The supermarket ñ one of the pioneers of graduate online recruitment ñ has developed a new corporate careers site at www.asda.jobs and launched an online application process for management jobs.
ASDAís resourcing team began the process by updating the firmís employer branding. Resourcing manager Judith Colbert says: ëThe careers section at www.asda.com was old and out-of-date. Weíve updated the information, launched the .jobs site and are using press advertising to drive people there.í
Candidates for management jobs can go to the careers site and search for vacancies or apply speculatively. ëIt takes about 45 minutes to apply. It is quite an in-depth process but not so detailed that candidates feel they are online forever.’ Applicants go through two online screening processes before being asked to an interview or assessment day. A first set of questions checks that they match the minimum requirements for a role. For example, it could be they need to have had experience controlling their own budget or managing a team.
ëIf they donít quite fit the level of experience we are looking we prompt them to go back to the jobs vacant section and see if there is anything more suitable. We are looking for calibre not volume and this is one way of ensuring candidates donít waste time and resources.í
The right candidates then move onto a personality questionnaire to test their cultural fit to the organisation. They also complete a set of verbal and numerical reasoning tests based on an ASDA store environment. ëIt is at this stage that we ask some open ended questions about why candidates want to work for ASDA and what skills they think they have.í
All this information is used to score candidates on a traffic light system. A red light means automatic rejection, amber means ASDA will take another look at a candidate and green takes the candidate through to an assessment day.
ëWe interview people face-to-face but all the administration is still managed online, which is unusual for a retailer,í Colbert says. After only a couple of months, e-recruitment seems to be delivering. ëWeíve had no problem in terms of the volume of candidates applying and the number coming through to assessment process has gone up since we went online - so it seems to be doing its job.í
Colbertís next challenge is to extend e-recruitment to the shop floor. The business is already working with Jobcentre Plus on some ideas. ëWhatever we do online has to be fully inclusive. We donít want to cut out potentially good candidates. But we also recognise that there are now many ways in which people can get access to the Internet.í
ASDA is reinvigorating its e-recruitment practices
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