Soundbites

17 March 2010

Paul Awcock, Head of recruitment - UK, Aviva
“We look to recruit individuals against their natural strengths. For our entry level roles we’ve thrown away competency questions and exercises for a new approach in recruitment methodology based on assessing an individual’s natural strengths. From the initial application form, through to telephone interview and assessment centre, we spot candidates’ strengths and make our recruitment decisions based on this information. We want to find out what people enjoy doing naturally, and how they get results in a way that is authentic for them. Therefore this eliminates the need to focus on educational or professional qualifications, and leans more towards experience and natural talent.”

Mike Brind Operations director, ITEC Systems
“Qualifications are generally rarely relevant, and only serve as historical markers. Often, there isn’t an easy way to discern the quality of study required to achieve them. They don’t tell me anything about the quality of a candidate and their potential value to the business. I want to know what’s driving a candidate today. Experience, attitude and a willingness to continue learning and improving are most important to me. I’m not even necessarily interested in the quantity of experience. It’s the quality of it that counts.”

Paul Smith Managing director (North), right4staff
“While both qualifications and experience are important, the key is the individual themselves and what I call the ’third ingredient’. I have employed people with excellent qualifications and little or no experience who have gone on to be very successful; equally, I have incredibly successful people in my organisation with few formal qualifications but a wealth of experience. The ’third ingredient’ is their personal drive. If they are truly self-driven with a hunger to win, qualifications or experience will propel them to success whatever the state of the job market.”