In previous posts, we looked at the promise of mobile assessment solutions. Assessments that leverage off mobile technologies seem to tick a lot of the boxes that modern recruiters feel are important in making selection more efficient and effective.
But what of real applications?
In today’s article, we examine a recent example of how mobile assessments helped a client of our mobile assessment partner, cut-e, to improve their talent sourcing practices.
The problem
If you’re an IO Practitioner in a company that relies on recruiting the very best graduates in engineering and IT, in a market that offers high starting salaries and benefits akin to those we associate with the likes of Google and similar companies, how do you remain relevant in your recruitment practices?
This was the challenge one client of cut-e had. Manufacturing a diverse range of products, from high-end vehicles to jet engines that power military aircraft, meant that the client had to be quick on the draw when it came to recruiting the best engineering and IT graduates.
Historic practices simply weren’t delivering the right results. For one, there was a high drop-out rate for candidates doing traditional PC-based assessments (30% of candidates never completed their assessments), and the candidate experience was poor. In a very real sense, the company was presenting themselves as a low-tech player in what is a high-tech talent marketplace.
A mobile solution
When the company approached cut-e, they wanted a solution that would accomplish a number of goals:
- Candidate experience: millennial engineering graduates had grown up in a world of deep and constant connectivity and instant communication. Traditional online assessments simply did not speak the language of the target audience.
- Drop-out reduction: having 30% of potential talent never complete their assessments meant that many high-potential candidates were finding employment elsewhere, often with competitors.
- Valid results: while the above concerns were critical to address, the company did not want to compromise on quality of decision making or the validity of the assessments used.
Taking all these elements into consideration, cut-e, using their chatAssess platform, created a company-specific Situation Judgment Test (SJT) that mimicked an instant messaging platform (e.g. WhatsApp).
Candidates were required to engage with an artificial company representative in a simulated business discussion where engineering, design, and team decisions had to be made. Depending on the SJT’s results, candidates could advance to the next round of assessments.
The results
The results spoke for themselves. When compared to traditional online assessments, the IOs found that:
- Drop-out rates of candidates completing the assessments went down from 30% to less than 3%
- Candidates reported that they enjoyed the innovative format of mobile assessment, found them easy to use, exciting, and differentiated the company from other employers. In fact, the chatAssess solution was preferred by 60% of the candidates over more traditional assessment methods
- The results were robust. Candidates that passed to the next stage of assessments using the mobile solution were 65% more likely to succeed at subsequent psychometric and assessment centre-based testing
Implications
In a competitive talent environment where the best and the brightest are quickly snapped up by competitors, IO practitioners cannot afford high drop-out rates or poor candidate experiences. An online assessment hurdle is often the first exposure potential hires have of an employer. If the selection process does not align with the company’s brand positioning or promise, recruitment consistency and efficiency will suffer.
By using the cut-e chatAssess mobile solution, the company was able to improve its recruitment process and prevent costly talent loss at the early stages of selection.
If would like to know more about mobile or online assessments, why not drop us a line at info@tts-talent.com or visit us at tts-talent.com