sunglass hut case study: how they use assessments to boost their attraction and selection process

Thanks for joining us!

Get to know us! Nic – Senior Consultant, cut-e Australia

Inari - Organisational

Development and Talent Business Partner – Sunglass Hut

Today’s Agenda

• Get to know more about Sunglass Hut and Luxottica

• The ‘problem’ Sunglass Hut were facing

• Making assessments part of the attraction strategy

• The solution: Realistic Job Preview, Situational Judgment Questionnaires

• Implementation and challenges

• Key takeaways and questions

Get to know more about Sunglass Hut

and Luxottica

Luxottica and Sunglass Hut

RETAIL

WHOLE

SALE

Who are Sunglass Hut?

REAL: Authentic &

genuine,

personal &

connected

SEXY: Seductive &

attractive.

We create

desire.

INSPIRING Inspirational

&

stimulating,

full of fresh

ideas

SAVVY: We’re in the

know, we

understand

fashion.

FUN: Energetic &

dynamic,

entertaining

& alive.

FIND YOUR COOL

DRIVE Game on!

FUN It’s

FUNdamental

INCLUSION

Be Yourself

SHARED

WINS: The best

success is

shared

RELATION-

SHIPS

People work

for people

THE SUNGLASS HUT

SUMMIT

Where it all began…

This is Sunglass Hut…

• 260 Retail Stores across Australia and New Zealand

• 1800 employees, casuals make up 70% of workforce

• 800 new hires (300 associates, 100 managers, 400 xmas casuals)

• Over 75,000 applications per year – we shut adverts down often after

2-3 days

• 55% Casual turnover

• 30% Store Manager turnover

• 1 Recruiter managing all of this

Hire

Application via Job Board / Careers Portal – Taleo

Taleo Pre-screening Questions x 3 –

ACE filtering

Recruiter - Resume screens

– by ACE filtering

Hiring Manager

Interviews

Recruiter - Shortlist 3-4

to Hiring Manager

100+ candidate applications per

vacancy

ACE Filtering Questions;

1. Which retail sector do you have

experience in?

2. How many years customer

service experience do you

have?

Gee - hope we got it

right..!

Screen through 10-20

resumes and when we have 3-

4 good ones, we send them to

the Hiring Manager.

Reject / decline the other 70-

80 applicants

Before…

What should drive our success?

Prior retail experience doesn’t translate to high performance on the job

Are we screening out high potential candidates? How many of the 70-80 we decline per job (50,000+ candidates

per year) could be high performers or future leaders?

We know some of our current leaders came from outside retail

What did we want? Streamline the recruitment process for Store Managers and Retail

Associates

What did we want?

Help define a Success Profile for

Sunglass Hut

Define a People process that is aligned with The “Sunglass Hut

Experience” which connects our customers to our Brand

What did we want?

Improve Quality of Hire

Reduce Time to Fill

Increase in Sales per Hour ratio (Profit)

Increase tenure

Define a process with a proven ROI around;

Making assessments part of the

attraction strategy

Gamification – what is it?

• Our definition:

The use of game elements and game design

techniques in non-game contexts to increase engagement

Key elements of gamification

Engaging

Reward

Feedback

Community

Think about…

• So, do you use gamification to enhance the candidate experience,

OR do you use traditional assessments to measure cultural fit?

• What’s more important?

The solution

So, did we use gamification, or traditional assessments?

Hire

Optional Realistic Job Preview

Application via Job Board / Careers

Portal – Taleo

Situational Judgment

Questionnaire (RA and SM)

SM – shapes

personality

Hiring Manager

Interviews

Recruiter - Shortlist top

fit (4-9) to Hiring

Manager

The rejuvenated,

engaging selection

process!

What is a Realistic Job Preview (RJP)?

Gives insight into what the job is really

like, gets candidates to

respond to on the job scenarios

Optional quiz – candidates

are not required to complete it

Completed prior to

application

Anonymous – no data is collected – candidate

retains control over

their data

No scoring Candidates can self

screen based on feedback

Realistic Job Preview (RJP)

Realistic Job Preview (RJP)

So why would you use a realistic job preview?

Get better fit applicants

applying, makes screening less difficult and

time consuming

Get candidates that are a better

fit with your values and

organisational culture

It’s a realistic preview - so it shows the good

and the bad

Get cost effective

customised gamification

What is a Situational Judgment Questionnaire (SJQ)?

Completed at initial stages of selection

process post application

Describes a typical on the job scenario and candidates allocate

points across 3 response options

1-9 score is returned, low fit candidates (1-3) are screened out of

the process

Situational Judgment Questionnaires (SJQ)

Quick quiz…

• A father and his son are involved in a horrific car crash and the man died at the scene. But when the child arrived at the hospital and was rushed into the operating theatre, the surgeon pulled away and said: “I can’t operate on this boy, he’s my son”.

• How can this be?

What impact does unconscious bias have?

We all have unconscious biases!

Old process was biased towards candidates that had previous retail experience

The impact of fatigue when manually screening thousands of CVs can further enhance the impact of our biases

Things like the person’s name, gender and how similar they are to us can all have an impact on our decisions

Unconscious bias: How do the assessments

address diversity?

As scientific, objective measures, assessments reduce human biases that can come into play when making selection decisions

RJP allows candidates to self screen – recruiters have no impact here, therefore unconscious biases have no impact

SJQ scoring and screening is automatic (yet still engaging for candidates) – removes recruiters from this initial screening stage

Based on behaviours that all candidates have the same opportunity to demonstrate

So what?

Utilising elements of gamification (feedback, reward, engaging)

Ensured they got candidates that fit their organisation’s culture as the assessments were designed and validated to measure just that!

Enhance the brand, by giving candidates a genuine, engaging assessment experience that also gives them a better understanding

of the role and the culture

Increasing diversity by reducing the impact of unconscious bias through using objective assessments, and allowing candidates to

self screen via the RJP

Sunglass Hut made assessments part of the attraction strategy by:

Implementation…

• Introduced to the Exec team

• Key players involved in workshop

• Presented at the Sunglass Hut Summit

• Storytelling success stories

What they loved…

• Store Manager interview guide

• Better knowledge of the business before interview

• Interactive careers page

Key takeaways

• Candidate experience is critical – think about how you can enhance yours

• Every organisation’s culture

is different, does your

selection process reflect and

assess your unique culture?

• Look to the data to build your business case

• Automate what you can and use more objective measures to decrease unconscious bias

Questions