Nothing is as straightforward as it used to be – and Recruitment is no different! The good old days of two-stage interviews and job offer are behind us as. Over the years, other selection methodologies have come in and out of vogue, including verbal and numerical reasoning tests, personality and psychometric profiling, IQ measurements, NLP assessment, presentations, competency interviewing, in tray exercises, group exercises, role play, and coaching or sales exercises, in groups or (horror of horrors!) on video!
So what is in vogue now?
Organisations vary, but most have learnt from the past and don’t put too much emphasis on any single indicator - hence the assessment centre has gathered momentum.
Assessment centres have benefits for both recruiter and candidate:
• The length of time involved lets the potential employee and the recruiting companies get a better look at each other.
• The time/financial investment by both parties demonstrates mutual commitment to the process.
• There are a number of assessors involved, which allows for a candidate to be identified on merit rather than subjective information.
• The tools used tend to measure natural attributes or trained skills, which allows individuals who haven’t done the same job before, but have excellent potential, to be identified.
So… how can you perform at your best?
Look the part!
Unpolished shoes, poorly ironed shirts, a suit that has seen better days… all create a less than stunning first impression. Equally, trend setting young guns in today’s hottest in high street tailoring may feel like the best dressed in town, but in reality the potential customer base is really quite conservative. If they notice your suit but not your product presentation – you’ve failed.
Doing the research
Employers often comment that candidates appeared ‘really keen on the job but when I asked why, they had no idea’.
If you don’t know exactly what the job is going to involve or what the challenges in the market place might be, how can you really convince your potential employer that you’re serious about your application? How can you demonstrate how you plan to achieve success in the role?
Something important to remember is that it’s not only what you’ve learned in your research that’s important, but how you’ve gathered the information. If you’re fully briefed by a recruiter supporting your application – but you’ve made no efforts to find additional information independently – you will not have impressed upon the interviewer your ability to use your investigative and networking skills. The same is true if your research is confined solely to published media – to really impress with your research skills, talk to people, network, ask questions.
Evidence of your Success
If you introduced a new product to a customer and made claims about it’s efficacy with no clinical data, you wouldn’t be surprised if the customer was a little sceptical! The same applies to you. You need to present some specific examples and evidences of your success, as well as explaining how you achieved it. Take your evidence in an organised format – employers have been known to complain about candidates who root around box files of ageing, yellowed papers in search of ‘just one more e-mail’.
The interview
In simple terms, you have just an hour or so to convince the inter-viewer that you’re the right candidate– and that’s not much time!
Preparation is the key:
• What is the job role?
• How much of that have I done before?
• How can I demonstrate my transferable skills?
• Look at your CV from a third party perspective – what would you ask? Are there any gaps, omissions or changes in direction?
• Make sure you know why you want the job.
One of the most important things about the interview is to make sure you answer the questions – fully, openly and honestly, backed up with a specific example. Employers’ feedback along the lines of ‘his skills just didn’t come through’ or ‘I didn’t really get to the bottom of this’ indicate that the questions have only been half answered and the interviewer left unconvinced. It’s up to you to check that the interviewer has all the detail they need.
The presentation
With sufficient preparation everyone should be able to prepare a good presentation. If a presentation is part of your assessment;
• Familiarise yourself with the ‘text book’ version of how to do a presentation – they’re all fairly similar but have some good, common-sense themes.
• Spend time planning the content.
• Spell check your slides!
• Rehearse the presentation in front of people – and get their feedback
• Make sure you get the timings right.
• Be ready for interruptions – how will you handle them? Don’t be thrown off your stride.
The psychometric test
Fundamentally, they are used early in selection to screen out candi-dates who have a low match for the company culture or the demands of the position. Unless you are a maestro of personal subterfuge . . . it isn’t worth trying to second guess what the employer is looking for. If you try to skew the answers, you may cause inconsistencies in the ultimate profile that might actually cause you to be deselected!
The sales skills exercise
The key thing is. . . . Don’t stress! What they’re looking for is your knowledge of, and ability to use, the ‘text book’ sales process. So, back to basics!
• Build rapport.
• Use open probes and questions to identify the customer need.
• Explain the key features and benefits of your product that meet these needs.
• Flush for concerns / overcome those objections.
• Check that you’ve met all the needs you can in this call.
• And finally… close for commitment!
Verbal and Numerical testing.
It may feel like being back at school, but these tests are often not as complex as we fear! Many of them are designed not only to test out your basic verbal and numerical reasoning skills, but also to see how you perform under rigid time constraints – many have so many questions that it is rare for people to actually finish the test. It’s impor-tant to bear in mind that it may be error rate that’s being assessed, rather than volume of questions answered. The best course of action is to work through the questions at a reasonable pace and not waste time by labouring over the same question again and again.
Business Planning Exercises
It is increasingly common for a business planning exercise to form part of the assessment process – you may be presented with a scenario and volumes of supporting data with the task of drawing out the key issues. Often, the supporting information includes sales data or RSA type figures. Make sure you know how to read, interpret and draw useful conclusions from it! Points to bear in mind:
• Identify your key objectives.
• What you have to do to achieve the objectives?
• Generate a plan.
• What measures will you build in to qualify that your plan is correct?
• What modifications to plan are you going to make? Under what circumstances?
• How are you going to measure your outcomes?
Group exercise
Depending on the role, the Assessors might be looking for very different attributes, so try to find out beforehand. Typically, though, group exercises are designed to identify leadership skills – the ability to facilitate the group in moving forward without ‘bulldozing’ into submission. Active participation is crucial – sitting on the sidelines rarely scores plus points. Other than that, the ability to listen, challenge constructively, input creatively and negotiate your position, are all important elements of a successful group exercise.
Over to You!
Whilst by no means exhaustive, this should get you to think about how you might be assessed, which will help you focus on how to present your natural skills and attributes to your best advantage. Good luck!
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