Graduate Management Scheme – Virtual Assessment Centre
The challenge
Recognising how competitive and over-subscribed the national NHS Graduate
Management Training Scheme is, Gloucestershire CCG were keen to implement
their own GMTS offering enriching roles to ambitious graduates who are keen to
progress. The successful candidates would be provided with opportunities across
the ICS. The Gloucestershire GMTS was advertised in late 2019 and received
around 130 applications.
The CSU Offer
South, Central and West (SCW) has an in-house graduate management scheme
that has been running for a number of years and is well established within the
organisation. SCW also hosts a number of graduates from other schemes, such as
the national NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme and the Civil Service
Fast Stream. The CSU therefore has significant experience and expertise in this
area of talent management. SCW were commissioned to programme manage and
deliver the CCG scheme from initial attraction and short-listing to on-boarding the
successful candidates and establishing personalised development plans for them.
The impact of Covid-19
Soon after the initial shortlisting took place, the response to Covid-19 meant the
scheme was at risk of not progressing with planned interviews and candidate
assessment activities unable to take place. As time progressed there was a risk
that shortlisted candidates could lose interest and secure roles elsewhere.
C-19 however, posed a next level challenge in that the traditional ways of
recruiting were not available, and whilst virtual interviews had been taking place,
a fully virtual assessment centre is not commonplace anywhere.
Design and delivery of a fully virtual assessment centre for
Gloucestershire CCG
The innovative solution
We worked with the CCG to identify what they needed in terms of competencies,
skills and values and then designed a two day fully virtual assessment process (on
MS Teams) involving 11 candidates and 13 assessors from the CCG.
On the day there were several exercises for the candidates, including an
innovative group collaboration exercise, a written communication task, a data
review assignment and panel presentation. There were also opportunities to hear
from senior executives and have informal conversations with CCG staff. All the
exercises were designed to draw out what the CCG were looking for. The result
was a huge success for the CCG and the candidates.
Customer Testimonial:
“Wow! What a great couple of days and what a brilliant bunch of candidates – the
CSU have done us proud in the design and delivery of a virtual programme of
assessment, and the CCG team have been fantastic in their various assessor and
moderator roles. It’s been a great team effort all round.”
Jo Underwood, Transformation Programme Manager, Glos. CCG
Candidate feedback:
“The preparation for the day was done extremely well and the communication was
very helpful and friendly.”
“I feel the assessment process went really well. I was worried about being on
screen for 9-5, but it has gone very quickly and I would not mind doing this in the
future.”
SCW contact
Name: Zack Pandor, Senior OD Consultant
Email : zack.pandor@nhs.net
