Attracting and screening

The labour market is dominated by Millenials, particularly in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, with Generation X expected to account for only 25% within a decade and rapidly decline in the decade that follows. The labour pool is changing, and so is sourcing.

Attracting the best and brightest is no longer as simple as advertising a job. The internet has created a global labour market for every job seeker, no matter where they live. Sourcing channels have merged with our increasingly borderless lives.

Family, home, work and friends are integrated and interconnected, and potential employees (particularly Millenials) move fluidly and flexibly between each aspect. Companies have to rapidly move from traditional sourcing to channels that will find and engage potential talent in their borderless lives. This takes concerted effort and planning to ensure you win the ‘war on talent’.

Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2014

Screening talent is critical part of recruitment and selection. It is estimated that the cost of a bad hire can be 150% of annual salary, by the time you factor in direct and indirect costs and productivity losses. This increases to 250% for more senior roles.

Effective screening relies on having a:

Clearly defined role, including 6-8 core competencies that drive success for the job
Clarity the required fit – to the role, the organisation and the team
Rigorous, statistically correlated, best practice methodology

There are many benefits of using effective screening methods and tools:

Higher quality of hire
Reduced expenditure from rehiring
Improved retention
Enhanced engagement
Reduced absenteeism
Enhanced productivity
Improved reputation

Education engagement

Early engagement with the education sector allows you to identify and screen talent in advance of competitors, providing you with a ready pipeline of excellent talent. This is particularly effective for in-demand or niche skill sets.

We can assist you with developing engagement programmes for specific occupations or disciplines or a more general catchment approach. Engagement can be solely aimed at your recruitment pipeline or can target your longer-term pipeline by initiatives to influence the subject choices made by student in schools to guide them to your required disciplines.

Assessment centres

The purpose of candidate screening is to predict the future performance of each candidate, as accurately as possible, in order to make the best hiring decision.

Unfortunately, the most commonly utilised methods of screening candidates have the lowest predictive ability.

Predictive validity of screening and selection methods
Correlation	Method
1.0	Perfect prediction
0.7	Assessment centres with ability, personality and values testing
0.5-0.6	Assessment centres without testing
0.4-0.6	Work sampling Ability tests
0.3-0.4	Personality assessment
0.1-0.2	References, unstructured interviews, resumes, educational qualifications
0.0	Graphology & astrology

Assessment centres are an excellent methodology to use in the screening process. In short, assessment centres provide a mix of simulations, activities, role plays and tests which, when grouped together, provide excellent insight into the candidate and how likely they are to fit your requirements and perform well on-the-job.

We recommend using assessment centres in your recruitment approach. They have the highest predictive validity of any other method and increase the chance of the right hiring decision being made.

Executive assessment

Leadership bench strength is critical to organisational success. Selecting the best and brightest leaders (or those with the potential to be tomorrow’s leaders) is one of the most critical recruitment challenges. It is doomed to fail if the older, least predictive methodologies are used.

Best practice executive assessment involves using specific tools to screen or assess a candidate against specific job competencies. Methods include:

Ability testing
Personality profiling
Emotional intelligence assessment
Behavioural interviewing
Assessment centres

We can build a bespoke assessment approach to fit your budget and context that gives you the critical information required to make an excellent hiring decision.