approach allowed LBG to enjoy the best of both worlds, recognising people who had done well academically, whilst also not excluding candidates on the basis of otherwise arbitrary academic screening criteria.
New developments and future trends Social mobility has firmly established itself at the heart of new policy developments in recruitment. This is seen nowhere more clearly than in the Bridge Group Report on ‘Socio-economic Diversity in the Fast Stream’, which makes a series of extremely thorough and hard-hitting recommendations for how recruitment processes need to change. Notably, this report and its recommendations were accepted in full by the Civil Service, and are in the process of being implemented.
In March 2016, the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility published its report and recommendations for improving social mobility overall, with a number of issues pertinent to recruitment processes, including the need for better assessment and the removal of structural barriers, such as
arbitrary screening on academic criteria. Clearly, change is afoot when it comes to enabling greater social mobility through better assessment and recruitment practices.
To help student recruiters take the next steps themselves, I close with a set of key points for best practice.
Key points for best practice 1. Stop using arbitrary screening criteria, such as academic qualifications, UCAS points, or university attended. Instead, use better assessments.
2. Use better assessments that predict subsequent performance and do not show adverse impact against gender, ethnicity or social background.
3. Make the most of combined assessment approaches which give candidates the best opportunity to demonstrate their fit, and give you as the employer the best opportunity to identify the talent that will match your needs.
4. Help candidates by providing them with feedback on their performance – easily achieved through automated feedback reports for online assessments.
5. Help candidates by referring to Jobmi any candidate who is not a match for you in your recruitment process – they could be a perfect fit for another employer, and you are promoting social mobility by giving them second chances.
6. Monitor, evaluate and analyse the social background of your candidates to ensure you are delivering equality of opportunity for all, finding talent wherever it may have come from. You will very likely be surprised…
From clear demographic trends, we know that the next five years or so are going to be tough for student recruiters – there are simply not enough traditional candidates to meet an increasing demand. Yet, by putting the above principles into practice, you will ensure that your organisation finds the rich talent that exists throughout the diversity of our young people.
www.agr.org.uk | Graduate Recruiter 21
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