It’s never been more difficult to find good candidates with the post-COVID talent crunch, so should you be including a task as part of your recruitment process?

Many of our clients include the completion of a small project as part of this process. This takes various forms:

·      Providing datasets and requiring a response showing analytics and insights

·      Describing a marketing situation and asking for a strategic or communications plan to address and solve

·      For creative projects, providing a brief and then requiring candidates to present back their creative response

Sometimes these projects are timed and in other cases candidates are given a few days to prepare a presentation and deliver.

Is this a step you should be skipping given the current situation?

We recently conducted a poll to assess candidate’s feelings around this and the results are a little surprising. 64% of respondents felt it was still a great way to assess fit and to ensure that both parties feel skillsets are aligned and meet expectations. Comments included:

·      “I was hired by a company that used this process. It was great”

·      “I don’t really see any problem and think it is a fair process. It’s like us going to buy a product”

·      “I loved this process. It was not dependent on other candidates, but on your ability to showcase your craft based on new work that you created for the interview”.

There are a few caveats though, that we recommend keeping in mind. The task should not be too time consuming ( a maximum of 2-3 hours is about right) and no task should require candidates to take time out of their current employment, for example spending a day on-site is not reasonable. Tasks should never require divulging confidential information and using this process to source unpaid expertise is unfair and unethical, and will only reflect badly on your brand.

It is also worth considering that, according to our poll, 19% of respondents would withdraw from the recruitment process if asked to complete a task. So, if you do set a task, bear in mind you do run the risk of losing candidates.

Our thoughts? Tasks are a great way to peek beyond the CV, and really understand the proficiency and capability of candidates. Keep the task simple and use their presentation to get an insight into how they think and tackle problems. But in this market, always move quickly and keep the recruitment process as fast and efficient as possible.



If you’d like any advice on the types of tasks to set for candidates or would like us to share examples of what we have seen in the market, don’t hesitate to get in touch.