The situation and the problem
The client, an FMCG company, recruited interns each year through a student competition with up to 200 participants.
Students had begun forming group chats and sharing answers to conventional case exercises, making the results less meaningful. HR staff spent time checking for duplicates, while teams rather than strong individual candidates reached the final round. The client wanted to retain the scale of the competition while assessing each person fairly and preventing cheating.
Our solution
We proposed replacing conventional tasks with the Red Planet analytical simulation. Each participant receives a unique scenario: the starting data, sequence of attributes, and mission objectives are generated at random. With a different set of parameters and a different correct answer for each person, sharing answers no longer worked.
The simulation assesses:
- Prioritization: which areas and attributes a participant chooses to analyze with limited resources;
- How participants justify their hypotheses: the logic and clarity of their written conclusions;
- The ability to make decisions under uncertainty.
The online competition ran for two weeks. All 200 participants completed the 40-minute simulation. Results were ranked automatically by how closely they matched the reference solution and by the quality of each participant’s reasoning. HR received a ranking without manually grading submissions.
Results
Before: 200 participants, shared answers and group submissions, difficulty selecting finalists, and manual grading.
After: All 200 completed the simulation individually, eliminating answer sharing. The top 20 participants, who scored above 85%, were invited to final interviews. The top five received internship offers.
Additional outcome: The company received an objective profile of each finalist, showing strengths in analysis, prioritization, and reasoning. This helped assign interns to different teams, including product analytics, data, and business analysis.
Conclusion: The simulation became a standard selection tool that the client now uses for other large-scale assessments.
