Pioneering Assessment & Selection for a Large Professional Services Firm

Creating the most innovative recruitment process to date

Background

As the second largest professional services network in the world, this organisation is one of the Big Four accounting firms. Based in London, their portfolio of services includes tax, assurance, advisory, actuarial, legal and consultancy.

Objectives

Revolutionise their recruitment approach to focus on identifying potential.
Introduce immersive, storytelling approach to create a competitive edge.
Provide realistic job previews introducing candidates to the company culture and schemes.
Improve efficiencies including time to hire.
Focus on improving all diversity hiring.

Solution

After consulting with over 100 visionaries, subject matter experts and current incumbents, we collaborated to develop a framework that would identify future-proof talent through:

A Match-Me Assessment that determined if a candidate’s natural behaviours lent themselves to a career within the organisation.
A Situational Judgement Test (SJT) that provided a realistic preview of the role by offering insights into their company culture through first-person storytelling.
A Game Based Assessment that measured characteristics including cognition, aptitude and preference in a highly engaging way.
A Video Assessment that included real-life scenario based questions and presented technical case studies relevant to particular roles.
Paperless Assessment Centres that enabled candidates to complete exercises on digital devices, with ‘defamiliarisation’ elements to accurately identify potential.
Automated Personalised Feedback that provided instant responses to candidates based on their answers and delivered insight without the need for recruiter intervention.

Results

The organisation’s new recruitment programme features the latest emerging technology – artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, automation, data insights and predictions. By using scientifically proven tools to make decisions, we also removed senior interviews that are prone to bias.

68% increase in applications compared to the previous season
96% of candidates agreed the experience boosted their view of the employer
400% reduction in time to hire – less than 6 weeks vs market average of 11 weeks
5,000+ chargeable business hours saved by passing control to recruitment team
15-20% reduction in withdrawal during the early stages of assessment