How Reed & Mackay standardized travel-consultant hiring with scenario-based assessments

Reed & Mackay is a premium corporate travel company. Its consultants handle complex trips and demanding clients, often under time pressure.

To make hiring more consistent across client-facing roles, Reed & Mackay needed a way to evaluate judgment and communication before interviews.

Hiring the right person for that work is hard, because the qualities that matter most do not show up on a resume or in a standard interview.

Why interviews were not enough

An interview rewards people who present well in the room. It says little about how a candidate makes a decision when a flight is cancelled, or how they write to a client who is already upset. In a service business, those moments shape the client relationship. A hire who interviews well but struggles under real pressure is an expensive mistake, and one Reed & Mackay usually only discovered after the person had started.

A test built around the real work

Reed & Mackay built its own Business Travel Consultant assessment on Testlify and made it mirror the job instead of using a generic aptitude quiz. It has four parts, each with a clear purpose:

• Written scenarios. Candidates get real travel situations and write out how they would respond. In one exercise the team sees their reasoning, their tone, and their written English, the same skills a consultant uses in client emails every day.
• A decision-making check that shows how a candidate chooses when options are limited and time is short.
• Personality measures that flag fit for a high-pressure, client-facing role before an offer is made.
• A short spoken check, because much of the work happens by phone and Reed & Mackay needs to know a candidate can hold a client conversation.

Each component was designed to evaluate a specific competency required for successful travel consultants, giving hiring managers a structured and consistent evaluation framework.

Part of the Reed & Mackay experience, not a bolt-on

For a premium brand, the way candidates are treated is part of the brand. So the assessment runs white-labeled on Reed & Mackay’s own candidate portal. Applicants stay inside a Reed & Mackay experience rather than being sent to an outside tool, and every applicant goes through the same consistent process.

What changed for the hiring team

Hiring managers now start each interview already knowing how a candidate reasons and writes. That turns the interview into a deeper conversation with the strongest people instead of a basic screen. The team has leaned into it: candidates assessed are up about 25% year over year, and 73% finish the assessment, a high rate for a test that asks for written answers rather than a few clicks.

A fairer read for candidates, too

Because everyone sits the same scenario-based test, the process depends less on interview-day nerves or a polished resume and more on how a candidate actually works. It also gives applicants a realistic preview of the role before they accept it.

Now the standard for client-facing roles

The approach now provides a consistent hiring standard across multiple client-facing roles while maintaining a branded candidate experience.

What began with consultants has grown. Since 2024, Reed & Mackay has used the same approach for team-lead roles, making scenario-based hiring its standard wherever service quality depends on the person in the seat.