The New Candidate Experience for Beauty Advisors

– Helen Godwin – Assessment Manager, Boots UK

– Helen Clark – Principal Consultant, Cubiks

What does a great

candidate experience

look like?

Last year we presented the

results from our candidate

experience survey

This explored candidates’

perspectives on how to make

recruitment processes more…

• Effective

• Efficient

• Engaging

Highlight how you’re different

Keep your promises

Use the selection process to

promote your employer brand

Deploy robust online tests

Demonstrate how rigorous your

online tests are

Enable candidates to prepare

Communication and

transparency are crucial

Respond in a timely manner at

all stages to all candidates

Provide thorough feedback

Learn where you can

improve

Key learning points from the 2015 survey

Three key considerations for candidate

experience

Candidate perceptions need to be taken into consideration in the

design of the assessment experience

The learning points highlight key themes that impact upon

candidate opinions of the selection process and the employer:

1) Perceived relevance

2) Perceived enjoyment

3) Perceived fairness

Honesty perceptions (for successful candidates) were also

deemed important – many felt the employer didn’t meet their

expectations

So what next?

• This year we have put

these learning points into

action

• The Boots Beauty solution

reflects a case study

showcasing how we have

listened to candidates’

feedback to improve the

online and in-store

assessment experience

A new approach for Beauty

• Company ambition to transform the advice model, tailoring

the care we offer our customers

• We want to attract the best people but our general store

colleague assessment wasn’t differentiating the Advisor

candidate group

• We wanted a bespoke assessment that was market leading

and could be used globally across Walgreens Boots Alliance

(WBA)

Key requirements for our new assessment

• Provide an engaging candidate experience that promotes our

employment brand

• Work based scenarios that provide a realistic job preview for Beauty

candidates

• Mobile enabled, improving accessibility for candidates

• Bespoke output reports for Hiring Managers and candidates

• Fully piloted to ensure accuracy of assessment, reliability of results

and defensibility

• Full integration with the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to monitor

candidate experience through the recruitment journey and minimise

time to hire

• For recruitment across the WBA group

Key improvements to ‘look and feel’

• Images that communicate our

people, their interaction with

customers and the store

environment

• Improved accessibility – desk

top, tablet and mobile enabled

• Personalised welcome page

and clear guidance on how to

complete the assessment

Key improvements to ‘look and feel’

• Animation to promote a more

‘interactive’ experience

• Clear navigation and

progress bar

• Bespoke candidate feedback,

presented in a simplified

format, available on screen

shortly after completing

A candidate-centered solution for

Beauty Advisor roles

(released August 2016)

A candidate-centered solution…

…leveraging a proven, robust assessment methodology combining

SJT questions and…

A candidate-centered solution…

…personality-based questions to enable feedback on work style and

preferences

A candidate-centered solution…

…including on-screen feedback upon completion of assessment

Candidate feedback – on-screen and PDF formats

Developmental feedback on 8 key

personality scales

A single page report - succinct for

easy viewing and interpretation

on a mobile / tablet

Interview report with:

• Guidance for best practice

interviewing

• Candidate performance across

competencies and personality scale

• Fit to role (Low, Mid or High)

• Competency-based questions

• Behavioural indicators for scoring

Hiring manager report – for in-store interview

Informed by candidate feedback

Relevance

• Relevant, immersive imagery

• Job-specific content inherent in SJT design

Enjoyment

• Interactive elements

• Graphic design by Pink Squid

• Mobile enabled, responsive format – mobile, tablet and laptop

Fairness

• Robust assessment combining SJT and personality

• Perceived relevance increases likelihood of fairness perceptions

• Provision of feedback upon completion of assessment including development tips

• Mobile enabled assessment may attract a more a diverse applicant population

Has it worked?

• Too early for a formal validation – we need job performance

data!

• A survey was sent to applicants that have completed the

assessment seeking their feedback

• So far….

Over 88% of candidates felt that the assessment gave

them a better understanding of the role

80% thought that the tutorials and instructions were great

or excellent

Over 84% loved the content of the feedback report

And over 91% of candidates would recommend the

application experience to a friend or colleague

Some of the feedback we’ve received so far…

I liked that it had a

positive outcome i.e.

the feedback report

I imagined myself working at

the store and being put in one

of the scenarios which was

quite enjoyable

It made me think more about myself in

the sense of what my personality is

actually like and how I would react in

a situation I'd never thought about

I liked the variety of

questions

It gave a good insight to

the daily on goings within

the job role

Interesting accessibility stats

23.5%

2.5%

63.0%

10.9%

Mobile Tablet Laptop PC

What this shows is that

25% of candidates are

completing the

assessment on a hand-

held device e.g. phone

or tablet.

Looking back at 2015 survey - what have we

achieved?

Highlight how you’re different

Keep your promises

Use the selection process to

promote your employer brand

Deploy robust online tests

Demonstrate how rigorous your

online tests are

Enable candidates to prepare

Communication and

transparency are crucial

Respond in a timely manner at

all stages to all candidates

Provide thorough feedback

Learn where you can

improve

Highlight how you’re different

Use the selection process to

promote your employer brand

Deploy robust online tests

Demonstrate how rigorous your

online tests are

Provide thorough feedback

Learn where you can

improve

Keep your promises

Enable candidates to prepare

Communication and

transparency are crucial

Respond in a timely manner at

all stages to all candidates

Looking back at 2015 survey - what have we

achieved?

So where next?

• We’ve achieved a lot but still

room for improvement

• Creating an item-bank

• Exploring ways to identify

potential

• Global roll-out – we will soon

be trialling content in the US

to create a version that is

appropriate for this market

• Improving accessibility

• Test security options

• Your ideas?

Future developments

Helen Godwin

Helen.Godwin@Boots.co.uk

Helen Clark

Helen.Clark@Cubiks.com

Thanks for listening!