Unbiased selection with Talogy Hire: Graduate recruitment at Currys

Client challenge

Britain’s largest electronics retailer understands that hiring the best entry-level talents is key to thriving in an increasingly complex retail landscape. With high volumes of applications received annually, Currys wanted to ensure they identify the very best entry level talent to lead them into a successful future.

Additionally, Currys realised that a diverse workforce is key to organisational success, and that they had to overcome a critical challenge to get there: they struggled to attract both female candidates and candidates from BAME (Black Asian, and Minority Ethnic) backgrounds for their entry-level graduate roles.

Currys decided to streamline their graduate assessment process, focusing on two main goals:

• More objective assessment to optimise diversity of hires
• Increased awareness and engagement with their company brand

Female hires increased from 26% to 64% because of the new process

Solution

Talogy was brought on board to help design the new graduate assessment process. It was decided to implement a blended assessment approach, allowing the assessors to get a full picture of the candidate for improved decision-making and little room for bias. The implemented process consisted of the following components:

• Development of a new competency framework covering the essentials for a Currys entry-level role
• Implementation of an engaging, online Hire screening solution, comprised of an employer branding module, an ability test and a short personality assessment
• A customised ‘Day in the Life’ assessment centre for those candidates passing the screening stage
• In-depth assessor training to enable Currys assessors to score candidates in an objective, reliable way

Outcomes

After implementing the solution, Currys has seen a huge shift in quality of graduate hires. Most notably, female graduate hires increased from 26% to 64% of the graduate hires. Additionally, Currys managed to hire 3x more BAME applicants: From 16% before the start of the new assessment process, to 50% of their total graduate hires once the new process was implemented.