“In today’s competitive recruitment landscape, HR teams are under increasing pressure to juggle high numbers of vacancy rates, elevated staff turnover, along with organisational diversity goals,” says Jo Lawrence, Director at the Occupational Psychology Centre (OPC). “As HR teams are under more time and resource pressures, advanced HR tools are no longer just helpful—they’re essential to managing these demands while streamlining recruitment processes.”
To support HR teams, the OPC provide bespoke digital solutions. With over three decades of experience in safety-critical industries like transport and engineering, the OPC collaborates with clients worldwide. They deliver tailored assessment recommendations that enhance team performance, identify top talent, and help develop a safer workplace culture.
Supporting High-Volume Recruitment Projects
The OPC specialises in safety-critical role recruitment across a range of industries – managing large-scale projects as well as niche, senior manager searches. They understand the importance of identifying talent with the best skills and attitudes, that will help to keep them safe in high-risk environments. With the post-pandemic shift to digital hiring, the OPC provides customised pre-screening tools to address recruiter’s challenges that may include some of these:
- Non-negotiable questions that are pre-requisite for the role e.g. “Are you happy to work shifts?”.
- Job preference questions assess candidates’ alignment with job demands.
- Role-specific questions help evaluate a candidate’s understanding of the role.
- Mini-situational judgement questions simulate real-life job scenarios.
- Organisational knowledge explores the candidate’s knowledge of the company.
The OPC tailors pre-screening questionnaires to fit each role, streamlining recruitment by filtering out unsuitable characteristics quickly, and creating an accurate shortlist efficiently. This standardised process saves time and resources, by providing scalable and fair results with ease.
Jo Lawrence, explains, “These pre-selection tools can be tailored for each client and customisable for specific roles. Our validation research shows that performance on these pre-selection questionnaires can also predict success in later stages.”
Online Psychometric Assessment Tools
With a smaller talent pool, finding the best-fit candidates is essential. OPC Assessment offers over 60 assessment tools, available both digitally and on paper. Many have been specifically designed for safety-critical roles. The range includes:
- Ability Tests: Measures key skills and abilities. For example, the Core Skills Diagrammatic Reasoning Test (CoreD) evaluates visual problem-solving skills, crucial for engineers.
- Personality Questionnaires: Identifies a candidates preferred behavioural styles, i.e. the Safe Personality Questionnaire (SAFEPQ) assesses attitudes around cautiousness and rule focus.
- Situational Judgement Tests (SJT): Evaluate candidates in job-related scenarios, the Magnificent 7 Situational Judgment Test (M7SJT) can be used to assess for competencies like motivation and risk management.
The OPC works with HR teams to review job descriptions and recommend role-specific assessment tools; whether for production floor employees, the back office, apprenticeship or graduate programmes. Once selected, recruiters can either choose our Bureau Service, where we handle the entire process. Or they can pursue a Test User: Occupational, Ability (TUO-A) qualification to administer psychometric tests independently.
So, how can the OPC help…
- We create tailormade recruitment solutions with role-specific assessment tools that enhance and simplify your recruitment process.
- Our bespoke pre-screening solutions filter out unsuitable candidates, delivering an accurate shortlist of top talent that saves HR teams time and resources.
- OPC Assessment’s user-friendly testing platform, Candela™ streamlines candidate communications and tracking, providing real-time updates and actionable reports for both high-volume and small-scale projects.
- Conduct validation studies to ensure clients are using the most effective psychometric assessments.
Jo Lawrence, Director at the OPC, summed up, “As talent acquisition becomes more complex, we’re committed to providing innovative solutions that simplify recruitment projects. We help clients make informed, evidence-based hiring decisions, ensuring they select top talent while keeping the process fair and efficient.”
If you think we can help streamline your recruitment process, get in touch with the friendly OPC team.
E: admin@theopc.co.uk
T: +44 (0)1923 234646
W: www.theopc.co.uk
