How can applicant feedback improve recruitment for digital marketing apprentices?

Last month I wrote a blog that went into some detail about why Apprentify’s digital marketing apprentices were right for your business. I spoke about our in-depth recruitment process and the steps we have put in place to ensure only the best candidates are sent to your business.

This month I want to discuss one of the main steps in our recruitment process, the assessment session and how this has gradually got more successful over time through applicant feedback.

Each assessment session is 4 hours long and I complete one each week. The sessions are in depth, engaging, effective and cover the below elements;

• What is an Apprenticeship and how it is funded
• What is an Apprenticeship Standard
• Off The Job training and how it is embedded into the apprenticeship
• Apprentify’s Path to Mastery and how it is embedded into the programme
• What is End Point Assessment
• How is the learners progress monitored
• How Functional Skills Maths and English form part of the apprenticeship
• Understanding the expectations, time and commitment required for the apprenticeship
• Identifying areas for development in blog writing, data analysis and interview techniques
• Chance to review their skills and knowledge within digital marketing
• 

As you can see there is a lot to fit in the 4-hour time period so creating a great environment for the applicants was key for this process to work and we have overcome some bumps and changes along the way.

We started off with an idea of what information should be included on the assessment session and what activities we feel will provide us within a clear insight to their current skills and knowledge within digital marketing. We knew we would not get this right first time and we would be tweaking the session for months to come. So, with this is mind we created an anonymous feedback form to be completed at the end of the assessment session. We wanted real honest feedback that we could use to improve the sessions which is why we decided on anonymity.

Throughout this blog you will see word clouds which contain feedback from my assessment sessions.

Apprentice/applicant engagement is a huge part of my role at Apprentify and it is always great to see so much positive feedback coming back through. It was great to hear that the sessions were ‘engaging’, ‘informative’ and ‘helpful’.

Just as importantly and to enable me to make relevant changes, it was also great to receive some constructive criticism in certain areas. Some of the feedback was the allocation of time for tasks, certain parts didn’t flow well, some tasks were too complicated to follow, and some instructions were not clear enough.

This may seem straightforward feedback but after tweaking the session here and there weekly through this feedback it has made such a positive impact to the sessions overall look and feel. I am still constantly improving the session and it would not be as successful as it is now without all the feedback I have received.