With approximately 3,500+ candidates assessed annually, we transformed our assessment processes to match fast-paced, high-growth environment like ICICI Bank.
Background
At ICICI Bank, we utilize SHL’s Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) to evaluate candidates during campus hiring. However, the process for assigning the assessment to candidate was highly manual and fragmented. Each candidate’s details had to be individually entered into SHL’s OPQ portal, leading to several recurring issues:
- A linear and time-intensive process
- Inability to track if candidates received their assessment links
- Delays in dispatching links due to server dependencies
- Low response rates, often impacting candidate pipeline quality
- A high dependency on SHL’s support team to troubleshoot issues
With approximately 3,500+ candidates assessed annually, these inefficiencies were not sustainable, particularly in a fast-paced, high-growth environment like ICICI Bank.
Objective
To automate and streamline the OPQ evaluation process for campus hiring to support scale, speed, and consistency, aligning with the bank’s rapid growth trajectory and commitment to hiring top campus talent efficiently.
Action
We collaborated with SHL to enable a bulk-assessment mechanism. Upon alignment, SHL agreed to provide bulk user IDs and passcodes for in advance, facilitating mass personalisation of OPQ assessments.
To operationalise this, I singlehandedly spearheaded the development of a bulk OPQ assessment assignment tool using Microsoft Office’s mail merge functionality, an uncommon solution between 2004–2008. This allowed us to:
- Send thousands of OPQ links at once at our convenience using basic system instead of relying on backend system of SHL, so more control on process.
- Email consisted customized communication for each candidate, creating more branding opportunities for bank
- Track delivery and response status more effectively to candidates and campus
- The entire process became self-service, scalable, and less error-prone.
Results
The results were both immediate and impactful:
- 70% reduction in turnaround time, compressing weeks of manual effort into hours
- Seamless tracking of delivery and completion rates, enhancing follow-up efficiency
- Faster and wider reach, helping us connect with candidates across Tier 1, 2, and 3 campuses simultaneously
- Higher response rates, improving the depth and quality of candidate assessments
- Independence from SHL’s support team, enabling real-time troubleshooting and execution
More importantly, this innovation directly contributed to ICICI Bank’s position as a front-runner in campus hiring. At a time when the bank was expanding aggressively across geographies and verticals, this solution empowered our talent acquisition teams to onboard high-potential talent faster and with better alignment to ICICI’s culture and leadership expectations.
This initiative became a benchmark for innovation within HR operations, and received wide appreciation from both peers and senior leadership, who recognized it as a critical enabler of our campus strategy and a prime example of tech-enabled HR transformation.
Over two years, the automated process successfully supported over 7,000 assessments, laying the groundwork for further digitisation efforts in HR.
“Innovation in HR doesn’t always need a new platform, sometimes it just takes a fresh perspective on existing tools. This solution helped us shift from reactive to proactive hiring, and proved that even small automation can drive big impact.”
