NHS Graduate Scheme Selection Process

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement has developed a cutting edge approache to graduate recruitment

By Nicola Fair, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and Stephen Lucks, Pearn Kandola

 

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement runs the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme. The Scheme has been running successfully for over 50 years. Over that time, priorities have changed and the focus has needed to shift.

 

As part of the NHS diversity agenda, Sir Nigel Crisp, former CEO of the NHS, had called for 30% of senior NHS positions to he held by BME staff.  The impact of this was the need to increase the diversity of staff at all levels, including at graduate intake.

 

Over the years, the popularity of the scheme has increased. This, along with the higher levels of educational attainment of today's graduates meant that more accurate and efficient means of screening, short listing and selecting were needed.

 

In 2006, the NHS Institute commissioned Pearn Kandola – a business psychology consultancy - to look over its last 3-years of the graduate selection process in an attempt to improve and modernise it.

 

The original process comprised four stages, one of which was a paper sift and time consuming, another relied on interviews and a group discussion on the same day, providing a relatively low throughput of candidates and was thus inefficient.

 

Assuming, for example, apart from travel, that marking an application form took on average half an hour (a conservative estimate) the marking of these alone took 3,000 hours of NHS management time.

 

Ongoing evaluation work that the NHS Institute commissioned also indicated that the diversity statistics were not in line with expectations, and certainly were not meeting to Sir Nigel Crisp’s aspirations.

 

Change to the process was therefore necessary.  The challenge in designing a new process was in maintaining what was good about the original one, namely the personal touch and face to face contact that applicants experienced and the realistic nature of the assessment centre, whilst at the same time finding efficiencies. 

 

In consultation with the NHS Institute and other stakeholders from the health service, Pearn Kandola found a solution to keeping the personal touches but making the system more efficient: 

 

Stage1: Online screening comprising:

o   Verbal and numerical testing;

o   A situational judgement test;

o   A motivational test

o   A competence based screening tool;

Stage 2: A highly structured and focused interview with a very structured scoring process;

Stage 3: A modernised 24 hour assessment centre

 

Both the NHS Institute and Pearn Kandola were keen to ensure that the most cutting edge approaches to graduate recruitment were used throughout, ensuring that fairness and validity were built into every stage.  Equally important was the need for "face validity" i.e. that the process looks and feels realistic and relevant. 

These last two aspects are, from an applicant’s perspective, very important as they will see the selection process as a fair one as well as giving them a realistic preview of the type of challenges they would face as a graduate trainee.  As a result, they would be better placed to make an informed decision as to whether health service management was the right choice of career for them.

 

To improve the process from a technical perspective and thus improve levels of validity and fairness, the screening tools chosen and developed were the most valid and fair approaches available.  This meant that higher quality graduates came through to interview stage.

 

At interview stage, the actual questions were specifically designed to collect relevant information in as fair and efficient a manner as possible.  The scoring and rating process was also made more mechanistic, with clear definitions of ineffective, effective and highly effective performance, thus making the process more objective and easier to administer.

 

The 24 hour assessment centre was updated in a number of ways.  The content of the exercises was updated to bring it in line with current affairs in the health service and again providing candidates with greater insight into health care management, for example, mental health issues were included in the exercises.  The scoring and rating process was the same as for the interview stage described above.  Finally, the traditional "wash-up discussion", where all assessors review the evidence and make a selection decision was removed as research has shown that this is the place where objectivity and fairness usually suffers the most.

 

Overall, the process is supported by best practice assessors skills training for the large pool of service managers who each your give up their time to support the process.

 

The results and benefits to the NHS have been:

 

·               Improved diversity statistics year on year since the process has been in place.

• An evaluation of the interview stage, for example has shown that adverse impact against BME groups has reduced to zero, thus more BME candidates get through to assessment centre stage.
• The standard of applicants passing the screening stage has increased year on year
• The process is more efficient and thus saves management time.

 

In recognition of the above, the NHS Institute was awarded the Association of Graduate Recruiters prize for best graduate selection process in 2007, and in 2008 Stephan Lucks, the lead Psychologist from Pearn Kandola was awarded the practitioner of the year award by the British Psychological Society.

 

About the authors:

Nicola Fair, Corporate Lead, Building Leadership Capacity, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement

Stephan Lucks is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist and assessment specialist at Pearn Kandola business psychologists. He can be contacted on 01865 516202 or emailed at slucks@pearnkandola.com