Digital Innovation
COMBINING PRECISION
A N D C A N D I DAT E
E X P E R I E N C E I N D I G I TA L
ASSESSMENT
Alan Bourne, Founder and CEO of Sova Assessment, explains
how digital assessment is benefiting candidates and employers.
T he assessment industry End-to-end assessment, from
has been held back by inertia screening through to face-
and defensiveness. Many older to-face activities, is the way
companies transferred paper-based, forward. We've extended online
off-the-shelf assessments to desktop,
but the content didn’t work on a small
screen. The industry has been slow
to build responsive assessments for
mobile, tablet and desktop, but this is
the direction of travel.
Evaluating the ‘whole person’,
candidate experience, and
precision are paramount. The
assessment might have situational
judgement content; behaviours;
aptitude; technical questions, but
you’re building one assessment,
particularly for volume-screening.
Candidate experience is about the
quality of the experience from
the candidate’s perspective; precision
of quality of hire from the employer’s
perspective. You can deliver those
and save money if you are smart
about your approach and digitise
what you’re doing.
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assessment from early screening done
remotely, into digital assessment
centres. It’s about tools for assessors
and candidates during the face-to-
face assessment process, moving from
paper-heavy to digitised. An example is
our work with British Airways, where
we’re rolling out an end-to-end solution
for all their cabin crew assessment.
“A bad assessment
experience
impacts on brand
experience”
There’s a trend towards tailoring
assessment to organisations and
values. Creating ‘playlists’ of bespoke
content, specific to the role family, means
that rather than using off-the-shelf tests,
you’re creating content that measures
what’s important for that group.
Customisation can achieve
economies of scale. The higher-
volume areas are ripe for this kind
of solution. For example, we provide
video-based, situational assessment
to John Lewis and Waitrose, as part of
the selection process for all their stores.
Those role families are very consistent,
with lots of people doing similar jobs, so
there’s a volume angle.
We’re evolving towards more
configurable solutions that will
work in experienced or specialist hire,
or for small companies. Where lots of
jobs are different, you need an approach
that is less targeted, but has a lot of
configuration around adaptability to
diverse jobs.