£40,000
Potential savings per cohort, from eliminated interviews and assessment centres
~700 interviews
Telephone interviews eliminated from the recruitment process
10,000+ reports
Automated feedback reports sent to candidates
Security Officers make up around half of Heathrow’s total workforce
Recruiting for a role that’s half the workforce, and half the airport’s first impression
Heathrow needed to transform how it assessed and selected Security Officers, a role that makes up around half its workforce, without losing quality, diversity or candidate goodwill.
Heathrow needed to increase the quality of successful candidates, with a particular focus on customer service skills, and to improve candidate engagement by better showcasing the role itself.
The process also needed to streamline time and cost, recruit from diverse backgrounds that reflected Heathrow’s own customer base, and account for the fact that unsuccessful applicants are also likely passengers, whose loyalty could be affected by how they were treated during recruitment.
One online assessment, built around the job itself
A realistic scenario test and an observation exercise replaced a slower, more resource-heavy process.
Judge the situation
A Situational Judgment Test presented realistic Security Officer scenarios, aligned to Heathrow’s own competency framework and built around customer focus.
Test observation
A vigilance and image-comparison exercise measured the observation skills and mental agility candidates would need to operate scanning equipment.
Automate feedback
Every candidate received an automated feedback report, removing a major manual bottleneck from the process.
potential savings per cohort, from eliminated interviews and assessment centres
A more efficient process that also worked better for candidates
Replacing interviews and assessment centres with one online assessment cut cost without cutting quality.
The new assessment increased the quality of applicants reaching later stages, with a high correlation between assessment performance and customer focus measures, while removing around 700 telephone interviews and over 100 assessment centre places from the process, a potential saving of around £40,000 per cohort.
Completion rates were significantly higher than under the previous process, and candidate feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The assessment also worked fairly across a wide age range, 16 to 65, with no group differences found.
“I enjoyed taking this assessment as it seemed very realistic to the types of situations I look forward to dealing with.”
A Heathrow Airport candidate
Security Officer recruitment, before and after
How replacing telephone interviews and assessment centres with one online assessment changed the way Heathrow recruits Security Officers.
Want to cut the cost of high-volume recruitment without losing quality?
We can help you replace interviews and assessment centres with one assessment built around the job itself.
