The Asda online recruitment journey

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: The Asda online recruitment journey.

With a recruitment philosophy of 'hire for attitude, train for skill' ASDA differentiates itself from the traditional approach in retail where applicants are typically only invited to interviews if they have the right skills or previous relevant experience.  So how does a high volume recruiter with such a philosophy go about implementing this in their recruitment process?  

This case study looks at the journey taken by ASDA and Criterion Partnership working together to create an online assessment process that that would work in harmony with the ASDA job site, support approximately 400 different job roles and leave candidates with a positive impression of the retailer.
The pre-historic world.

Back in 2002 ASDA was using a paper-based recruitment process for their graduate and management positions with 22,000 applications being manually sifted by their 5-strong resourcing team. The process was:

Resource hungry: taking up a significant proportion of the Resourcing team's time.
Slow: causing a 7-10 day delay between application and first communication from ASDA.
Screening ineffectively: too many candidates were being invited to costly assessment centres and were not successful.
Not differentiated: ASDA's recruitment process was broadly similar to that of their competition.

And so came the eureka moment.
For many years 'hire for attitude' meant conducting generic psychometric testing during assessment centres on an adhoc basis. The journey to a different approach started when Archie Norman and Allan Leighton 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 our training stores
The Distribution team
Colleagues at George home office and ASDA House
Senior managers
 
Criterion Partnership 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.
 
The solution
Further to this research ASDA worked with Criterion 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: 2002-2005 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:
 
Application form with scored elements and open-ended questions for discussion during interviews.
Personality questionnaire.
Cognitive test simulating the demands of the role.
Scored work experience and education section.
Online sifting interface that used a traffic light system.
 
This combination was web-enabled by ASDA's state-side IT team.
 
Phase 2: 2005-2008 The 'Websifter'
As their competitors introduced online assessment, ASDA increased the gap with this next phase that added:
 
The ability to tailor assessments and sifting to suit different roles.
A bespoke candidate management system (built and hosted externally by Criterion).
A more seamless candidate experience.
Greater integration with back-office systems.
 
For this phase ASDA moved away from its State-side developers and Criterion's developers took over the development using Microsoft.net technology.
 
Phase 3: 2008 The 'Supersifter'
This most recent phase incorporates:
 
A seamless candidate experience from browsing the job site to submitting an application.
SMS messaging.
User-generated Web 2.0 features.
Greater role-by-role flexibility.
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!

Impact to the business
To deliver value to the business the initiative had a number of objectives to meet:

Objective 1) reduce the volume of candidates reaching the later stages
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.
 
Objective 2) Speed up the recruitment process
From a starting point of 32 days from advert to acceptance, this initiative has reduced the end-to-end process by 84% to an average of just 5 days.
 
Objective 3) Reduce the administrative burden
The resourcing required to service the management and graduate recruitment needs of ASDA reduced by approximately 65%.
 
Objective 4) Deliver higher calibre candidates
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.
                         
Objective 5) Differentiate ASDA from the competition
A recent mystery applicant exercise exploring the recruitment processes of the other major supermarkets has shown that ASDA is still the only major supermarket to sift applicants based on personality and values rather than just skills and experience.

Keeping costs down
The new system succeeded in reducing the cost-per-hire by 88% delivering an annual saving of approximately 2.64 million (averaged over 5 years).
 
Key areas of savings include:
 
 A 65% reduction in the workload associated with the management and graduate recruitment process, delivering an annual saving of approximately 30,000.

 A 60,000 reduction in the need for press advertising.

A 70% reduction in the number of candidates put through costly assessment centres.
 
These financial benefits do not include the following unquantified indirect benefits:
 
New starters with improved cultural fit are more likely to be motivated, happy and productive colleagues

The faster recruitment process reduces the likelihood of those keen to start work accepting competing offers while waiting for ASDA to make an offer.
 
Summary
The phased roll out of the new online assessment system saw it evolve from a primarily standalone system into a process that is fully integrated with existing HR systems and the ASDA careers site. There are now different online assessments for different roles with the ability to edit existing assessments and add more as new roles are defined.  The process offers a seamless candidate experience from browsing the job site to submitting an application, with all the latest Web 2.0 features and SMS messaging incorporated to demonstrate ASDA's leading position.

The project has been awarded 'Most innovative use of technology' at the 2009 HR Excellence Awards and 'Employer Website of the Year' at the 2009 Recruitment Advertisers Awards.