Budget Friendly Digital Assessment Centres

Want your students to benefit from a digital assessment centre experience, but working with a limited budget?

At SRS, it is our mission to help as many students as possible to grow their employability skills and increase their confidence. That’s why we’ve developed two new online services to help you deliver a budget friendly digital assessment centre.

Collaborative digital assessment centres

In the spirit of collaboration, we can provide an assessment centre experience where several universities can take part – sharing the materials and most importantly, the overall cost. Your students will get to participate in exercises alongside students from different regions, universities and schools.

How will it work?

• We will create and deliver a digital assessment centre for multiple universities.

• We can either focus on a particular school, such as engineering students from multiple universities, or we can focus on a particular sector, such as assessment exercises and jobs in the creative arts industry.

• Employers and/or academics will be invited to interact with students during the assessment centre.

With a collaborative digital assessment centre, you can give your students an outstanding digital assessment centre experience with a limited budget - see more HERE.

Digital assessment centre training

Our new workshops are a cost-effective option that show you how to deliver your own digital assessment centre experience to improve the confidence and knowledge of your students. They can be delivered to careers teams and/or academics.

What will the training involve?

• A comprehensive guide to the student journey.

• Guidance on how to validate materials and exercises so that they meet your objectives.

• Best practise on creating timelines and schedules.

• Demonstration of our digital assessment platform and feedback criteria.

• Assessor training.

After our digital assessment centre training, your team will have all of the knowledge they need to run a successful event for students. Read more HERE.

Get in touch to talk to us about digital assessment centre options.

SRS University Webinars

Employability webinars for university academics and careers service staff

We recently ran two webinars for university academics and careers service team members, where we shared our advice and expertise on two topics which we’re renowned for...

Embedding assessment centres into the curriculum

• How our university clients have embedded our assessment centre simulation into the curriculum

• How you can sell the benefits of an assessment centre experience to other colleagues and leaders within your university

• The different ways in which you can assess an assessment centre as part of a credit bearing module

• The barriers to embedding an assessment centre experience and how these can be overcome

Running a digital assessment centre

• What a typical digital assessment centre involves

• The types of exercises and platforms being used

• Tips and advice you should be sharing with your students

100% of participants who completed the post-webinar survey learned something useful and would recommend the webinars to others, commenting…

“Really informative, well delivered, and it was good to hear the case studies. Some really good tips that we can take away and put into practise”

“Very helpful session, good to get a better understanding of how employers have adapted assessment centres to the digital world.”

“A valuable opportunity to see what is going on at other HEIs and benchmark against our own provision”

Get in touch for links to the webinar recordings.

University branded webinars

We are now offering universities the option to have our series of employability webinars recorded with their university branding, to use on their own channels. The webinars can either be prerecorded or hosted live, and you also receive all the resources that come with the webinars. Multiple universities have now taken advantage of this offer, using the rebranding to share the webinars more widely, allowing more of their students to benefit from the expert advice and tips. 

If you would like to explore this for your university please get in touch.

SRS Employability Webinars - Series Complete!

Over 1,800 students benefit from SRS employability webinar series

Last week, we completed our 8 week series of employability webinars for students. With over 1,800 students signed up for the webinars, we have been overwhelmed by the amazing engagement from students and the positive impact they’ve had. 98% of participants said they would recommend the webinar series to other students, leaving comments including…

“The webinars have helped me a lot during my job hunting. I am glad that I have attended them because I have 3 final stage interviews next week and now I feel confident.”

“The webinar was very motivating. It is reassuring and encouraging to learn from experts in the field.”

“I’ve attended several employment seminars before with other companies and I found this one the most useful.”

We’ve also loved the engagement on the hashtag #LockdownYourCareer. Webinar hosts Sophie and Helen have accepted lots of invitations to connect from students growing their professional networks online.

All of our webinars are now available to view on our YouTube channel. We've created a playlist for the webinars, and a playlist for the associated webinar task videos so they are easy to find. 

Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any future content!

SRS Partner with the University of Lincoln for Digital Assessment Centre

200 University of Lincoln Students gain experience of digital approaches to recruitment with large scale SRS digital assessment centre

At the end of April, SRS partnered with the University of Lincoln to deliver a digital assessment centre for 200 Business, Accounting & Finance, and Economics students. The assessment centre took place over the course of one day, and was embedded as part of the students’ degrees. SRS have collaborated with the University of Lincoln for a number of years, usually to deliver an in person assessment centre. However, in response to more employers opting for a digital approach in their recruitment processes, this year we transitioned to a digital assessment centre. Students therefore continued to have a realistic and representative experience of what an employer’s assessment centre involves.

Students used an easy to navigate digital platform to take part in three exercises, all via video conference with professional assessors. The exercises were an e-tray exercise, pre-prepared presentation, and 1:1 interview. Each exercise tested different skills, including communication, reasoning and problem solving.

Following the event, students received detailed and personalised feedback reports. The reports highlighted strengths and areas for improvement, so students could instantly apply their feedback and learning.

100% of participants would recommend taking part in the assessment centre to other students.

Read our case study HERE to find out more about the event.

You can also read about the event HERE, in an article which was published in the summer edition of The Student Employer magazine from the Institute of Student Employers.

Want to know how we can help your students? Get in touch for a chat.

SRS in Partnernship with the University of Hertfordshire Shortlisted in AGCAS Awards for Excellence

SRS, in partnership with the University of Hertfordshire, are delighted to be shortlisted for the Building Effective Partnerships award in the AGCAS Awards for Excellence.

The AGCAS Awards for Excellence celebrate good practise amongst higher education careers and employability practitioners and their partner organisations. The Building Effective Partnerships awards focuses on effective collaboration between organisations.

The partnership between SRS and the University of Hertfordshire results in the delivery of the Assessment Centre Experience (ACE) programme. ACE is a series of graduate assessment centre simulations, taking place over the course of three weeks. Previous years saw the assessment centre simulation take place at Watford Football Club. This year it will take a digital format to reflect the recruitment processes employers are currently using. Over 3,000 University of Hertfordshire students take part, from 9 academic schools. The assessment centres are part of embedded modules in the students’ curriculum, meaning their learning is contextualised and contributes to their academic record, but they also gain representative experience of the challenging graduate recruitment process.

ACE is designed to support students who may not have the experience, knowledge and opportunities to navigate recruitment processes and present themselves to employers. Bespoke materials (including job descriptions and assessment activity briefs) are created for each different school of students, which are used in exercises which accurately reflect an employer’s recruitment activities. Students are assessed in these activities by professional assessors and receive individual feedback reports. The feedback is used for self reflective assignments and future career planning, with support from the University of Hertfordshire Careers Team.

Feedback from students on their experience of ACE is always hugely positive, with one student commenting "I found it life changing, I received feedback that will help me personally and professionally that I would have never known about had I not come."

You can read more and see the full shortlists in the AGCAS Awards for Excellence HERE.

The award winner will be announced at an awards webinar on Tuesday 14th July!