Hiring simulation at scale: 43,000+ candidates in 24 hours for Axis Bank
Axis MOVES is Axis Bank's flagship campus competition, relaunched with InsideIIM after a seven-year hiatus and now running pan-India across B-schools and engineering colleges. The assessment layer is a custom eight-stage banking hiring simulation built by AltUni Labs on SignalAI, which put more than 43,000 candidates through a live customer portfolio inside a single 24-hour window, with AI proctoring, scoring and shortlisting built into the same engine. Our teams also run the on-ground campus rounds and film them for Axis Bank's employer branding content, so the shortlist and the story come out of one operation.
Problem: A frontline banking role that generic assessments cannot measure
Axis Bank needed to reach campus talent at national scale and identify candidates who could do a specific job: read an unstated banking need from a customer conversation and recommend the right product without over-selling. Four constraints shaped the brief.
- Scale inside a fixed window. Tens of thousands of candidates across B-schools and engineering colleges, assessed inside a window short enough to keep the competition credible as an event.
- Integrity at that scale. Conventional invigilation does not extend to tens of thousands of concurrent online sessions, and unproctored assessments are not defensible as a hiring input.
- Role specificity. Off-the-shelf aptitude tests rank general ability. They do not reveal whether a candidate can handle a compliance dilemma or a crisis call on the frontline.
- A property that had already lapsed once. MOVES had gone dormant for seven years. Relaunching it meant giving it a real hiring outcome and a reason to stay visible between editions.
Solution: A custom hiring simulation inside a full campus property
MOVES is not an assessment bolted onto a job posting. It is a pan-India campus property with a competition front end, an AI assessment engine underneath it, live rounds on campus, and a content layer that turns the season into employer brand material Axis Bank uses long after hiring closes. The shortlist feeds directly into Axis Bank's hiring pipeline rather than sitting as a standalone competition result.
The eight-stage banking simulation
Built on SignalAI, using Axis Bank's own competency framework, product set and customer archetypes.
Each candidate was assigned a portfolio of customers with distinct banking needs and worked through the full customer dialogue rather than a summary. The task was to identify the underlying need in each case and build the right portfolio from the bank's savings, deposit and lending products. Poor product fit was penalised. Over-selling was penalised.
Later stages moved through crisis, dilemma, strategy and review, all on a timer. Across the eight stages the simulation stress-tested the competencies Axis Bank hires for at the frontline: customer conversations, portfolio trade-offs, compliance dilemmas and crisis calls.
- Full customer dialogue rather than a condensed brief, so comprehension is part of the assessment
- Real product catalogue, so recommendations are scored on genuine fit
- Explicit penalties for over-selling, which is what separates a sales test from a suitability test
- Timed later stages, so judgement is measured under pressure
- Reasoning captured at each decision point, not just the final selection
What the AI engine ran
Hiring managers received an explanation attached to each ranking, not a percentile.
| Function | What ran |
|---|---|
| Proctoring | Anomalies flagged in real time across every concurrent session for the full 24 hours, with no invigilators and no integrity trade-off at scale |
| Scoring | Every choice scored against Axis Bank's competency map, with the reasoning behind each decision captured alongside it |
| Reporting | Decision-grade reports per candidate: strengths, risks, and the reasoning behind every ranking |
The campus rounds and the content layer
The simulation narrows the field. The campus rounds are where Axis Bank meets the shortlist, and where the property earns its employer brand value.
Our teams run those rounds on the ground and film them as they happen. The footage becomes employer branding content for Axis Bank, spanning candidate stories, leadership sessions and the finale itself, cut for YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn and distributed across the InsideIIM network.
Most assessment vendors cannot run the on-ground rounds. Most content agencies cannot run the assessment. Running both means the shortlist and the story come out of the same operation, in the same season, with one team accountable for both.
Impact
- More than 43,000 candidates assessed through the simulation inside a single 24-hour window
- No invigilators, with real-time anomaly detection across every concurrent session
- Decision-grade reports delivered per candidate, with reasoning attached to every ranking rather than a percentile
- Pan-India reach across both B-schools and engineering colleges in the same cycle
- On-ground campus rounds and employer branding films delivered inside the same engagement
- A dormant property relaunched, with a hiring outcome attached and content keeping it visible between editions
Before AI and after AI
| Area | Before AI | After AI |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment design | Off-the-shelf aptitude and general ability tests | Custom eight-stage simulation on the bank's own products and customer archetypes |
| Assessment window | Staggered slots across days or weeks | 43,000+ candidates inside one 24-hour window |
| Proctoring | Human invigilation, capped by room and staff capacity | Real-time anomaly detection across every concurrent session |
| Scoring | Final answers marked | Every choice scored, with reasoning captured at each decision point |
| Hiring manager output | A percentile or a ranked list | Decision-grade report per candidate with strengths, risks and reasoning |
| Employer branding | Separate agency, separate budget, after the season | Filmed alongside the rounds as a by-product of hiring |
| Property continuity | Lapsed for seven years | Relaunched with a hiring outcome and a content layer attached |
Key takeaways for talent teams
Common challenges
- Peak-day assessment volume that conventional platforms cannot absorb
- Integrity risk once invigilation stops scaling
- Generic assessments that rank ability but not role fit
- Rankings hiring managers cannot interrogate or defend internally
- Campus properties that lapse because they have no hiring outcome attached
- Employer branding treated as a separate project from the hiring it depends on
Practical guidance
- Load-test against your expected peak during the build, not on the day.
- Make proctoring part of the assessment engine rather than a bolted-on vendor.
- Build the simulation on your own products and customer archetypes when the role is specific; a general ability test cannot measure suitability judgement.
- Penalise over-selling explicitly if the role requires it, or the assessment will reward the wrong instinct.
- Capture reasoning at every decision point, so every ranking arrives with an explanation attached.
- Film the rounds while they happen. Employer brand content is cheapest as a by-product of hiring you were already doing.
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