“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

“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.” Candidate feedback

  • Challenge

    Recognising how competitive and over-subscribed the national NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme (GMTS) 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. .

    South, Central and West (SCW) has an in-house graduate management scheme of their own 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. They were asked to bring their significant experience and expertise in the area of talent management to programme manage and deliver the CCG scheme. This would encompass the whole process from initial attraction and short-listing to on-boarding the successful candidates and establishing personalised development plans for them.

    The Gloucestershire GMTS was advertised in late 2019 and received around 130 applications.

  • Approach

    Following this positive application rate, initial shortlisting took place. It was at this point that COVID-19 struck. Prioritising the pandemic response, the CCG risked stalling the planned interviews and candidate assessment centre. As time progressed there was a risk that shortlisted candidates could lose interest and secure roles elsewhere.
    COVID-19, however, posed an even greater challenge to the recruitment process in that the traditional methods used in recruiting could no longer take place. Whilst virtual interviews had been undertaken, a fully virtual assessment centre was not something that was commonplace.

    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 using MS Teams.

  • Impact

    Gloucestershire CCGs first assessment centre which was held entirely virtually involved 11 candidates and 13 assessors from the CCG.

    On the day several exercises were conducted with the candidates, including an innovative group collaboration exercise, a written communication task, a data review assignment and a  panel presentation. There were also opportunities for the candidates to hear from senior executives and have informal conversations with CCG staff. All the exercises were designed to draw out the skills, competencies and values the CCG were looking for.

    As a result of the virtual assessment centre 5 graduates were recruited and the process was deemed to be a huge success by both the CCG and the candidates.

Senior OD Consultant