Other Selection Methods

Many organisations further enhance the recruitment process to help ensure that they choose the best available candidate, often using additional tools such as assessment centers, presentations and psychometric tests to better evaluate the applicants. The tools that are available to you will naturally depend upon the current practices you adopt, but even if you don’t have access to the sample tools/approaches described here, you can still take some of the principles on board to strengthen how you select your employees.
Assessment centers have grown in popularity, particularly for senior level recruitment, and they often consist of a ½ or full-day event where candidates are presented with a number of structured assessment activities which are designed to really test their motivation and suitability for the post. These events often take place at the latter stages of the recruitment process when the broad field of candidates has been narrowed down, so they can be quite intense and competitive; but that too is often part of the rationale for using them. By providing for a more detailed exploration of a candidate’s suitability, assessment centers have been proven to be a more effective method of selection. These events may involve a combination of activities, including:
 Psychometric tests
 Individual/Group exercises
 Case study analysis
 Formal presentations
 Role Plays
 Behavioral interviews
Clearly, organizing and managing an assessment center takes time, money and expertise but if they result in better recruitment decisions then they
represent a good return on investment. Even if you are not in a position to devote the necessary resources towards running a full assessment center, you might use some of the tools individually.
>>Psychometric tests
Psychometric tests are designed to assess an individual’s reasoning abilities or to gauge their likely behavioral responses to a variety of situations. By testing a candidate in these areas, you can compare their score to accepted norms and the results can then support the decision-making process during recruitment. Generally, you will come across two main types of tests:
Ability Tests
Personality Inventories
Ability tests seek to measure a candidate’s skills in areas such as numeracy, verbal reasoning, analytical capabilities and so on. They are frequently conducted under time constraints, so they can also demonstrate how well an individual can cope under pressure. Personality questionnaires, on the other hand, can be used to evaluate a candidate’s likely behavior and attitudes according to a variety of situations such as their ability to interact with other team members or how they might deal with a range of work based scenarios.
Role Plays/Presentations/Group Exercises
It is always possible for you to integrate role plays, presentations and exercises into your recruitment process and they can be particularly suitable when seeking to fill sales or customer-facing positions. For example, if you had a large number of applicants for a particular post, bringing them together and setting them an exercise to work upon in groups, whilst monitoring their performance, could help in ‘screening’ candidates to ensure that you only interview those with the greatest potential. Equally, having a sales candidate make a short presentation as part of the interview process makes good sense as you want to see how they can communicate to potential clients.
>>Behavioral Interviewing
At the very least, you should always ensure that the majority of your questions posed during the interview have a behavioral component to them, which are linked to the employee profile you are searching for.
This can be achieved by presenting candidates with scenarios related to the role and asking them to explain how they would deal with the situation.
A further addition that you could consider to enhance your recruitment efforts would be to ask potential candidates to work with your team for a short period, so that you can better judge how they actually perform on-site and whether they integrate well with your team.
In fact, in some organisations, the team members are also involved in making the final decision. This approach is becoming more popular and as candidates are paid for their time, they are not being treated unfairly.
However, you could only do this if you had a high performing team and indeed if your organisation was open to this approach. Regardless of your particular circumstances, you should now have some useful ideas to help you strengthen how you currently recruit your team members.

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