Hiring for a Retail Graduate: Pre-employment assessment tests to use
Retail is a very promising and increasingly popular career choice for graduates due to the variety of roles available and the substantial level of responsibility it offers from the outset. Amongst recruiters, therefore, there is a growing demand to find the right Retail Graduates, who can combine diverse skill sets and knowledge to effectively navigate the dynamic and fast-paced retail industry.
In this comprehensive guide, we outline step-by-step the most robust skills-based assessments and selection tools to integrate into your recruitment strategy for Retail Graduates. This will streamline your candidate selection process and ensure you hire the top candidates equipped with the essential skills to excel within your role and organization.
Contents:
- What is a Retail Graduate and what do they do?
- What is the ideal assessment process to hire the right Retail Graduate?
- Concluding remarks
1. What is a Retail Graduate and what do they do?
What is a Retail Graduate?
A Retail Graduate is a trainee role, often recruited as part of structured graduate schemes offered by a number of retail organizations, from clothing brands and department stores to supermarkets chains and homeware retailers. Many schemes involve hands-on training, industry and business-wide insight, and early responsibility with the aim of fast tracking graduates to become future retail leaders.
What are the common career paths for a Retail Graduate?
During their career, a Retail Graduate may find themselves working in a number of specialized areas, including:
- Retail Management
- Buying
- Merchandising
- Store Development
- Supply Chain & Operations
- Online Operations
- Marketing
- IT & Analytics
- Human Resources
What would be the roles and responsibilities of a Retail Graduate in my organization?
Retail Graduates are primarily responsible for facilitating the seamless operational running of the store, working closely with senior managers to ensure exceptional customer service standards and drive overall business success. They will also be required to immerse themselves in the various departments to gain insight into the diverse operations, systems, and procedures of the organization.
Common responsibilities for a Retail Graduate include:
- Developing leadership skills to take on the responsibility of leading a team of colleagues
- Providing excellent customer service to assist customers with their needs and enquiries
- Inventory management, stock counting, quality management, and working closely with suppliers to replenish stock
- Analyzing market trends and forecasting for new product launches, stock allocation, and implementation of promotions strategies
- Thoroughly learning about the company’s products, including their features, benefits, and pricing
- Assisting with recruitment, onboarding, training, and development of staff
- Monitoring the financial performance of the store to maximize sales and minimize costs
- Collaborating with colleagues across different departments to achieve shared goals
What skills and competencies are important for a Retail Graduate role?
There is a current need for Retail Graduates who can combine technical skills, soft skills, and customer-centric skills in order to succeed within retail. Therefore, there are numerous skills and competencies which we recommend assessing in your Retail Graduate hiring process. These include:
- Customer service skills
- Communication and listening skills
- Organizational skills
- Leadership skills
- Decision-making skills
- Teamwork skills
- Flexibility
- Strategic thinking and creativity
- Resilience
- Time management
- Analytical and numerical skills
- Commercial awareness
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2. What is the ideal assessment process to hire the right Retail Graduate?
When implementing a pre-employment assessment process tailored to your Retail Graduate role, it is essential to thoroughly assess candidates based on the relevant skills and competencies required for retail.
That is why below we have outlined step-by-step the best practice for hiring a Retail Graduate. Our recommended recruitment process will provide you with comprehensive and accurate insights into candidates’ skills, competencies, and predicted performance so you can confidently hire the right candidates first time.
1. A Pre-employment Numerical Reasoning Test
To begin your Retail Graduate assessment process, it is best practice to initially ask candidates to take a pre-employment numerical reasoning test. As Retail Graduates will be working frequently with financial data, sales figures, and market data, assessing candidates’ arithmetic skills, analytical skills, and ability to interpret numerical data is essential.
A numerical reasoning test enables efficient and accurate sifting of high volumes of applicants and identifies those with the necessary numerical skills to advance to the next stage of assessment.
2. A Pre-employment Situational Judgement Test
At this initial sifting stage of your Retail Graduate assessment process or the stage after, we also advise including a pre-employment situational judgement test, where candidates are asked to select the best and worst actions to various work-based scenarios. The way in which candidates respond to these challenges accurately measures their core behavioral competencies and indicates how they might perform in both the role and the workplace. This valuable insight complements the information already gathered about candidates’ numerical skills, building a more well-rounded candidate profile.
Furthermore, you have the flexibility to customize your Retail Graduate situational judgement test to reflect real work-based scenarios and challenges from your organization. Through customization, you can also hone down the questions to specifically assess the relevant competencies for retail.
What specific competencies should I assess in my Retail Graduate situational judgement test?
Retail competencies which you should assess in a situational judgement test include:
- Communicating
- Customer focus
- Leadership
- Organizing and planning
- Teamwork
- Delivering results
- Influencing
- Resilience
3. A Work-style Personality Questionnaire
At this same recruitment assessment stage, we suggest getting your Retail Graduate candidates to also fill out a work-style personality questionnaire that measures personality and work-style preferences based on The Big 5 personalities. This is because having alignment amongst colleagues around work-style and work culture is a priority for many retail companies to ensure effective teamwork towards shared goals.
How should I use the results from my Retail Graduate work-style personality questionnaire?
Rather than for sifting purposes like the previous aptitude tests, the results of your Retail Graduate personality questionnaire are designed to help you learn more about candidates’ authentic personality traits and work preferences to see whether they naturally align to your role and will thrive within your organization. You may delve further into these insights with tailored questions later during the interview or assessment stages of recruitment.
Similarly to the pre-employment situational judgement test, your Retail Graduate personality questionnaire can be customized to fit your company culture and work-style preferences within your team and organization.
4. A Pre-hire Video Interview
As the penultimate stage in your Retail Graduate assessment process, we recommend asking candidates to film their responses to a variety of preset questions as part of a one-way timed video interview. From these recordings, you will be able to learn more about candidates and their skills, behaviors, retail experience, and whether they are a good fit for the role and company culture.
As a recruiter, what questions should I include in my Retail Graduate video interview?
Typically, it is best to structure your Retail Graduate video interview around strength-based, competency-based, or situational questions. For example, you could provide examples of daily challenges and tasks that Retail Graduates might face in their role and assess how they might deal with these challenges. You could also ask candidates about their motivations, aspirations, and passion for working within retail and your company.
As assessors, you have the flexibility to use your own hiring criteria and behavior framework when selecting candidates to pass to the final assessment stage. This means you can confidently determine which candidates are best suited to your retail role and organization and whether they have the overall strengths to succeed there.
5. An Assessment Center
For the final assessment in your Retail Graduate recruitment process, you should invite the top shortlisted candidates to an assessment center, either virtually or in-person. This assessment day is designed to delve further into candidates’ full range of behaviors, skills, strengths, and weaknesses so that you can gain a holistic understanding of each candidate. This insight will allow you to make the most informed hiring decisions and select the right candidates first time.
How should I set up an assessment center for my Retail Graduate role?
Your Retail Graduate assessment center should involve a series of exercises tailored to your role and organization and designed to assess top candidates’ knowledge, behaviors, and personality. These exercises may include:
- A group exercise evaluating how well candidates work within a team, how they contribute, delegate, and put forward ideas under pressure
- A final stage individual presentation where candidates pitch an idea or solution to a problem, ensuring they use data and research to strengthen their ideas.
- A final interview, one-to-one or with various senior staff – this should explore candidates’ motivations, commercial awareness, passion for the role and company, and cultural fit.
By leveraging these exercises, as assessors, you will identify which candidates align best with your data analytics role, your team dynamics and company culture. This will enable you to confidently select those top candidates who will succeed in your organization and should therefore hire.
Keep in mind that assessment centers should be a two-way process in which the exercises are also designed so that candidates can learn more about your business and company culture to determine whether it is the right organization for them. It’s important to ensure candidates are relaxed and to encourage any questions they might have.
3. Concluding remarks
Building your Retail Graduate recruitment process with these 5 assessments will ensure you gain a well-rounded trustworthy understanding of each candidate, their diverse skills, behavioral competencies, and work-style preferences. This invaluable, objective insight will enable you, as professionals within talent acquisition, to confidently select and hire the top best-fit candidates first time.
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