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Introduction
Companies are increasingly facing a volatile business environment, and Shell is no different. For example, in the span of one year, the oil and gas industry saw historically high and low oil prices, leading to the need for a workforce that can adapt to ever-changing market conditions. Shell is an organization that grows their own talent; almost all top executives in the organization started at Shell early in their careers. Thus, to ensure a pipeline of successful yet agile leaders, Shell needs to hire top graduate talent. Historically, Shell has competed with other similar oil and gas companies for quality hires. Now, in addition to the traditional hiring pool, Shell competes with large global companies outside of its industry when recruiting, and having a robust assessment process that yields a good candidate experience is vital for attracting top talent and ensuring high-quality hires.
Shell has utilized structured assessments for their graduate recruitment for over 30 years, and they have been refreshed every three to five years to keep up with the market. Typically, these assessments have been conducted in person though in 2013, the graduate assessment process was partially digitized; it consisted of online assessments (i.e. behavioral, decision-making and problem solving tasks), a phone or face-to-face initial interview and an in-person assessment center that included an online simulation exercise, a written task, a group discussion, a case study and a reflection exercise.
Project goals
HR analytics and assessment specialists collaborated with recruitment on a project reviewing the recruitment methodology. The goals of the project were two-fold: the first goal was to examine the quality of the assessments. The second was to understand whether the assessments could be further digitized while maintaining the quality of hire. Several reasons were behind the goal of further digitization. Candidate feedback indicated that the hiring process was robust, but the time to offer was longer than expected; further digitization of the process could ensure better candidate experience. Additionally, Shell uses internal assessors from the business during the hiring process, and having the ability for assessors from multiple locations to assess candidates without traveling would lead to faster assessment times, lower travel costs and greater access to diverse assessors across the globe. Being able to conduct assessments on mobile devices...