Running fair and engaging graduate selection assessments

Vattenfall is a leading European energy company, working towards fossil free living within one generation.

Energy sector
Company Headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden
Over 20,000 employees
Established in 1909

Challenge

Vattenfall is a sustainability-focused energy provider, and one of the biggest players in Europe. Specifically focused on the Swedish, German, Dutch, Danish, and British markets, they employ 20,000+ people around the continent.

To secure the brightest graduates to come work for Vattenfall, the company runs an annual ‘Trainee Programme’. Within this programme, 30 top university graduates are selected to enter a 1-year, highly educational business programme, allowing the Trainees to get a taste of what working in several areas of the Vattenfall business would be like. The programme format allows them to learn a lot in a short amount of time, giving them a head start in their Vattenfall career.

With only 30 places available in this highly sought-after programme, and thousands of candidates applying each year, Vattenfall needed help with a valid, fair, and engaging selection process to identify the 30 graduates that will be enrolled into the 1-year Trainee Programme internationally.

In 2020, Vattenfall decided to run their annual Talent Selection Days in collaboration with Talogy for the first time – and they have run the programme annually ever since. They chose Talogy as their assessment partner for the programme because of previous successful talent management programmes that were run together; the chemistry was there.

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Solution

Talogy and Vattenfall designed a 4-step selection process to hire the right candidates for the trainee roles.

Online assessments: All applicants for the Trainee Programme are asked to complete Talogy’s Hire assessment when applying: A highly engaging online assessment solution that consists of a cognitive ability module, plus a short personality and competency questionnaire. The assessment results are then used to screen out low-ranking candidates and narrow down the pool to 100-150 candidates that continue to the next step.
Initial interview: Vattenfall’s recruitment professionals interview the remaining candidates, and the results from the completed Talogy Hire assessment are used as a basis for the interview. Ensuring alignment and fairness throughout.
Talent Selection Days: The final step involves conducting 60 Assessment Centres remotely over 5 days. The Assessment Centres comprise various components, among which is the completion of an in-depth personality assessment P.A.P.I., a role play activity, and a competency-based interview. All activities are assessed by a team of Talogy experts and Vattenfall HR professionals.
Post-assessment calibration sessions: Following the Talent Selection Days, the Talogy and Vattenfall assessors’ observations are reviewed during calibration sessions to determine a final group of 30 candidates who will be offered a spot in the Trainee Programme in the upcoming year.

At Vattenfall we emphasise the importance of a fair, competency-based recruitment process. The solutions from Talogy helped us to design an effective recruitment process with focus on quality and candidate experience.

Daniel T Nilsson

Head of Recruitment for Sweden & Finland at Vattenfall

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Robust results

With Talogy’s help, Vattenfall selects 20-30 high performing talents for their Trainee Programme each year. The 1-year programme has produced strong future leaders, shaping the company’s leadership teams. The Vattenfall team highly values the partnership with Talogy, rating it a 9 out of 10 during the project evaluation.

“Professional, personal, knowledgeable, authentic, and open: setting the scene to perform.” – Vattenfall assessor.

The candidate experience has shown to be a powerful one as well. With nearly all candidates giving high evaluation scores to the process, regardless of their success in the programme.

Programme experience: 4.77 / 5
Assessor interaction: 4.95 / 5

In addition, almost all candidates who participated in the Talogy assessment process would recommend it to others; resulting in an average score for Talogy of 8.86 out of 10.

Talogy was very professional, both in their interactions with Vattenfall assessors and with candidates.

Vattenfall assessor

What’s next with Talogy?

Vattenfall and Talogy are running the selection for the Vattenfall International Trainee Programme on an annual basis and are working together on many other talent management initiatives, traineeships, and team and individual development projects.

Vattenfall