The problem with junior hiring today
Junior hiring has become one of the least reliable parts of recruitment. CVs look similar, many early career candidates use AI tools to write them, and short interviews mostly reveal confidence rather than capability.
HR teams keep facing the same situation: a large top of funnel, very little real signal and expensive mistakes that show up during probation instead of at the selection stage.
For junior commercial roles this is even more visible. Success depends less on long experience and more on everyday behaviour: reading instructions carefully, completing small tasks, following up, adjusting after mistakes and staying engaged when work is repetitive.
The real question is simple. How can HR see these habits early without slowing the process or increasing cost.
A gamified funnel for one junior role
To test an alternative, Dandelion Civilization, an HR startup focused on behaviour based hiring and digital learning, built a short behavioural funnel based on simple games and micro scenarios for 1 junior business developer role.
The vacancy attracted around 500 initial responses. From there the funnel worked as follows.
- 165 candidates completed registration on the company site which is about 33% of those who clicked through.
- 99 created accounts on the platform and started the gamified tasks which is about 60% of those who registered.
- 46 completed the full first stage with 4 short games which is about 46% of those who started on the platform and less than 10% of the total pool.
- 29 reached the self pitch stage.
- 34 took part in a scenario based sales simulator.
- 24 of these achieved at least 1 confirmed sale which is a conversion to action of about 70%.
In the end 3 finalists were selected. That is fewer than 1% of all applicants.
The key point is that most candidates did not drop out due to lack of knowledge. They dropped out because of how they behaved when faced with simple, structured steps.
When drop off becomes selection data
Across the funnel the same patterns repeated.
- Some candidates did not read instructions to the end.
- Some started tasks and abandoned them halfway.
- Some consistently chose the minimum possible effort even when a richer answer was clearly possible.
These are not abstract signals. They map directly to problems managers see later in probation: missed details, incomplete handovers and weak ownership of tasks.
In this process those habits became visible in the first days of selection instead of in the first months of employment. The drop off was not just operational noise. It became part of the evaluation.
What the sales simulator showed
The sales simulator added another layer of clarity.
Thirty four candidates entered this stage and worked through short customer scenarios. Some of them repeated one script regardless of what happened. Some simply guessed. A smaller group did something different. They:
- asked clarifying questions
- tried alternative approaches after a negative result
- adjusted to the situation instead of following a fixed pattern
The 3 final hires came from this smaller group. They had already shown persistence in the earlier games and then treated the simulator as a problem to solve, not just a form to complete.
A short controlled scenario gave more insight into judgement and adaptability than a standard early interview usually provides.
How candidates used AI in written tasks
The process also included written tasks. This revealed how candidates used AI tools in their work.
Some submissions read like generic AI generated text. The content was smooth but impersonal and could have come from a basic prompt. Other submissions used AI as support. The candidate might have used it for structure or language but the ideas, examples and tone were clearly their own.
The useful line was not between those who used AI and those who did not. It was between candidates who outsourced their thinking and candidates who guided the tool with clear intent.
Those who relied fully on AI tended to stay generic even when the task invited specific reflections. Those who kept control of the argument and used AI as a helper were more likely to advance.
For HR this reflects a wider shift. Asking whether a candidate used AI is becoming less relevant. Evaluating how they used it is becoming more important. Structured written tasks inside a gamified funnel make that difference visible.
Time, cost and efficiency
The entire contest, from the moment the vacancy went live to the final decision, lasted around 14 days.
The direct cost of promoting the vacancy was modest. Including internal platform use for games, simulator and analysis, the team estimates that processing more than 500 applicants and selecting 3 finalists cost in the low four figure range in direct expenses.
Most of the manual effort that usually goes into early CV review and first calls was replaced by clear behavioural steps. Recruiters spent their time only on candidates who had already demonstrated persistence, instruction discipline and practical decision making.
What HR teams can take from this
The experiment highlights several practical points for HR teams who hire junior staff.
- Performance for junior roles is strongly linked to basic behaviour, not only to previous experience.
- Simple games and micro scenarios can filter large volumes of applicants without heavy manual screening.
- Three recurring signals stood out as useful predictors of reliability:
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reading and following instructions accurately
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completing a full sequence of tasks instead of dropping out
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doing slightly more than the absolute minimum when given the chance
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These are specific, observable behaviours that can be measured in a structured way rather than guessed at in short interviews.
As application volumes rise and AI generated CVs become common, it becomes harder to rely on documents to judge potential. Behavioural signal needs to appear before CV signal.
A short sequence of well designed tasks can show reliability, attention to detail, initiative and learning capacity long before probation.
Looking ahead to Q1 2026
Dandelion Civilization plans to officially launch its behavioural assessment tools in Q1 2026. The junior hiring contest with around 500 candidates gave the team a large real world test of this approach.
The underlying message for HR is clear. Performance starts as behaviour, not as paperwork. Hiring becomes faster and more accurate when those behaviours are visible from the first step of the funnel, not discovered at the last stage of employment.
Original Article: HRnews
If you need to hire talent in 2025 or need help with your recruitment advertising contact our digital recruitment specialist Gareth Allison on 01732 914056 or email info@mysoutheastjobs.co.uk