Can multimedia assessments improve the quality of selection?

In 2016, the Government Recruitment Service (GRS) made the decision to improve the provision of psychometric tests for the Civil Service. The goal was to improve the quality of selection decisions across the Civil Service through more efficient sifting of applications, and to support their ambition to become the most inclusive employer in the UK by 2020.

Following a Civil Service wide consultation, GRS identified that a completely bespoke item-banked multimedia assessment, applicable to all departments across six grades of seniority, would be needed to drive higher quality recruitment. To help them with this ambitious goal they identified a supplier, PSI, to support them. The following article covers the main challenges of the project, what we did to deliver the assessment and some of the outcomes.

The challenges