Arab Open University B203B TMA: Recruitment and Selection at Tesco

This report examines Tesco's recruitment and selection processes, focusing on how the company attracts, assesses, and hires employees across its global operations. The analysis begins by outlining Tesco's internal talent plan and external recruitment strategies, emphasizing the use of semi-structured interviews to evaluate candidates' professional experience and suitability for various roles. The report then delves into Tesco's application of assessment centers, detailing how they are used to evaluate candidates' analytical, teamwork, and problem-solving skills. The strengths of this selection procedure are highlighted, including its ability to predict future performance and identify new recruits' strengths and weaknesses before onboarding. The report also compares the effectiveness of assessment centers and interviews, noting that combining both methods increases the accuracy of the selection process. Furthermore, the report references the benefits of these selection procedures, such as their role in setting the company's employment proposition and employer brand, as well as providing feedback to applicants, and the use of videotaped and documented feedback from appraisers. The document concludes by referencing the provided references to provide a comprehensive understanding of Tesco's approach to recruitment and selection.

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Answer- 1
Tesco recognized as one of the leading private sector employers in the U.K has expanded
its business operations to over 13 countries with a number of non-store as well as store based
workforce, which have been increasing significantly. Tesco comprises of a global sourcing team,
which consists of over 1000 people in 20 nations. Tesco primarily identifies its internal talent
plan in order to fill vacancies (Tesco.com 2019). This recruitment procedure selects existing
employees who have been seeking for an internal promotion within the organisation. However if
there are no appropriate candidates in this talent plan or developing on the internal management
development programme known as options Tesco advertiser's the post on an internal level on its
internet for a specific timeframe (Das and Ahmed 2014). Tesco in its external management
recruitment selection procedure primarily uses a number of uniform stages.

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Tesco in its external management recruitment selection procedure stages
Source: (Tesco.com 2019)
Trivedi and Muduli (2015) have emphasized on certain techniques of efficiently handling
interviews of varied types, namely situational, structured, and unstructured as well as semi-
structured interviews. Tesco has been proficiently using semi structured interview which
primarily aims to provide significant opportunities for interviewers in enquiring analytical
questions related to candidates’ professional experience and further to explore their
appropriateness towards the vacant roles. Additionally, Tesco's semi structured interview process
has enabled its interviewers to explicitly describe the job profile and about the organisations’
standards and principles in a more comprehensive manner (Potter et al. 2016). Furthermore, such
selection procedure has been offering significant avenues for candidates to enquire about the job

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and further to clarify issues related to employee knowledge development, induction, training,
career prospects in addition to the company's terms and conditions and policies. On the other
hand, Tesco has been using the assessment centre method for selecting its potential candidates
who have been shortlisted from the preliminary round of interview. The assessment centre of
Tesco primarily takes place in store and executed by the managerial base (Samantara and Sharma
2015). These managers have been proficiently accountable to provide constancy and stability in
the selection process by ensuring high authenticity and equitable attitude. In the selection
procedure, the applications are provided with various exercises to evaluate the analytical and
subjective skills by including scenarios, which require to exhibit teamwork and problem-solving
ability in situations like critical event analysis. Tesco's Human Resources personnel have been
working on such a proficient selection method whereby the candidates approved by the internal
assessment centre will be eligible for the last round of interview to identify specific job
requirements available for the applicants (Cascio 2015). The assessment centre selection
procedure despite of its tendency to be time consuming and expensive comprises certain benefits
which have been effective for Tesco. Tesco through the assessment centre procedure can
successfully observe applicants in critical problem solving process and predict their future
performance and competence to handle the role, which will be assigned to them. In addition to
this, the organisation can distinguish the area of strengths and weaknesses of the new recruits
prior to the on boarding procedure. However, according to McCarthy et al. (2017) the assessment
centre procedure used by Tesco can facilitate a successful influx of employees, which have been
rejected in the selection procedure up to the level of employee required to hire for future
employee vacancies. One of the major strengths of the selection procedure lies on successfully

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identifying the aptitude knowledge and competence which applicants exhibit and further
minimise the induction expenditures.
Answer-2
Assessment centres and interviews are recognised as two vital selection procedures,
which typically evaluate the expensive range of aptitude skills and individualistic attributes of
candidates required for the job Mukherjee, Bhattacharyya and Bera 2014). Although the
interview procedure provides around 20% accuracy two organisations using them, assessment
centres have been identified as one of the most reliable and credible methods of assessing
candidates level of competency. However, when scores obtained from both assessment centre
and interview procedures are combined, the precision rate can increase over 65%. Tesco with its
implementation of assessment centres and interview process have been able to experience and
improved accuracy level in its selection procedure as they have facilitated the company with an
extensive range of selection methods (Samantara and Sharma 2015). Furthermore, these two
selection methods have aid an assessment of current performance and further helping the
company to predict future job performance of the candidates. In addition to this, reports of
Cascio (2015) have noted that these two vital selection procedures have provided Tesco with the
opportunity to assess as well as differentiate between applicants who exhibit similar skills and
proficiency while offering candidates and improved insight regarding the role as they are
evaluated on the basis of exercises which have been specifically focused on the role they have
applied for.
Through the assessment centre and interview procedure, Tesco has enabled itself my
proficiently setting up its employment proposition and employer brand to the applicants.

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Furthermore, these two selection procedures and the expenditures associated with them have
been noted to be lower in comparison to the potential expenses of several other recruitment
phases. On the other hand, majority of assessment centres change to reduce or mitigate
recruitment fallacies in which there is an intrinsic cost reduction by having fewer levels of errors
(Trivedi and Muduli 2015). The assessment centre results can be used for various purposes and
have benefited Tesco. Additionally, these two selection procedures have improved the decision
making process of the company related to promotions and job assignments thus identifying
organisational deficiencies such as weakened internal communications and the need for
improved or revised organisational policies. Thus, Tesco with proficiently designed and
strategist assessment centre and interview procedure method have been able to play a decisive
role in providing feedback to its applicants regarding their areas of strengths and weaknesses the
enabling them significant insights into the competencies and abilities (Potter et al. 2016). For
example, Tesco has recently introduced videotaped and documented feedback from appraisers,
which have been highly expedient for candidates in preparing them for prospective development
and improving their future assessment centres (Tesco.com 2019). As a result, applicants have
been receiving a highly tangible benefit from their participation in the process thus helping Tesco
to attain a competitive advantageous position in the industry.

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References
Cascio, W.F., 2015. Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill.
Das, S.C. and Ahmed, I.Z., 2014. The perception of employer brand to enhance recruitment and
selection processes. Perception, 6(6).
McCarthy, J.M., Bauer, T.N., Truxillo, D.M., Anderson, N.R., Costa, A.C. and Ahmed, S.M.,
2017. Applicant perspectives during selection: A review addressing “So what?,”“what’s new?,”
and “where to next?”. Journal of Management, 43(6), pp.1693-1725.
Mukherjee, A.N., Bhattacharyya, S. and Bera, R., 2014. Role of information technology in
human resource management of SME: A study on the use of applicant tracking system. IBMRD's
Journal of Management & Research, 3(1), pp.1-22.
Potter, A., Lalwani, C., Disney, S. and Velho, H., 2016. Modelling the impact of factory gate
pricing on transport and logistics. In Developments in Logistics and Supply Chain
Management (pp. 231-239). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Samantara, R. and Sharma, N., 2015. Talent Management at Tesco: A Case Study. Parikalpana:
KIIT Journal of Management, 11(2).
Tesco.com., 2019. Tesco :: Online Groceries, Banking & Mobile Phones. [online] Tesco.com.
Available at: https://www.tesco.com/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2019].
Trivedi, J. and Muduli, A., 2015. Research on recruitment outcomes and recruitment methods
under the mediating impact of credibility & satisfaction. International Journal of Advancement
in Engineering, technology, Management and Applied Science, 2(9), pp.26-53.