Talent Assessment Maturity Quiz

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How mature is your talent assessment process?

No need to worry – our quiz is here to help you understand how mature your process is and what improvements you can make that can significantly impact your talent acquisition.

(16 questions, 5 minutes)

1/5 Knowing What To Look For

Having a strong selection process begins with knowing exactly what to look for and where to find it. The first set of questions will help you to understand the depth of knowledge, accuracy and rigour in how you choose your hiring criteria.

Your intake meetings (recruiter briefings), how do they happen and who’s typically involved?

Intake meetings - what are they?
Intake meetings are planned but they usually involve hiring manager telling Talent Acquisition what they want in new hires.
We like to involve a range of people including role experts, hiring managers and those responsible for training and development to reach alignment on what we collectively feel is important in new recruits ahead of hiring each role.

How often does the Talent Acquisition team challenge hiring managers about what to look for in new hires?

Not really, what the hiring manager requests is usually what is agreed upon.
We want to do more of this but we feel like we’re on the back foot when it comes to challenging the hiring manager’s authority.
We do this a lot, Talent Acquisition has the major say in what to look for in new hires.

When was the last time you conducted a job analysis ahead of hiring?

Job analysis? Err… We don’t do that here.
We’ll conduct a job analysis if there’s a significant change in the role, such as the switch to remote work or a change in the hiring profile.
We conduct a job analysis ahead of each major hiring drive to ensure that our selection criteria is still valid.

How do job adverts get created?

Shhh… but we typically copy and paste them from the last time we advertised the role.
We use the previous advert as a template and may ask the hiring manager and a few other people to check it’s ok before publishing.
We invest time in understanding what actually needs to go in the job advert and don’t accept things just because they were done like that in the past. This typically involves working with teams in the business such as role experts and L& D to check that they are truthful and will help them to achieve their objectives.

1/5 Hiring Alignment & Stakeholder Engagement

Often people disagree on what it takes to be successful in the role. Better hiring depends on everyone (talent acquisition, HR and hiring managers) agreeing on what attributes to assess and how to assess them. Getting hiring managers and other stakeholders bought-in to your recruitment strategy is crucial to this. This section will tell you how aligned everyone is when it comes to hiring.

How often do hiring managers reject resumes or applications sent from the TA team?

Hiring managers almost always push back on a few candidates.
Occasionally managers will reject a CV or say a candidate was not what they were looking for, but we get it right most of the time.
This never happens, we are fully aligned on what to look for and most people we put forward would receive job offers.

How easy is it to get time in the diary with hiring managers about participating in recruitment briefings and interviews?

Honestly, it’s like getting blood from a stone.
Hiring managers are happy to participate but they’re sometimes not very clear about the process and can get quite frustrated.
Hiring managers see hiring as a top priority, intereviewers come prepared and they feel fully trained and versed in their role in the process.

How open are hiring managers to new ways of assessing and selecting talent?

Even if it’s not working they’d be very reluctant to try anything new.
If hiring wasn’t going well, they’d be open to changing how we recruit.
Hiring managers are very open to doing new things. In fact they often come to the TA team with ideas on how to recruit differently.

What best describes the relationship between talent acquisition and hiring managers?

Transactional - most hiring managers see TA as a supplier; they expect them to fulfil their needs.
Collaborative - most hiring managers see TA as a business partner; they’ll work with TA to get what they need.
Strategic - most hiring managers see TA as a higher authority on the subject of hiring and they take on board all their advice.

1/5 Candidate Communication

Communicating regularly, honestly and candidly with candidates is proven to reduce new hire failures. This set of questions will help you to understand how well your external communication is aligned with the role requirements and candidate pool.

What information do candidates typically have about the roles they’ve applied for?

They’ve usually seen a job advert and read our careers page, but that’s about it.
As well as the job content on our careers page, we reach out to them ahead of interview to answer any questions they may have.
We create role specific content to help them learn more about the job they’ve applied for such as realistic job previews or realistic job assessments.

When a candidate applies - what happens next?

Their application usually sits in the ATS and the recruiter will eventually conduct a resume review. If it’s relevant they’ll move them to the next stage.
Their application gets reviewed promptly (typically within 24 hours) and either rejected or moved to the next stage.
We instantly start communicating with them, answering questions via email, chat, text or phone. If appropriate we’ll ask them to complete a job relevant assessment to see if we’re a fit for each other.

How do your candidates rate your hiring process?

I have no idea, we don’t have a way of measuring this.
We’re somewhere in the middle. We don’t get too much negative feedback.
We get really positive feedback. We have a great process for capturing this information and actually ‘win’ candidates because of our hiring process.

Thinking about external employee review sites like Glassdoor, how accurate are they as a representation of your employer brand and company culture?

Glasswho? We don’t really check out our reputation on review sites.
We keep on top of Glassdoor reviews. We reply to negative remarks, post employer brand content on social and try to ensure we are seen positively in the market.
We regularly monitor the health of our employer brand in the market. We have a strategic plan to ensure we act on issues raised in negative reviews.

Your Talent Assessment Results

Hello! You’re here and thank you for filling out our quiz. First off, it’s very exciting to have you here – filling in this quiz is a great step to understanding how mature your talent assessment strategy is. You can find your results below and we hope that the information will guide you and help you to achieve your recruitment goals!