An online sifting tool has helped supermarket bosses at Waitrose cut down on the amount of time they take to assess graduate applications.
The Graduate DILEMMAS system arranges applicants for graduate retail jobs at the firm in order of quality based on different criteria, with Waitrose using it to go through thousands of applications for its yearly recruitment campaign. It hopes that the ultimate return on investment will be demonstrated by high scoring applicants becoming high-performing employees.
Graduates start the process by filling in an online form and personality questionnaire. These are passed on to the Graduate DILEMMAS tool, which reduced the candidate numbers in this campaign by 800.
Waitrose has hired 12 graduates from 2,500 applicants from its winter campaign. A summer campaign is expected to hire a further eight graduates. Successful Waitrose graduates are placed into store-based retail management roles and have the opportunity to reach department manager level within 12-24 months.
