Case Study

How Mintek enhances graduate recruitment with psychometric insights

At Mintek, graduate recruitment is a key part of the business talent strategy, enabling the team to find and develop potential for a highly specialised science and engineering environment. However, assessing potential at an early stage - often before candidates have any work experience, can be challenging. 

With large volumes of applicants, interviews and academic results alone are not always enough to make reliable hiring decisions. 

As Kelebogile Tsielo from Mintek explains: 

“A candidate can come and represent themself well in an interview… but when you go to the assessment, you start seeing the difference in terms of aptitude capacity.” 

Mintek needed a way to objectively identify high-potential candidates while managing volume effectively. 

Using tools such as the General Intelligence Assessment (GIA) and Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) from Thomas, Mintek now evaluates candidates during the bursary selection phase - well before they enter the workforce. 

This early-stage assessment enables Mintek to: 

• Measure intellectual capability and learning potential  

• Identify strengths and development areas  

• Reduce reliance on interview performance alone  

• Make more objective, unbiased decisions.  

“The assessment helps us to see further beyond the interview… you start seeing the gaps, the weaknesses, the strengths, the intelligence.” 

Crucially, this approach allows Mintek to make calculated investment in candidates who may not shine in interviews but demonstrate strong underlying potential. 

By embedding psychometric assessments early in its recruitment process, Mintek has strengthened the quality and consistency of its graduate hires. This data-driven approach enables the team to identify high-potential candidates more accurately, even at an early stage in their careers. 

As a result, graduates selected through this process consistently perform well and more often integrate successfully into the organisation, supporting long-term talent development in a highly specialised field. 

“The GIA has always been 100% spot on in terms of their intellectual capacity, how they can perform.” 

Beyond hiring, assessments also add value to the candidate experience by providing meaningful insights into strengths and development areas. 

“All the candidates that have been on the bursary programme have always been good, have always shown up and met the standards that we really wanted.”

• Assess early: Evaluating candidates at the start of their journey provides deeper insight into long-term potential  

• Look beyond interviews: Psychometric data reveals strengths that may not surface in traditional selection methods  

• Improve quality of hire: Data-driven decisions lead to more consistent and successful outcomes  

• Support candidate development: Feedback from assessments adds value for candidates, not just employers