Recruitment activity for a local SME

Managers in SMEs frequently say that they don't have the time or the budget to do much more than a quick interview for recruitment. The reality is that the extra time and cost that is spent can more than repay the extra effort. 

Research shows that a high performer* can contribute up to 60% more to the bottom line than an average one - for a fairly typical £25,000 salary, that's £15,000 additional contribution - many time more than the extra cost of recruitment.

The Background

We provided specialist recruitment expertise for a local SME seeking to recruit (over time) 6 specialist tele-sales people. Our involvement included a novel use of SHL's Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) and creation of a bespoke role-play.

The role was unusual because of the specific personal requirements - not just the hard skills of tele-sales, but also certain personal attributes important because of the employment contract.

We firmly believe that observing people in work simulations is by far the best assessment method - and that's what we set out to do here.

What we did

Applicants were carefully screened through a bespoke application form which included 3 competency questions, and were then invited to take part a short role-play. This was a simple, but carefully documented, simulation or a real outbound call, with attendant behavioural indicators and interrupts. The intention was simple - to put the candidates into as real a work situation as possible and carefully assess how they performed, using the standard Observe / Record/ Classify / Evaluate technique.

Our customer then asked us to report on 4 personal attributes, not directly assessed by OPQ: Trustworthiness, Diligence, Positiveness and Intellectual Resourcefulness. OPQ scales for the so-far successful candidates were combined into mega-traits (eg Trustworthiness was a combination of the OPQ scales of Conscientiousness and Rule Following) and the relevant scores were combined.

Our report was on these mega-traits, as well as the standard report on the OPQ scales.

The Outcome?

We developed two bespoke recruitment tools that satisfactorily reflected the unusual requirements of the role, and provided a targeted and objective approach in an unusual situation. And one that very cost-effectively provided suitable candidates (ie we knew they had the technical skills and the right personal qualities) for the final selection stage.
 

* here a high performer is one who performs 1 standard deviation above the median value, and in a highly skilled role. 

Contact us for more details of this research - an application of a technique called Utility Analysis. We'd be pleased to discuss it with you, and discuss how it could help highlight the benefits you might accrue from objective assessment.