Jaguar
Land Rover are innovating with their Situational Judgment tests, Teach First
are capitalising on social media, Ernst and Young are pioneering their use of Strengths
based interviews and Gradcore are making the most of video interviews. How are employers revising their recruitment
strategies? Why are they doing this? And how can you keep pace and perform
effectively in these new innovative methods of graduate recruitment?
At
a training event held over the summer for University Careers Advisers from
around the region we heard from representatives of the above companies all of
whom have transformed their recruitment processes in recent years by
introducing new and innovative practices.
These new methods of recruitment are becoming more popular amongst the
larger and respected graduate employers... and much of the rationale behind it
is based on making things better for you!
Many
of you may feel that application and lengthy recruitment processes are there to
test your persistence, determination and resilience. Designed to put you off,
and to weed out the faint-hearted! Or even that they are a necessary evil and
with a few ‘tricks of the trade’ you can master and apply a winning formula
that will get you through. Having read
through numerous applications with students, I agree!
The
rationale behind introduction of these new methods of recruitment, however, is
very different. Much of the focus is to
make things better for you, to ‘improve applicant experience’, to speed up the
process, help you to self assess your suitability for the job, for you to see,
and to a certain extent, experience
the culture of the organisation. In this
way the organisations want to get more applications from suitably motivated graduates,
who genuinely ‘fit’ into their role/workplace and who don’t ‘drop out’ during
the lengthy process.
So
for example JLR have moved away from lengthy competency based application forms
and have instead introduced their online situational judgement tests that look
and feel very different. Incorporating
multimedia images, animation and audio the recruitment method reflects the
company’s innovative, quality and creative ‘brand’ – and gives you a more realistic
insight into typical situations that you are likely to encounter as a new
intern or graduate. In this way, you are assessing your ability to fit into the
behavioural and cultural requirements of the company. This is only the first year that JLR have
used this method but so far it has had the desired effect of improving the calibre
of applicants, getting fewer people ‘dropping out’ through the process and
speeding up their recruitment process.
Speeding up and
making the graduate recruitment process more timely is very much behind the introduction
of Gradcore’s video interviews too. As a
company working on behalf of several large recruiters including the British
Council who received 25,000 applications for 20 jobs last year, being able to
interview people around the world, often in different time zones is a
challenge. Having a video interview that
the candidate can complete wherever or whenever is convenient to them and that
assessors can watch whenever suitable has ensured a speedier and more
consistent interview experience.
The concept
of ‘fit’ is also important to Ernst and Young and behind their use of strengths
based interviews. Basically strengths are things which we are good at AND that
we enjoy doing (or we LOVE to do!). By using strengths based interviews, Ernst
and Young are able to recruit employees who are authentic individuals who will
find genuine fulfilment in their work, perform highly effectively, achieve
their goals and consequently improve the companies’ retention rate of staff. At
interviews, Ernst and Young recruiters are not just listening to the content of
your answers to questions such as ‘what makes a good day for you?’ ‘What gets
done on your ‘to do’ list? What never gets done?’ or ‘what do you do when you
find a task boring? They are also observing and noting your body language,
energy levels, tone of voice, words and phrases used and enthusiasm levels and
in this way assessing your ‘fit’ to their company culture.
Want to find out more? For more
information on these new and increasingly popular methods of graduate
recruitment practice, visit the Careers Service website pages and take a look
at these useful links:
Watch our video
interviews animation at: http://youtu.be/WakdpDunmjw http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/careers/students/gettingajob/media
What
are your experiences of these new graduate recruitment methods? Add your
comments below if you want to share your experiences or give your hints and
tips for success.
Annette Baxter
Careers Adviser
Annette Baxter
Careers Adviser
No comments:
Post a Comment