Case Study: Graduate assessment centres

21st April 2023

Solution: Assessment Centres
Industry: Public sector

The challenge

Our client, a government body, had key requirements that needed meeting to be able to deliver on their Graduate Surveyor Assessment Centres. Their requirements were as following:

To design a full day assessment centre:

The government body wanted two to three assessments which test candidates on their leadership and teamwork skills, as well as a panel interview to be led by the body itself. Therefore, Consultancy+ needed to make sure the design of the assessment centres was aligned to their profile's framework. This meant Consultancy+ needed to work closely with the client's subject experts to gain a better understanding of the complexities and requirements for the graduate roles. Once the assessment centres were designed, piloting and testing took place to make sure they would run efficiently.

The delivery of the assessment centre, which consisted of:

The client asked Consultancy+ to provide experienced assessors to help assess the candidates and to train and support the panel with the ability to support any reasonable adjustments to the assessment centre process. Consultancy+ was also tasked with supplying an online booking system for candidates to use when scheduling their assessment centre, and to provide assessment centre materials and prior reading materials for the candidates. Additionally, Consultancy+ were asked to produce a scoring framework for each part of the assessment centres.

The solution

We had a clear project plan in place and were able to lean on and hire subject matter experts to provide advice where needed, specifically for the design of assessment materials and scoring frameworks. To deliver on the assessment centre, we needed to put together sector specific questions to test the candidate's knowledge. We were able to lean on associates that we work with to put together the materials needed. We also have assessors who have worked in the sector who were able to draft appropriate 'tests' to be approved by the client.

We had to adapt and overcome different challenges. Initially, we started off by delivering a pilot virtual assessment centre to test how it would run. The client then decided they wanted the assessment centre to be delivered in-person. We decided another pilot would be best, which we hosted in our Birmingham office. We managed to get a lot of feedback that helped us to improve the 'live' assessment centre. This helped us to decide on the locations of the assessment centres. Fortunately, at Consultancy+ we can lean on our partners at Reed and so were able to use the office space and meeting rooms available to them. Reed has offices in 92 locations across 11 regions in the UK that we could access. Consultancy+ hosted three out of the four assessment centres and the government body hosted one at a neutral location.

We took a collaborative approach on each stage of the brief, keeping the client in the loop with progress and potential risks in our weekly checkpoint calls. We used the checkpoint calls to track progress against the project plan that we had written. We were also on hand to have ad-hoc meetings.

The result

Overall, the government body were looking to interview 80 candidates for four different locations: London, Manchester, Newcastle, and Nottingham. From these candidates, they were looking to recruit 20. As a result of the assessment centres, the government body has 33 candidates that hit the pass mark and were able to fill the quota needed.

We had an online booking system for the candidates that also allowed us to track candidate feedback from both Consultancy+ and the government body. All the candidates who took part in our feedback system stated they were happy with the assessment day and felt they were supported throughout.

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