Data management giant Veritas explains how it got the most out of its assessment day with Pareto.

Veritas provides industry-leading solutions at an enterprise scale, helping customers through disruptive technology shifts. With a careful eye on the future, Veritas is always looking to evolve and bring through the next generation of talent. Crucially, this is something that has led them to develop a close working relationship with Pareto.

With the intention of creating an assessment day process that gets the most out of people, Pareto give companies like Veritas an opportunity to observe candidates from a variety of backgrounds in an assessment situation.  

Assessment day activities

Pareto’s assessment day began with a brief overview of the opportunity on offer and the various types of career pathways these tend to lean towards. The candidates then had a chance to introduce themselves to each other and the assessors.

Throughout the day, there were several individual and group assignments, whereby the behaviours and characteristics of each candidate were closely observed.

One of the key assignments during the assessment day was the requirement for each candidate to deliver a presentation to a panel of assessors.

This part of the day was an opportunity for the candidates to take the initiative and make a good impression on the assessors as an individual. Instead of just listening to what they had to say, the panel looked to see how the candidates presented themselves.   

A human centred approach

Pareto’s process of assessment goes beyond simply looking at CVs and interviewing candidates. In fact, a human centred approach is used, relaxing people into a natural state.

By allowing people to feel comfortable and experience a sense of companionship with their fellow candidates, the applicants tend to forget that they are being assessed. As a result, the assessors are able to observe the real side of each candidate, leading to a far more effective method of assessment.

The benefit of diversity on assessment

With nearly 50% of the candidates being female, a diverse pool of talent was assessed. Not only did this allow the candidates to draw on a wide range of experiences, strengths and weaknesses, it meant that Veritas had a higher chance of finding the specific behaviour and character traits that they were looking for.

Diversity isn’t just beneficial in terms of assessment, a diverse workforce gives companies access to different thought processes, while also helping to retain staff in the long run.  

Choosing the most suitable candidates   

Alongside a couple of assessors from Pareto, Veritas had a number of people watching on as the assessment day took place. Throughout the day, the assessors kept a close eye on how dynamic the candidates were. This was done by regularly changing the sizes and people in each group, while only giving a small amount of information before each activity. This was carried out in such a way to see how the candidates interpreted and responded to the information given in the brief.  

Although, there may be questions around whether the assessment day favours extroverts over introverts, there was an opportunity for everyone to be get their point across and be heard. What’s more is that the assessors weren’t just looking for the most outspoken person, they made their assessment by determining how suitable each candidate was for the company.

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