Job Simulations: The Secret to Uncovering the REAL Candidate!

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
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<li>Don’t skip Job Simulations and Work Culture Assessments: Observations are better than predictions and you don't know enough to predict job success.</li>
<li>Get hard facts using observations: Job Simulations and Work Culture Assessments are great opportunities to see how a candidate will behave in your workplace.</li>
<li>Benefits both parties: Work Culture Assessments help you and the candidate ensure an excellent cultural fit.</li>
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You might be excited (or relieved) to have found a potential new employee and be tempted to rush into making a job offer. Don’t!

While Structured Interviews are great at identifying patterns and trends, you’ve basically been playing a game with the candidate. They’ve presented the best version of themselves, as you have with your organisation.

You need hard facts, not rhetoric. Job Simulations and Work Culture Assessments are a SECRET recruitment method for obtaining hard facts through observation.

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Job Simulations

Just as a football team manager wouldn’t hire a footballer without seeing them kick a ball, you shouldn’t give someone a job without seeing how they perform tasks. Job Simulations provide a realistic preview of a candidate’s potential using a job relevant task, offering insights into technical and soft skills.

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Note:</span> To avoid confusion, you are not purchasing a premade situational judgement test. Those often aren’t job relevant or as accurate as Job Simulations.</span>

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Example Job Simulations

Let’s look at some examples of job specific simulations. Notice how they are designed for the candidate to demonstrate just one or two Key Competencies needed for the job.

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Customer services executive

For a customer services executive, two important competencies might be:

1. Demonstrating warmth and empathy for customers.
2. Carrying out professional yet familiar written communication with customers.

To test these, print off a couple of customer emails and ask how the candidate would respond. Give them 20 minutes to respond to the emails. Afterwards, check for spelling, grammar, and tone.

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IT developer

When recruiting IT developers, you could arrange for them to meet a fellow developer and discuss coding patterns. The candidate could also review a section of code and do some pair programming. (While I appreciate online code tests are available, code is unique like handwriting, so it’s essential to see if the candidate can adapt to your style.)

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Ledger clerk

When recruiting a ledger clerk, the following might be important:

1. Highly accurate and detail oriented.
2. Able to report how numbers are driven by activity.

A quick test might involve giving them a mock ledger in Excel and asking the candidate to input data manually. You might then present hypothetical scenarios, such as, “We think we’ve incorrectly reconciled £1,000 on American Express – can you track it down?” (You need to know the answer, of course!)

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Salesperson

Job Simulations can also incorporate role plays like a sales pitch.

For example, I was recruiting salespeople who were conformists and could easily be trained. One candidate gave a brilliant interview. I would have hired him on the interview alone, but I knew a role play would still be valuable. The Job Simulation was conducted by a sales manager, who explained what a sales call involved and asked the candidate to sell in the format just described. You don’t expect perfection, but the candidate was shockingly bad, not following what the sales manager had asked for.

After some feedback, the sales manager suggested trying again the next day, giving the candidate time to take the feedback on board. The candidate said, “No, not necessary, I’ll do it again now”. He performed just as badly. The role play had shown that his current level of performance was unsuitable and that he would be hard to train. Despite a great interview, it was now clear that he couldn’t proceed further in the recruitment process.

Similarly, I recruited sales advisors for a large sauna manufacturer. It was amazing how few candidates could pronounce “sauna”, which was an interesting impediment!

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Trainee electrical engineers

An employer I work with who recruits trainee electrical engineers, teaches them how to knit to test their physical dexterity.

Another employer asks trainees to put two electrical back boxes on a wall and run conduit between them, testing the candidates’ general aptitude with tools, and whether they do it all “level”, testing their eye for detail.

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Funeral worker

Whilst this is a very niche example, I include it to show how versatile Job Simulations are. Thankfully most people have never seen a dead body, but when they do many often faint or are physically sick. Therefore, a funeral director I work with shows a dead body to finalist candidates to ensure they are comfortable with the situation. This sensible precaution avoids a lot of embarrassment later.

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Designing a Job Simulation

When designing a Job Simulation for your vacancy, here are some considerations:

• Prepare in advance: It’s too important to be thrown together on interview day; it needs thought and preparation.
• Designed by Great Performers and line managers: They know the two or three Key Competencies to assess and how to make Job simulations realistic.
• Short exercise: 30 minutes is sufficient. Longer tasks generally yield diminishing returns and require payment to the candidate for their time, often with gift cards.
• Solo exercise: Avoid team exercises, which can add unnecessary complexity and variability.
• Held in the workplace: It is easier to see how a candidate performs when they are in front of you. Whereas remote exercises require a proctor to ensure the candidate doesn’t get assistance or take too long.
• Scheduled after the first or second interviews: The candidate should be forewarned that there may be a short “assessment” after an interview, and that they will not need to prepare for it. It is important to play this down, otherwise candidates may get apprehensive and not attend the interview.

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Tips:</span> When creating Job Simulations for candidates with professional qualifications, be careful not to recreate their professional exams. If they have years of post-qualified experience, they have already demonstrated an ability to apply their professional knowledge.<p></p>Don’t ask candidates to prepare a presentation (unless that is a key part of the job). Job Simulations allow you to observe how a candidate works, whereas a presentation is akin to a fictional story.<p></p>Finally, don’t include a Job Simulation before the first interview. Candidates often lack the motivation and necessary knowledge to perform well so invariably don’t complete the task. Hiring managers often incorrectly assume the candidate wasn’t genuinely interested in the job, but the fact is they weren’t “warmed up” sufficiently to put in the effort, so you lose a potentially great candidate.</span>

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Consider the results

When reviewing results, remember that candidates are working under pressure in an unfamiliar environment, and are unlikely to deliver their best performance. You’re simply checking the validity of what they said they could do, not testing for great performance (though if you get that, then all the better!).

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Note:</span> I would like to stress that the candidates won’t behave exactly as they will in “real life” due to the Hawthorne Effect (Team, 2023). While observing workers’ behaviour, Henry Landsberger found that the mere fact that they were being observed changed their behaviour. When the observation was finished, their behaviour returned to baseline.<p></p>Despite this, I still find Job Simulations are a strong indicator of future performance.</span>

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Job Simulations versus assessment centres

For the sake of clarity, Job Simulations differ greatly from assessment centres.

Assessment centres are typically used by large and fast-growing businesses to mass-hire broadly similar candidates (eg. graduate recruitment). They are often pressured, competitive, and stressful environments that sometimes cause candidates to react differently from how they usually would.

This article is primarily for SMEs, so I won’t explore assessment centres further.

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Work Culture Assessments

The Work Culture Assessment is a mutual way for candidates to assess their “cultural fit”, and the employer to keep selling the organisation and job vacancy.

Candidates are given a tour of the work environment and introduced to staff in an authentic and non-scripted manner. Both the candidate and employer can check for cultural fit and ask questions. It’s practically impossible to sugar-coat things, and candidates love this approach. Ultimately, I’d rather allow a candidate to qualify-out now than turn into a mis-hire.

However, be strategic about who candidates meet. Meeting senior leadership can be inspiring, show they are approachable, and demonstrate they take recruitment seriously. Equally, introduce candidates to like-minded individuals, especially those from similar backgrounds (fellow graduates, for example).

When meeting a potential new team, there should be an obvious point of excitement. If you don’t notice this, there may be an underlying issue.

In addition to touring the work environment, a few team members (preferably not from the Interview Team) could take the candidate for a coffee or lunch. It’s helpful to see how candidates are when they relax in an informal environment. I’m usually more interested in observing behaviour than what’s being discussed. I remember one candidate treating a server like a servant – it was unacceptable and not what I expected from his charming interview manner.

A few words of warning:

• Prepare your staff: Mention to employees that you may be introducing a candidate. This will give them time to prepare mentally, clear room in their diary, or at the very least look excited! The last thing you want is employees to respond as if it is an unnecessary interruption and they just want to get on with their jobs.
• Give instructions: I’ve frequently seen employees take a candidate out for an informal chat without knowing what to cover. Generally, this is an opportunity for the candidate to ask lots of questions and get frank answers. But if you need employees to gather additional insights, explain what they need to explore and pay attention to.
• Avoid discrimination: It is too easy to engage in small talk that leads a conversation down a potentially discriminatory path. For example, a candidate may see a picture of an employee’s child and start a conversation about their family life. Brief employees to avoid these types of conversations, and if they crop-up, then to tactfully change the subject.
• Only introduce candidates with a good chance of getting the job: Otherwise, your employees may get tired of meeting lots of people and think you’re being indecisive.
• Conflicts of interest: Be careful of employees not wanting to hire someone; for example, they may want the job! They’re not running the business and may be considering their interests rather than seeing the big picture.
• Don’t ignore an employee’s gut instinct: Although they may find it challenging to make a detailed and logical argument about why they instinctively “feel” something, their gut reaction may be valid.

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<span class="grey-callout"><span class="text-color-purple">Note:</span> To prevent misunderstanding, I am not recommending Culture Fit tools. These typically consist of statements or scenarios in which a candidate indicates their level of agreement or disagreement. They are too generic compared to the contextually relevant method I recommend.</span>

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Temporary-to-Permanent Assessments

If the candidate isn’t employed, they may consider paid temporary work with a view to going permanent. These contracts help everyone make a more informed decision, and it is easier to cancel the temporary contract if it is not working out. However, I recommend keeping the temporary employment relatively short; otherwise, the candidate may continue looking elsewhere.

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Additional Resources

• Recruiting Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employees
• Downloadable PDF guide; Boost Hiring Accuracy: Use Job Simulations & Work Culture Assessments.
• Article; Job Simulations; A Practical Approach to Candidate Evaluation.