With a recruitment philosophy of ‘hire for attitude, train for skill’, ASDA differentiates itself from the traditional retail approach where applicants are typically only invited to interviews if they have the right skills or previous relevant experience.
So how does a recruiter with such a philosophy go about implementing such a high volume recruitment strategy?
ASDA used to have ineffective recruitment process for both their graduate and management positions, with over 22,000 applications being manually sifted by their 5-strong resourcing team. The process was resource hungry, slow and undifferentiated from the competition.
For many years ‘hire for attitude’ meant conducting generic psychometric tests during assessment centres on an ad-hoc basis. The journey to a different approach started when ASDA suggested that attitude is such an important factor in selection, that they shouldn’t even give a candidate a second glance unless they shared the ASDA values.
ASDA therefore began to embrace the challenge of how it could meaningfully and consistently assess the values of every applicant for management/ graduate positions whilst keeping their costs down. The process would also have to meet the needs of all the stakeholders involved including:
Candidates
The ASDA Resourcing team
Recruiters in the training stores
The Distribution team
Colleagues at George home office and ASDA House Senior managers
Clevry and the ASDA resourcing team therefore held a number of listening groups across all areas of the business to understand what their customers and candidates were looking for from a system, what was in use already in the UK, and where things were headed in the future.
In recruitment cost savings (over 5 years)
Reduction in recruiter workload
Reduction in entire recruitment process to just 5 days
To deliver value to the business the initiative had a number of objectives to meet:
Reduce the volume of candidates reaching the later stages
Speed up the recruitment process
Reduce the administrative burden
Deliver higher calibre candidates
Differentiate ASDA from the competition
Further to this research ASDA worked with us to implement a web-based recruitment system that was rolled out in 3 distinct phases, enabling continuous improvement and ensuring that ASDA remained ahead of the competition.
PHASE 1: THE MANAGEMENT APPLICATION PACK
The first system included an online pre-selection process capable of filtering out the less suitable candidates before the first sift of applications. This incorporated the following entirely bespoke features:
Scored work experience and education section online sifting interface that used a traffic light system
This combination was web-enabled by ASDA’s IT team in America
PHASE 2: THE ‘WEBSIFTER’
As their competitors introduced virtual assessments, ASDA increased the gap with this next phase that added:
For this phase ASDA moved away from their American developers and our developers took over the development using Microsoft.net technology.
PHASE 3: THE ‘SUPERSIFTER’
This most recent phase incorporates:
An online application process for George roles linked to a George careers site for the first time
Job alerts to ensure that when an opportunity arises the candidate doesn’t miss it!
The new system succeeded in reducing the cost-per-hire by 88% delivering an annual saving of £2.64 million (averaged over 5 years).
Other key improvements included:
65% reduction in workload associated with management and graduate recruitment, delivering an annual saving around £30,000.
£60,000 cost saving in the need for press advertising.
70% reduction in the number of candidates put through costly assessment centres.
New starters with improved cultural fit were more likely to be motivated, happy and productive.
The faster recruitment process reduced the likelihood of candidates accepting fewer competing offers.
From a starting point of 10 candidates reaching the interview stage per vacancy, the innovation reduced this figure by 70% to 3 to 4 candidates.
Reduced the end-to- end recruitment process by 84% to an average of just 5 days.
The recruitment resourcing required was reduced by around 65%.
The improvement in applicant calibre was demonstrated by a 30% increase in the success of the recruitment process.
A survey of internal managers regularly used for interviewing highlighted that candidate quality had significantly improved since online sifting was implemented.
““Having worked with Clevry for a number of years, we felt that they really understood our business and our culture. They had shown that they could produce flexible and adaptable solutions, which was ideal for our purpose.””
– Claire Fuller, Resourcing Manager
