This document summarizes the development of a new online assessment for beauty advisor candidates at Boots UK. It describes improvements made based on feedback from previous candidates regarding relevance, enjoyment, and fairness. The new assessment features realistic scenarios, mobile accessibility, and personalized feedback. Early results show most candidates felt it gave a good understanding of the role and they would recommend it. Future plans include expanding the item bank, identifying potential, global rollout, and continued accessibility improvements.

2. The New Candidate Experience for
Beauty Advisors
– Helen Godwin – Assessment Manager, Boots UK
– Helen Clark – Principal Consultant, Cubiks

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. A candidate-centered solution for
Beauty Advisor roles
(released August 2016)

12. A candidate-centered solution…
…leveraging a proven, robust assessment methodology combining
SJT questions and…

13. A candidate-centered solution…
…personality-based questions to enable feedback on work style and
preferences

14. A candidate-centered solution…
…including on-screen feedback upon completion of assessment

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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.

21. 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

22. 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?

23. So where next?

24. • 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

25. Helen Godwin
Helen.Godwin@Boots.co.uk
Helen Clark
Helen.Clark@Cubiks.com
Thanks for listening!