Almost all businesses want to get their hands on the best graduates and/or school leavers. Unless you have the capacity (and budget) to do the traditional Milk Rounds the chances are you rely on advertising, social media and word of mouth to generate candidates.

The trouble is, how do you know from a CV of a School Leaver or a Graduate if they have the skills, mentality and ability to perform in your business ? It's a very difficult thing to get right.

Before you even get to the stage of interviewing, someone in your business will need to wade through the applications - many times this can run into the hundreds. There's no doubt that an element of unconscious bias will be used. After all, there needs to be some logic applied to whittle down the masses and focus on the best candidates.

Once again, it's very difficult at Graduate / Entry Level. Candidates at this level will have very little data to add to their CV, and if we're honest, does the fact they have been Head Boy/Girl, a prefect or a captain of a sports team really make them a superior candidate ?

I would advise companies of all sizes to embrace the world of pre-hire assessments but please choose your platform / supplier wisely. Asking a Graduate / School Leaver to complete a traditional psychometric assessment is not going to win you any awards for being innovative and being a millennial focused company, in fact it may have the opposite effect. If you want to get an idea of the candidate's cognitive ability why not use the services of someone like Arctic Shores ? Have a watch of their video..

Whilst these types of assessments are great (really great!), they don't necessarily tell you how a candidate might perform in any given job. For that, you'll need to use simulated assessments. This takes the selection process to the next level, your candidates are given a chance to demonstrate their skills and aptitudes that are specific to the job you want them to do.

Think about it - when was the last time you asked your graduates / school leavers to actually perform a task that's relevant to the job ? Not only does this give you a real insight as to how a candidate performs but critically, it allows the candidate to see if this job is actually of interest. If you get this right you'll see your attrition levels dramatically decrease !

Have a watch of what we do at TalentintheCloud - recruiting Graduates and School leavers should be no different to recruiting pilots !

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