GenAI meets Gen Z: What it means for Early Careers hiring
Now available on demand
Join Unseen and PeopleScout for a session exploring how generative AI is reshaping early careers hiring and what employers should do about it.
GenAI isn’t just changing how candidates apply. It’s changing how they prepare, how they present themselves, and how they engage with the hiring process. And importantly, most candidates are trying to use AI ethically to put their best foot forward.
Built around insights from PeopleScout’s latest report, GenAI meets Gen Z, this session will unpack what these shifts mean in practice and how employers can build a clear, thoughtful strategy in response.
From application through to assessment and onboarding, we’ll explore how hiring approaches need to evolve to stay fair, credible, and effective in an AI-enabled world.
Watch on demand now
What we cover
How GenAI is shaping candidate behaviour
Understand how students and graduates are using AI across applications, assessments, and preparation and why this is less about misuse, and more about evolving expectations.
Rethinking assessment in an AI-enabled world
If AI is here to stay, how do you design processes that remain fair and credible? We’ll explore how to assess not just outputs, but how candidates use AI judgment, transparency, and decision-making.
Building an AI-aware early careers strategy
Learn how to adapt your attraction, assessment, and selection approach setting clear expectations, encouraging ethical AI use, and improving confidence in hiring decisions.
What you take away
Key insights from the GenAI meets Gen Z report
Practical ways to respond to AI in your hiring process
A clearer strategy for assessing talent in an AI-enabled world
A recording of the session to revisit and share
Speakers
Nicola Sullivan
Partnership Solutions Director Unseen
James Chorley
Talent Solutions Director PeopleScout
Pip Wright
Talent Systems Technologist Unseen
Amanda Callen CPsychol AFBPsS FRSA
Head of Assessment Design PeopleScout
Company culture is a bit of an abstract concept; many think they understand it, but few can define it or explain how their culture was developed and maintained.
What is company culture and how important is it to get right?
Let’s start with a definition of company culture. The Cambridge Dictionary defines corporate culture as:
‘The beliefs and ideas that a company has and the way in which they affect how it does business and how its employees behave.’
It’s a good definition; it seems logical, straightforward, and concise. The problem is, it all too often seems that not many companies define their culture this way. Moreover, don’t all companies (especially when you ask their leaders) purport to have a ‘good corporate culture’?
The problem with misunderstanding your culture
It seems logical that business founders will be responsible for establishing a company culture and defining what that culture should be.
This culture is typically based on the company founders’ own personal values, vision, and their preferred working environment – and that culture will be imparted to the next member of staff, then the next, then the next… this seems like a logical strategy – but this is where many businesses start to struggle.
When a company culture is defined this way, the first few members of staff all end up being just like the company founder(s), meaning they may all share the same personal values, vision and work environment preferences. This all sounds great, and the recipe for a productive work environment, but when you start to dig a little deeper, is the best recruitment policy to employ ‘people that the founders would enjoy having a beer with’?
It’s a fairly common example: ‘we have a great company culture… we all go out for a beer after work on a Friday!’
But does this really mean the company has a great culture? Who says? Does it also mean that those people who can’t/don’t want to join the Friday beer club, won’t be model employees, who fully buy in to the business’ values and goals?
Although the beer example might be quite extreme, the point is that the ‘pint after work’ definition of good company culture does nothing for the long-term success of the business.
As a business increases its revenue, inevitably, more staff are required to meet demands; new staff with new skill sets to be brought in and new processes are to be implemented to streamline operations. This requires recruiting a very different set of individuals, with different personalities and unique personal aspirations.
Culture and hiring
The effect of a badly-defined company culture
A badly-defined company culture leaves the hiring manager asking all the wrong questions in interviews: is this person going to get on well with the rest of the team? Do I have anything in common with them? Are they like me? Will they be a good cultural fit (will they fancy a beer on Friday after work)?
Now this is where mistakes are made by some:
It’s not so much unconscious bias on the part of the hiring manager, as it is them genuinely believing this person doesn’t represent a cultural fit with the company. The issue is, the very cultural fit against which the candidate is being measured, has been defined in the wrong way!
This means that the hiring manager, all through wanting to perpetuate a poorly- defined company culture, is potentially missing out on the best person/people for the vacancies.
‘If we mention all of these great things we do, will this candidate work 10-hour days and weekends when we need them to?’
The ‘Friday beer’ example was only provided to illustrate a point; there are so many other examples of badly defined company culture that are far more common, and often detrimental. And it’s not always driven by the founders’ own personal values, vision and preferred work environment – it’s often erroneously defined by other ways.
For example, wanting to present a culture that the company thinks that staff and prospective hires will want… but the reality is far different from the concept.
Having break-out areas, cool, edgy office furniture, and free snacks – the whole ‘work hard/play hard culture’, often translating to staff having to work 60 hours a week to be rewarded with a free Dominos at the end of the month, doesn’t feel like a great culture.
Of course, we’re not suggesting that every company that has these policies and perceived benefits in place are disingenuous – far from it! But it does happen far too often that staff are misinformed about the role, and that many hiring managers are assessing cultural fit by asking internal questions such as ‘if we mention all of these great things we do, will this candidate work 10-hour days and weekends when we need them to?’
Many growing businesses are struggling to effectively define their culture, but this is a key step that needs to be completed before you can start to hire for cultural fit – so, how can this be done?
Step 1
Establish an organisational values framework
Nowadays, it’s becoming more and more important to develop an organisational values model. Company values are the core set of beliefs that a company has and gives all staff the opportunity to get behind the same goals.
Some examples of company values could include:
Openness, transparency, accountability and creativity
When developing company values, take plenty of time to get it right; it’s pivotal and will underpin everything from hiring to strategy, process to profits. Brainstorm with your team, involve as many stakeholders as possible. Include staff, shareholder, customers, and suppliers – what are the traits we have as a business that we want to keep, what do we want to eliminate and what do we want to do that we don’t currently? Having a core set of company values sets in place will help to shape the company mission and vision.
Step 2
Implement a mission statement and document your vision
If you don’t have one already, implement a company mission statement, and a written vision that is communicated to all staff. It’s something that everybody can get behind if it’s done properly. Alongside values, it forms the foundation of company culture.
Although it’s a decision for company owners and leaders, it’s hugely important that collaboration with staff occurs to build this mission statement so everybody is bought in from the outset. The mission statement should encapsulate the business vision and why the business exists; it’s crucial. Additionally, Mission-driven workers are 54 percent more likely to stay at the company for 5 years.
A crucial step in building your new culture is to assess against your newly developed values. Carry out anonymous staff surveys to see how your current staff feel you’re performing against values. If, for example, once of your values is “we are open”, anonymously survey your staff to see if they believe the business is as open as it can be; ask open-ended questions to find out where the company is performing well, and not so well, and look to provide interventions based on areas of perceived weakness.
Step 3
Assess against your new values and mission
360 feedback assessments are also a crucial way of seeing how aligned an individual (particularly a manager – as they’re often responsible for employee dissatisfaction) is aligned to the organisational values, and its culture.
Structure a 360 assessment around organisational key values and competencies and have their managers, direct reports, peers, other colleagues and even customers rate the individual against these competencies and values. This is a fantastic way of being able to highlight how aligned, or misaligned an individual is to the values and culture of a company, and gives an individual the opportunity to receive constructive and honest feedback from people they work with.
By incorporating these tools into your internal processes, it gives each member of staff the opportunity to feed back and contribute to the cultural shape of the business, whilst at the same time giving ownership of individuals’ personal and professional journey. For the business, it hugely helps to shape the internal culture, ensuring that all members of staff know exactly what the culture is, how it’s been developed and how it should be upheld.
Step 4
Foster the culture
Once the above steps have been carried out, the management can start to foster the organisational culture. This will not happen overnight but done properly it can work wonders for businesses. It is the responsibility of, initially, the leadership team and subsequently the entire staff base to maintain a positive company culture, based on the values and mission. And it’s incredibly important for the culture to be inclusive for all.
If one of the values that is developed is ‘team spirit’ – don’t just put a pool table in the office: look to reward the entire team when things go well – organise team days that are inclusive to all. In addition to the pub Fridays, offer a suitable alternative to those staff that are unable to join – use some imagination and creativity!
For businesses that have ‘integrity’ as a core value, make sure you’re as ethical, fair, and honest with your staff as you are with your customers: update them on company financials, future plans and your expectations of them.
The list is endless, but you can probably see how having a robust core set of values in place, should impact all your stakeholders in the same way – it builds consistency and supports in building an incredible organisational culture.
Conclusion
Company culture is absolutely paramount and is pivotal to the success of a company. Making sure that your business has a culture to be proud of will help you get the most from your current staff base and ensure that you recruit those that align with your organisation – and who feel your organisation aligns with them!
Speak to an expert
Share your goals and challenges with our qualified team to discover how Unseen can help you to hire your way.
Rethinking early careers: What employers need to redesign in 2026
This article is a summary of a webinar discussion that took place on March 17 2026.
Titled Rethinking Early Careers: What needs to change in 2026, the webinar featured:
Ali Hackett, Director of Customer Experience at Unseen
Anne Marie Campion, Emerging Talent Specialist at Institute of Student Employers
Claire Monks, Graduate Programme Manager at NHS Wales
Dr Frances Trought, Founder of Everything D&I
The early careers market has always evolved, but this year feels materially different.
In our specialist early careers webinar, senior voices from across early careers, education and workforce strategy agreed that employers are now operating in a structurally different environment from just a year or two ago. 2026 is a year shaped by economic pressure, policy change, rising candidate anxiety, unprecedented application volumes and the accelerating impact of AI.
The result is a growing gap between how many organisations still recruit early talent and what candidates and businesses now need from those processes.
A more volatile market is changing how employers plan
One of the clearest themes from the discussion was that traditional annual planning cycles are becoming harder to sustain.
Rapid shifts in hiring demand, budget scrutiny, apprentice reform and wider economic uncertainty are making long-term talent planning less predictable than before. Our expert panel reflected that strategies which might once have remained stable for a year can now feel outdated within months.
That pressure is forcing employers to move beyond inherited recruitment cycles and towards more deliberate workforce planning: understanding which roles are likely to change, which skills will remain critical and where future pipelines genuinely need investment.
AI is no longer a side issue in early careers
The conversation confirmed that the debate has moved on from whether candidates should use AI, into accepting the reality that its use is prevalent.
Candidates are already using it, employers are using it, and trying to remove it from recruitment entirely is increasingly unrealistic.
The more important challenge now is how organisations respond fairly and intelligently.
This includes:
Deciding where AI use is acceptable in applications
Understanding how it affects assessment validity
Addressing unequal access to paid AI tools
Distinguishing between assisted responses and genuine judgement
Several speakers noted that many established selection methods are becoming less effective in this context. Generic written answers, CV screening and predictable competency questions are now easily generated or strengthened through AI.
The implication is not to remove rigour, but to redesign it, placing greater weight on judgement, authenticity and live interaction.
Related solution
Rethink assessment for a changing candidate landscape
As traditional screening methods become less effective, assessment needs to reflect how people think, solve problems and respond in real situations. Our Digital Assessment Centre platform, TopScore, helps employers assess potential more fairly and consistently.
A strong consensus emerged that assessment processes need to become more representative of how people will actually work.
If AI will be part of day-to-day working environments, then excluding it entirely from recruitment creates an artificial test.
Instead, employers should increasingly assess:
How candidates think
How they solve problems
How they apply judgement
How they use tools responsibly
That points towards more situational tasks, more project-based exercises and more live interaction, particularly later in the process.
At the same time, panellists acknowledged the practical tension this creates: face-to-face assessment and richer interaction often require more resource at a point when many teams are being asked to deliver more with less.
The confidence gap is now a major recruitment issue
One of the most important insights from the webinar was that candidate behaviour is being shaped not only by competition, but by confidence.
Across sectors, employers are seeing:
Higher anxiety
Lower certainty
Greater fear of rejection
Increased disengagement between offer and start date
For many young people, repeated rejection is no longer just part of the process but an experience that it is affecting confidence in education choices, career direction and whether they belong in professional environments at all.
That means candidate experience is no longer a secondary consideration. It has become central to conversion and retention.
Several speakers argued that employers need to think much more carefully about:
How rejection is handled
Where clarity is missing
How transparent entry requirements really are
Whether candidates understand what is expected of them
Even simple improvements in communication can materially change outcomes.
Related solution
Build confidence before day one
When candidates feel informed, connected and reassured, they are more likely to stay engaged throughout the journey. Unseen’s Candidate Experience & Onboarding platform, Meet & Engage, helps employers create stronger touchpoints before offer, after offer, and through onboarding.
Human connection matters more than ever before day one
A particularly strong theme was that organisations often underestimate how fragile the period between offer acceptance and start date has become.
This is where doubt grows, competing offers strengthen, and silent drop-off happens.
What prevents that is rarely process alone. It also about relationships and authenticity.
The most effective examples shared all involved stronger human contact:
Manager introductions
Buddy relationships
Early cohort engagement
Invitations to informal events
Clearer onboarding support
Practical visibility of what the first weeks will look like
As one panellist put it, organisations that retain talent best are often those that continue recruiting candidates emotionally right up until day one.
Skills-based thinking must go further
Another major point was that many organisations still talk about skills-based hiring more than they fully practise it.
Rigid academic filters, narrow qualification assumptions and institutional bias can still close off talent unnecessarily.
The panel challenged employers to think more carefully about aptitude, transferable capability and demonstrated potential – particularly where future roles are changing quickly anyway.
This matters not only for fairness, but for long-term talent resilience.
If organisations continue selecting only through familiar indicators, they risk reproducing the same talent profiles while missing the wider capabilities increasingly needed in a changing market.
Education and employers need closer alignment
A repeated concern was the widening disconnect between what education systems are producing and what employers expect.
Universities, schools and colleges are under pressure themselves, often being asked to support more students with fewer resources.
At the same time, employers continue to expect stronger work-readiness, AI fluency, data literacy and commercial understanding.
The discussion suggested that solving this cannot sit with one side alone. More partnership is needed:
Earlier exposure to employers
More meaningful insight experiences
Micro-internships and challenge-based learning
Stronger collaboration around future skill needs
The strongest examples are those that help young people understand work before formal application begins.
The strategic shift for employers
Taken together, the discussion pointed to a clear conclusion:
The organisations likely to succeed in early careers now will be those that stop treating recruitment as a fixed annual process and start treating it as a connected talent system – one that combines planning, assessment, communication, development and belonging.
The external pressures are unlikely to ease soon.
But many of the strongest responses are within employers’ control:
Simplify where complexity adds little value
Redesign outdated assessment steps
Build trust earlier
Communicate more clearly
Create stronger bridges between attraction and retention
In a market where candidates have more uncertainty and employers have less margin for error, the organisations that feel most human are often the ones that perform best.
Watch on demand
Hear the full discussion
This article captures some of the key themes from the conversation, but the full webinar explores the practical challenges, audience questions and panel perspectives in much greater depth.
The importance of a well designed selection process
A well-designed selection process improves hiring outcomes, strengthens your employer brand, and gives candidates a fair and consistent experience.
Many organisations still rely on processes that have simply grown over time rather than being deliberately designed. This means that interviews are unstructured, assessments feel disconnected, and decisions depend too heavily on individual judgement.
If you want better results, the process needs to be built with more intent. So, how can you go about designing a selection process that truly works for you?
Step 1
Start with a clear definition of success
Before even thinking about assessment methods, you need to decide on what ‘good’ looks like in the role you’re trying to fill.
That means identifying the capabilities, behaviours, and potential indicators that are genuinely linked to performance. Without that foundation, it’s difficult to assess candidates in a meaningful or consistent way.
Once defined, these criteria should inform every stage of the process. Whether you’re using interviews, job simulations or task-based assessments, each element should be tied back to those same measures of success.
Structured assessment design plays an important role here. It allows you to move away from instinct-led decisions and towards a more consistent and evidence-based approach.
Step 2
Design the process as a connected journey
Selection processes are often built in stages that don’t fully connect. Candidates repeat similar information in different formats, while hiring teams gather overlapping or incomplete insights.
A stronger approach is to treat the process as a single, joined-up journey.
Each stage should build on the previous one:
• Early stages can focus on core capabilities and potential
• Later stages can explore depth, judgement and real-world application
• Final decisions should draw on a complete and consistent set of evidence
This reduces duplication, improves efficiency, and gives hiring teams greater confidence in their decisions.
Assessment centres continue to play an important role here, particularly for roles where collaboration, communication and decision-making need to be observed in practice. Designed well, they allow organisations to see how candidates perform in realistic scenarios.
Step 3
Keep candidate experience practical and relevant
Candidate experience is shaped by clarity, relevance and respect for time. Processes that feel overly long, repetitive or unclear tend to lead to disengagement. In contrast, well-designed processes feel focused and purposeful.
A few principles make a noticeable difference:
• Clear instructions and expectations at every stage
• Assessment tasks that reflect real aspects of the role
• Consistency in how candidates are evaluated
• Communication that feels timely and considered
Employee-generated content can support this by giving candidates a more realistic understanding of the role and organisation. Seeing and hearing from employees helps set expectations and can make assessments feel more grounded in real work, replacing static or overly polished materials with something more representative of day-to-day experience.
Step 4
Build fairness into the design
Fairness needs to be considered upfront rather than reviewed after the fact.
Unstructured interviews, inconsistent scoring and unclear criteria all introduce bias. Over time, this affects both hiring quality and trust in the process.
A more structured approach helps to address this:
• Standardised assessment methods across candidates
• Clear scoring criteria linked to role requirements
• Interview frameworks that reduce subjectivity
• Documentation and data that support decision-making
Combining structured psychometric assessment with well-designed assessment centres allows organisations to build a more complete and balanced picture of each candidate, while maintaining consistency across the process.
Step 5
Bring it together
Designing a strong selection process comes down to clarity, structure and consistency.
That means being clear on what success looks like, building a process where each stage adds meaningful insight, and using the right tools to support fair and evidence-based decisions.
Used together, these approaches help create a selection process that is more predictive, more engaging, and more reliable.
Conclusion
If your current process feels inconsistent or overly dependent on individual judgement, it’s worth reviewing how it has been designed.
Small changes in structure and assessment approach can have a significant impact on both hiring outcomes and candidate experience.
Speak to an expert
Share your goals and challenges with our qualified team to discover how Unseen can help you to hire your way.
Unseen Group acquires employee content platform Seenit
Unseen Group has announced the completion of its 11th acquisition with the addition of employee content platform, Seenit.
Seenit is an employee-generated video tool that has enabled the likes of Amazon and Vodafone to build authentic, high-impact content that boosts talent attraction, retention and development.
The deal comes as Unseen relaunches with a new website and unified offering, designed to help large-scale employers make fair, data-driven hiring decisions while delivering exceptional candidate and employee experiences.
“I’m really pleased to introduce Seenit to the Group and I look forward to exploring how its employee-generated content platform can support our clients and partners at a time when demand is growing for more human-centred and data-driven talent solutions,” said Zac Williams, CEO of Unseen Group.
“Seenit is a perfect fit for our refined employer-led offering and further solidifies Unseen as a leading provider of talent tools, spanning from candidate engagement, through to screening, assessments, onboarding and employee development,” he continued.
Emily Forbes, Founder of Seenit, said this about joining the Unseen Group:
“From my first meeting with Zac, it was clear our missions were aligned and that Unseen was building something ambitious. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved at Seenit, and joining Unseen gives us the opportunity to scale that impact even further. There’s a lot for us to look forward to now as we enter this next chapter of growth.”
“Our goal has always been to see employee content embedded across the entire talent lifecycle as it continues to play a critical role in how candidates understand, join and grow within organisations. Being a part of Unseen allows that voice to sit alongside the Group’s existing engagement, assessment, onboarding, and development tools where it can have even greater impact.”
Unseen Group’s strategic re-launch is a response to wider changes in recruitment sectors as advances in AI continue to impact how candidates search and apply for jobs – as well as how employers evaluate AI-assisted applications.
“We’ve seen a real shift in priorities,” said Zac, “employers are under increasing pressure to cut through with content that feels genuine and recruitment and development stages that feel innovative and immediate. The addition of Seenit and employee-led video builds authenticity and real connection at scale and that’s becoming a critical differentiator in a market shaped by AI and automation.”
Unseen was advised by JMW (Legal), Cowgills (FDD), Unity (Tax), Megabuyte (Commercial) with support from Pelican Capital and ThinCats.
year Seenit was introduced by Amazon’s Employer Brand team
The Challenge
Amazon needed to hire at scale while competing with some of the world’s most recognised technology employers. At the same time, the business needed a more authentic way to showcase what it is really like to work at Amazon.
Traditional job descriptions alone weren’t enough to explain complex roles or bring the organisation’s culture to life. To attract the next generation of candidates, Amazon needed to amplify employee voices and show genuine experiences from inside the company.
The Employer Brand team also needed a way to create this content efficiently and consistently across a large global organisation.
Objectives
Key objectives of the brief
Support high-volume hiring
Help Amazon attract talent at scale while competing with leading technology companies.
Build brand trust
Amplify employee voices to showcase authentic culture and values.
Humanise complex roles
Make specialist roles easier to understand and more appealing to potential candidates.
Create scalable content
Enable teams to generate authentic employee stories quickly and consistently.
Our Solution
Seenit was introduced by Amazon’s Employer Brand team in the Retail division in 2018. The platform enables Amazon employees to capture and share video content that brings their experiences to life.
By gathering stories directly from employees, Amazon can create authentic employer brand content that showcases career opportunities, culture and day-to-day experiences across the organisation.
The content can then be used across the candidate journey, including careers pages, social media and recruitment campaigns.
Results
Over time, Amazon has used Seenit to build a large library of employee-generated video content that supports both employer branding and recruitment campaigns.
Employee storytelling has helped Amazon increase engagement with employer brand content while giving candidates a clearer, more human view of what it is like to work at the organisation.
Notable outcomes
1,500+
employee video uploads captured through Seenit
15,000+
pieces of content created using the platform
2x
increase in click-through rate to jobs pages
+200%
increase in careers site traffic
Looking Ahead
Amazon continues to use Seenit to create employee-generated video content that supports employer branding and recruitment campaigns. By putting real employee voices at the centre of its storytelling, the organisation can showcase culture, roles and opportunities in a way that resonates with candidates globally.
“We were able to increase our careers site traffic by 200% and increase applications for quality candidates by 35%.”
Matt Sharp, Global EB Lead, Amazon
Bring employee stories to life
Discover how employee-generated video can help you showcase authentic culture, engage talent and scale your employer brand.
Rethinking Early Careers: What Needs to Change in 2026
Join Ali Hackett, Unseen’s Customer Experience Director, along with Anne Marie Campion, Emerging Talent Specialist at the Institute of Student Employers, and Dr. Frances Trought, DEI expert, in this forward-looking session.
Together, they’ll be sharing what they’re seeing across the Early Careers market, and what needs to change.
Watch on demand
Enter your details to access the recording.
The topics we’ll be covering:
What feels different about this year’s early careers cycle
Dive deeper into how the early careers landscape is being affected by work readiness challenges, skills gaps and early attrition.
How attraction, engagement, assessment, and selection should evolve
Learn how employers can balance
efficiency with candidate experience
as expectations shift and AI evolves.
Where organisations risk losing talent
Find out how you can strengthen engagement and work readiness between offer and start date, as we share advice on designing a more connected and resilient early careers strategy.
Materials you will receive
A concise post-session summary with key takeaways
On-demand access to the webinar recording
Meet the speakers
Ali Hackett
Customer Experience Director, Unseen
Anne Marie Campion
Emerging Talent Specialist, Institute of Student Employers
Engaging assessment experience with enterprise-grade insight
1
bespoke tool built around NatWest’s framework, not retrofitted to software
360°
capability view, from colleague development to bank-level insight
✓
governance-ready approach to data privacy and security requirements
The Challenge
NatWest had recently launched a new skills and behaviour framework and wanted to embed it across the bank in a way that felt practical for colleagues and valuable for leaders.
The team had already built an internal prototype tool. It was basic, but its early success proved there was real appetite for a more polished experience. To scale adoption and unlock meaningful insight, NatWest needed an external partner that could design and build something bespoke to their framework, with a strong focus on user experience.
As a highly regulated organisation, data privacy and security were critical. Any supplier would need to meet stringent governance and supply chain requirements.
Objectives
Key objectives of the brief
Embed the framework
Give colleagues something tangible to guide development and build consistent capability language.
Make it engaging
The solution needed a strong focus on an engaging and innovative user experience.
Unlock insight
Enable flexible analysis and reporting to inform development activity at an aggregate level. Create a clear view of technical capability across the bank.
Meet governance standards
Ensure data privacy, security and supplier assurance requirements were fully satisfied.
Our Solution
NatWest partnered with Evolve Assess to build a simple, attractively designed assessment experience tailored to their frameworks, rather than adopting an off-the-shelf product and retrofitting the framework to match.
Evolve worked closely with NatWest’s stakeholders, taking an open and collaborative approach to shaping the solution and suggesting alternative routes where needed to meet bespoke requirements.
Throughout delivery, Evolve supported NatWest’s governance and supply chain processes, providing the assessments, certificates and evidence required to meet strict data privacy and security standards.
Results
The platform helped NatWest embed skills and behaviour frameworks across the bank, giving colleagues a practical tool to support development and enabling leaders to access stronger capability insight.
The analysis centre in particular became a standout outcome, giving NatWest the ability to shape and cut skills data in the ways the business needed, and to use those insights to inform development activities at an organisational level.
Notable outcomes
Adoption
Framework embedded via a tangible, colleague-friendly experience.
Insight
Aggregate capability data available to inform bank-wide development planning.
Flexibility
Analysis centre enabled data to be shaped and interrogated in multiple ways.
Looking Ahead
Following the success of the initial project and the strength of the working relationship, NatWest has since gone on to develop several additional tools with Evolve in this space.
“Our dedicated relationship manager has been great, really responsive, just excellent at anticipating our needs.”
Lucy Downs, Behavioural Science Manager, NatWest
“If you are looking to build an engaging online assessment, I really recommend Evolve Assess. From design to delivery, they’ve been proactive, understood the business and the requirements, and helped build a really innovative solution going forward.”
How Royal Mail Transformed Onboarding to Improve Engagement and Cut Attrition
The role of a postie is physically demanding, requiring individuals to walk up to ten miles a day, five days a week, in varying weather conditions while carrying heavy loads. Early starts, shift work, and the occasional encounter with unfriendly dogs further contribute to the challenges of the job.
Despite this, posties are seen as vital members of the community — familiar faces deeply rooted in the neighbourhoods they serve.
Royal Mail Group, one of the UK’s largest employers, faced a pressing operational challenge: high drop-out and early attrition rates among newly hired postal workers. While applicant numbers were strong, many new hires didn’t fully grasp the realities of the role, leading to drop-outs between offer acceptance and Day 1.
The Challenges
High renege rates (candidates accepting offers but not showing up)
Significant early attrition within the first 30 days
Inconsistent pre-start communication and engagement
Lack of a structured, scalable onboarding process
A requirement to recruit 250–300 new posties every week
The Aims
Delivering a positive, engaging candidate experience
Reinforcing the realities of the role early
Reducing renege and attrition rates
Meet & Engage’s Tailored Onboarding Experience
To address these challenges, Royal Mail partnered with Meet & Engage, using their Timeline onboarding platform – a personalised, social-style digital portal designed to drive candidate engagement.
Personalised Candidate Journeys
Candidates who accepted offers were invited to register via a link in their offer email, unlocking a tailored onboarding journey from acceptance through to Day 1.
Engaging Content in a Social Format
Instead of static documents, candidates received social-style posts, videos, articles, and interactive content designed to reflect the real realities of the role.
Automated Alerts and Nudges
Email and SMS prompts reminded candidates to engage, with intelligent triggers nudging those who missed content back into the experience.
Calibrated Content Flow
Content was intentionally limited to around 15 posts across a short window, preventing overload while ensuring clarity.
Mobile-First Design
With many candidates accessing the platform via mobile, the experience was optimised for anytime, anywhere engagement.
The Results: Strong Engagement and Reduced Attrition
Renege rates dropped from 35% to 12%
Early attrition halved from 32% to 16%
96% candidate satisfaction among registered users
17,800Candidates invited to onboard
49%Registration rate
96%Felt more prepared for the role
62%Accessed via mobile
A Scalable, Engaging Onboarding Model
Royal Mail’s collaboration with Meet & Engage demonstrates how digital, personalised onboarding can transform candidate experience at scale.
By combining engaging content, thoughtful timing, and mobile-first access, the initiative helped new postal workers feel prepared, valued, and far more likely to stay.
From first impression to first day, let’s build better hiring journeys together
Book your personalised demo of the Meet&Engage platform today.
Kier Group are a leading provider of infrastructure services, construction and property developments. After a couple of years using an assessment platform with significant challenges throughout, the Kier Group team were very sceptical about using another assessment platform and confidence was low.
With their graduate intake for 2025 increasing by 40% compared to 2024 resulting in a candidate pool of over 200, Kier needed a streamlined process that was easy to use, reliable, and effective.
Our Solution
Using TopScore to facilitate their in person and virtual assessment events gave Kier Group a seamless digital solution for their recruitment process.
With the ability to instantly change exercise materials and assessors when needed, along with the self-administration of exercise content, TopScore’s features were described as ‘an absolute game changer’ for Kier.
As Kier Group work in an ever-changing environment with the needs of the business shifting dramatically from day to day, having the ability to seamlessly adapt ensured a positive response from both candidates and assessors, and increased confidence across our stakeholder population.
Results
The Kier Group team grew in confidence around using an assessment platform thanks to the delivery of the project in full.
Feedback from the Kier team has been excellent, and all have expressed how intuitive and user friendly the TopScore interface is.
More importantly, Kier Group’s key business stakeholders have been extremely impressed, and comments such as ‘Can I use this for all of my interviews?’ and ‘Am I doing something wrong, it seems too easy?’ are a testament to the work that [the team] has dedicated to making the platform as simple and effective as possible.
Results
100%
of the assessors who said they experienced a significant improvement compared to the previous platform used
Looking Ahead
Feedback following the use of the Unseen’s assessment centre product has been so positive for Kier Group that they are now in the process of initiating a trial with an external partner to review the use of TopScore across all their Emerging Talent pathways.
The use of TopScore to provide an inclusive assessment structure and content, and the ability to ensure candidates are assessed fairly throughout the process, will be a key target of the trial.
In summary, I’ve personally been really impressed with both the platform and the support provided, it was a big gamble after the negative experience with a similar platform but my faith has been restored!! A massive thank you to Joe and Adam for their continued support and we’re looking forward to a long partnership!
Craig Melvin, Emerging Talent Recruitment Manager
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