Transforming recruitment and assessment to grow business

Innovative talent assessment for

financial services industries

smart. valid. preferred.

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Addressing the key

talent challenges faced by financial services industries

Businesses within highly competitive and results-driven sectors need totackle very specific issues:

The need to increase efficiency and effectiveness to improveprofitability: faster, more reliable and insightful hiring processesrequiring fewer internal resources thanks to technological andpsychometric developments.

Defining what is needed to take the business forward:understanding the key characteristics of the people who will deliveryour business strategy and work towards achieving your goals.

The fierce competition for great talent: attraction, robust yet speedyassessment and strong engagement are essential to find, identify andhire the best candidates for your organisation.

Up-skilling line managers to be better leaders and managers:recognising the need for managers to acquire new skills and behavioursthrough well-designed leadership programmes.

Growing sales and revenue by recruiting and developing bettersales professionals: early identification of sales and commercial skillsand aptitude during selection are crucial.

We see how these challenges impact the talent strategy of clients and wedraw on our own industry experience and range of cutting-edge, robustpsychometric assessments to support them to design more efficientscreening, hiring and development processes.

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Our finance and insurance sector clients look for assessment partners with:

Short, highly valid, customisable and powerful psychometricinstruments with a proven capability in the screening and selection ofapplicants.

Online, and mobile-enabled assessment tools to allow for anytime,anywhere application by candidates.

A combination of business, technology and psychometric expertise anda track record of making real business impact with demonstrable ROI.

The capability to understand the characteristics of role success and tocreate assessments to predict success in candidates and employees.

A wide range of test language availability, global support and systemcustomisation.

Integration success with ATS and HRIS systems to provide real-timeassessment data for data analytics, enabling assessment data to beuseful for screening as well as for development post-hire.

cut-e is the preferred partner for many companies within the financialservices sector.

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More than assessments:

a tailored solutionfor your business

A solid, sustainable and valid assessment and development process is morethan just the tools you choose to deploy. You need to understand how theassessments fit together, the information they give you and the way inwhich you can optimise their use.

We can help you with this, as we have with numerous other companiesacross the financial services sector to:

Define or refine what success looks like in roles and how this links toskills, behaviours and competencies.

Map our tests and assessments onto business critical competencies –and, where necessary, propose or create alternatives.

Brand the assessments so that your own corporate identity is reflected.

Outline the process and map out candidate flow through the selectionstages, looking at cut-off scores and expected volumes of applicants ateach stage.

Carry out pilot or trial phases to fine tune the hiring logic – and todemonstrate internally the efficiency of the approach.

Integrate with current ATS or HRIS systems.

Post deployment, review the entire selection process and how this givesyou the benefits you expect and require.

Analyse data and create internal benchmarks – as well as providingaccess to all our normative data sets.

Support and report to your senior management team or board.

Share global and regional best practice, latest trends and currentresearch and how this is shaping the world of assessment.

Create a best in class candidate experience.

For many organisations within the financial services sectors, psychometricassessments are not new. However, when faced with a significant increase ofonline applications due to the global talent market, ease of onlineapplication and upturn in attractiveness of the sector, efficient and effectivescreening of applicants is the new imperative.

Technology affords efficiency, and developments in the field ofpsychometrics now allow for tests to be adaptive, shorter and more focused.For companies that invest in defining their specific characteristics of success,the assessment of all applicants to highlight the best-fit candidates is areality. In addition, with psychometric tool robustness comes the ability tochange the sequence of assessment stages, tweak ‘pass’ scores and helpapplicants self-select out so that focus is on those most likely to succeed.cut-e helps clients to harness the benefits of technology and assessment togain process efficiencies and improve screening effectiveness.

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Maximising process efficiency andtalent expertise

BNP Paribas Streamlined recruitment of graduates and interns across Europe by integrating cut-eassessment with its talent acquisition software WCN and its own bespoke knowledgeassessments.

KPMG Transformed its graduate, intern and experienced hire selection after defining successwithin the firm and matching candidates to this.

Crédit Agricole Transformed the recruitment process of screening over 250,000 applications per year toinclude relevant psychometrics and identify suitable applicants early on. Results include: Attracting a wider applicant audience. Fair assessment of a more diverse talent group. Effective communication with candidates regardless of job offer.

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Engaging with your target talent

There have been significant changes across the sector; changes in the waybusinesses work; the values they hold; their definition of success and theirpositioning in the market. Two clear challenges for recruitment arise.

1 The first is for an organisation to differentiate itself and itsrecruitment process from competitors to attract the bestcandidates. Companies need to engage the applicants, andpromote themselves, their values and opportunities to the market.

2 The second is to truly understand what characteristics are neededto succeed in the role – and this may be different for roles acrossthe business – and to then identify those candidates with those skillsor behaviours.

cut-e works with businesses to build leading edge yet reliable and robustselection tools using the competencies recognised as leading to successwhilst presenting an engaging, candidate centric process. We designassessment processes for you to focus on the best people early on, and helpyou tweak the process to balance investment of resource with quality ofcandidate progressing.

NordeaUse of assessments in screening and selection to assess behaviour and abilities in the earlystage of the recruitment process. Target groups are graduates and service agents.

Credit Suisse A valid business impact study using the assessment, performance and attrition data of2,800 experienced hires showed clearly that cognitive ability and behaviouralassessments strongly predicts performance and attrition.

Sparkasse NürnbergBenchmarked current abilities to inform development planning using a 360 degreefeedback assessment.

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Ensuring and supporting best practice in

talent managementthroughout the business

How can one ensure best practice talent management with ever decreasingbudgets and overheads? Streamlining processes is one part of the equation,but training, enabling and equipping hiring managers; ideally light touch,with clearly perceived added value, is another big part.

cut-e works with organisations to set up and roll out, internationally ifnecessary, talent acquisition and development strategies.

This comprises:

understanding the key criteria for success.

defining relevant psychometric assessments which measure fit.

embedding assessments in a fun and relevant context to engage users.

providing clear, easy to use results with concrete further actions tohiring managers.

“After two years of using the cut-e assessments, thebenefits of such testing are clear. Managers now meetmore qualified candidates at interview – and perceivethe process as faster and better use of their time.”

Christine Applanat, HRIS Project Manager at Crédit Agricole

Credit SuisseBased on impirically validated insights Credit Suisse can provide recruiters with clearguidelines about which behavioural dimensions to look for in respect to performance,values fit and retention.

Generali “The fact that the process can be carried out autonomously by our field service managersmeans that we focus our HR on better quality support for the business. The level ofacceptance from the regional directors is high as they can make decisions themselves,making it profitable for us all.”

Marius Grindemann, Talent Development for Sales at Generali

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Talent strategies to

develop talent for the future

Businesses change - and leaders and managers need to upskill and acquirenew behaviours and abilities. Management development programmesensure that managers are given the insight into current skill level and areasof development are highlighted and planned to take the business forward.

cut-e works with clients to inform management development programmesbased on manager delegate need and to help measure progress made.

“The stakeholders were so pleased that we’re going toexpand the process to the next level of management.”

Annett Demmin, HR Development Manager, HSH Nordbank

HSH Nordbank Enabled department heads to benchmark their current skill level and approach againstthose needed by the organisation moving forward.

Generali Encourages ownership of career planning and development by creating a feedbackculture and supporting 360 degree feedback. Performance review based on own andmanager input to identify potential.

Bank of Ireland “At Bank of Ireland, we are dedicated to bringing in diverse people and also to keepingthe recruitment process as easy as possible. We've partnered with cut-e to help us meetboth of these objectives on our Graduate Programme.”

Stuart Woods, Talent and Capability Manager – Early Careers at Bank of Ireland

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Recruiting to

increase sales performance

Whether you’re looking to hire better salespeople to increase revenue perhead, wanting to retain great performers in the business or building salesleaders for the future, our clients tell us ‘recruiting for results’ is about:

Knowing which characteristics and attributes make for sales success inyour organisation.

Spotting great applicants early in the recruitment process to focus onthe best people for your business.

Recognising that keeping hold of talented sales people for longer hassignificant financial value.

Understanding the business needs of the future – and developing andrecruiting these skills.

cut-e helps clients to identify the characteristics of great sales success in theirspecific business and then how to spot these traits in new applicants.

“Collaboration with cut-e has been a completesuccess. We now have a better understanding ofcandidates’ sales aptitude and likely success.”

Alexandra Thiel, Head of Recruitment at Allianz Sales Personnel Department

Allianz Updating its sales competency model to include the key behaviours of customer advisersand sales staff. Followed by redesigning its recruitment processes to reflect this andcreating a more valid and transparent process.

Generali Developed an ‘ideal’ sales profile by analysing talent data and designed selectionprocesses using a sales-oriented behavioural questionnaire to bring candidates into theorganisation who are most likely to succeed.

Secure payment providerIdentifying talent early in selection process by measuring against valid characteristics ofsales success. ‘Great match’ candidates create nine times more profit per person fromsales revenue, and stay longer in the company.

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Measuring

what mattersby role and job level

The right behaviour for your rolesYou know that your high performers have a blend of the right personalitytraits, skills and attitudes for your business. But what are the specificingredients that make this blend; what are the attributes that you shouldlook for in new applicants?

We can help you identify the characteristics that your employees need tosucceed in your organisation, and then signpost the right tool from ourrange of behavioural questionnaires: shapes versions are available for usewith apprentices, graduates, specialists, managers or executives.

How the results are presentedWe help clients focus on the specific behavioural areas of the questionnairethat are important, and create profile scores and interview guides targetedat these areas.

What the applicant sees

In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on integrity, trustand credibility especially in the financial industry. squares, the first fair andvalid integrity test which really works, specifically predicts counterproductivework behaviour and reduces the risk of a bad hire.

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Assess numeracy and verbal skills quickly and objectively in afinancial context

It is critical within financial services organisations to check numeracy andverbal skills.

cut-e has developed numerical and verbal aptitude assessments for usewithin a financial context. The questions are relevant to finance, bankingand related industries. The contextualised questions create high useracceptance and applicants understand that the assessments are relevant tofuture job success.

scales numerical (admin) measures numerical reasoning. scales numerical(finance) and scales verbal (finance) measure the ability to draw logicalconclusions from complex numerical and verbal information respectively.They use language and numerical situations more suited to senior roles in afinancial environment.

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Measuring

what mattersby role and job level

Offering insight and a roadmap for personal development Understanding the need to develop managers and leaders for the future,and support talent during career progression is critical.

360 degree feedback gives insight to inform development plans.Customisable to your own corporate language, identity and competencies,the cut-e 360 fedback system is online and can be set up to automaticallyremind raters. The result is an informed, evidence-based conversationduring which priorities are set and gaps between current and future skillsrequired are reviewed.

“We are particularly impressed with the reliability andflexibility of the cut-e 360 system and the customerfocus of cut-e consultants.“

Lydwina von der Grun, Organisation Development, Sparkasse Nuremberg

Self

Direct reports

Superior

Peers Others

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Assess the ability to multi-task – for those in customerservice and call centres

Inevitably, the fast pace of the financial services industry requires the abilityto multi-task.

scales mt-sales measures multi-tasking ability in a sales context. Theassessment-taker needs to identify faces and decide whether any of theseare identical to those that preceded them immediately before, whilstperforming two other tasks simultaneously. As each test is generated by anitem generator at run-time, cheating through answer sharing is eliminatedallowing for unsupervised assessment.

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Measuring

what mattersby role and job level

Predicting how future job holders will react and dealing withday to day scenarios

cut-e works with a range of banks and insurance organisations to developcustomised situational judgement questionnaires (SJQ). An indepth analysisof common scenarios within your organisation: what ‘great’ behaviours looklike and which answers accurately predict strong performance result in acompany and role specific SJQ. Particularly suited to graduate programmes,call centres, customer advisor and sales roles, a situational judgementquestionnaire can accurately predict successful behaviour and successagainst business metrics.

With chatAssess, cut-e is innovating the assessment market. SituationalJudgement Questionnaires can now be embedded in instant messaging andapplicants can complete these via smartphone. Ability assessments andvideos, amongst other things, can be included to add context and heightenthe candidate experience.

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Integrate with with your ATSor HRIS software

You may already have a great talent management system in place; one thateffectively manages applications, schedules processes and analyses data. Orperhaps you’re looking at the technology available to support theseoperational aspects of HR. Either way, you’ll want an assessment system thatintegrates with this software, so that you’re storing and accessinginformation from one system in a seamless, process efficient, safe and secureway.

cut-e works with dozens of talent management system providers acrossscores of such integrations – and we know exactly how to do this, and to dothis seamlessly.

About cut-eFounded in 2002, cut-e (pronounced‘cute’) provides online tests,questionnaires and gamifiedassessments for attraction, selection,talent management and development.The company’s smart, valid andinnovative psychometrics have made itthe preferred partner of multinationalorganisations.

In May 2017, cut-e was acquired byAon plc, a leading global professionalservices firm providing a broad rangeof risk, retirement and health solutions.cut-e now operates as part of Aon’sglobal offering in talent solutions,helping clients achieve sustainablegrowth by driving businessperformance through peopleperformance. cut-e and Aon, as AonAssessment Solutions, undertake30 million assessments each year in90 countries and 40 languages.

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info@cut-e.comcut-e.com