Francesca Kelsall found a quiet room on her university campus, checked the light levels and acoustics, and shut the door. She then logged on to an InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) recruitment site, sat behind a desk and began talking to camera.
She tried not to sound over-rehearsed, knowing every word, expression and gesture would be pored over, not by recruiters, but by a computer. “I just tried to stay as natural as possible, as if I was speaking to interviewers.”
Ms Kelsall, a masters student in luxury hospitality at the University of West London, is one of 20 candidates recruited into IHG’s graduate programme in Europe. She also completed cognitive tests and personality profiles in an experiment to establish whether an algorithm can predict better than a human who, from a candidate pool, would make a top employee.