challenge 
As one of the most attractive and largest employers for university graduates in Germany, the company is confronted with many employment applications. In order to sustain the companies reputation, it was essential to speed up the handling of applications. The client’s traditional approach was to pre-select applicants based on  biographical data, like school grades, certification, foreign languages, internships etc.  This pre-selection was not only costly and non-transparent, it also turned out that this process was inefficient, since the success rates of the pre-selected applicants did not meet the expectations. Therefore, a very high number of assessment centres was needed in order to fill the vacancies for the various trainee programmes.

solution
cut-e developed a set of online ability tests so that the aptitude of applicants for the different vacancies could be tested at the very beginning of the selection process. The online ability tests can be completed by the applicants unsupervised, from home within a short time.  The tests have an appealing character, and face validity for the applicants with respect to the requirements of the target positions. The ability tests are implemented as SmartPlayer-modules into the existing client’s online recruitment platform. The acceptance of the online assessments by applicants has been analysed and confirmed in various studies. The predictive validity of the instruments is constantly analysed based on the results in the assessment centre and performance data of hired applicants.

benefit
By means of the online assessment 60% of the unsuitable applicants can be filtered out without losing suitable applicants. The online assessment increased the image of the client as an employer due to a speedy, efficient and fair handling of applicants. Furthermore, the online assessment reduced costs of the overall recruitment process by providing better success rates in the local assessment centre which means that less cost intensive assessment centres are needed for the planned hires.