Tailor-made Screening
bauMax Walks Innovative Paths in Personnel Selection
Home improvement chains with a large branch network find themselves confronted with very special challenges in the search for adequate personnel. Next to the high number of needed personnel, the branch-specific qualification of the employees plays a deciding role.
Consulting and service in sales are the Alpha and Omega for home improvement chains. Specialized salespersons in the different departments are an important resource. This is a great challenge for the managements in the markets – as they are confronted with the task of filtering the adequate employees from the flood of online applications as time-efficiently as possible. But how to find the right personnel that matches the company and its culture? |
Sonja Marchhart |
Efficient personnel selection
The management of the enterprise personnel department of the bauMax company group located in Klosterneuburg/Austria was confronted with this exact task. They recognized that they had to offer additional support to the branch office managers in the 68 markets in Austria that are not so experienced in the selection of applicants. The goal was to introduce a standardized applicant selection, in order to filter the best and especially the most adequate applicants out of a pool of online applications. The market managers should have a tool on hand with which they would be able to optimize personnel search and selection, and conduct it more efficiently. The time saved in this process was intended to be used for more intensive meetings with the best applicants.
Online Pre-screening
The bauMax company group decided to employ an additional screening procedure within the framework of the online application on the company homepage, which checks the candidates for their general adequacy for bauMax. The decision fell on the online screening procedure HILL_Online Matching. The questionnaire was attached to the online application form, and is to be filled out voluntarily.
What is it about?
HILL_Online Matching is a tailor-made screening procedure that compares the individual profiles of the applicants with the specific company and task requirements. A short and individually adapted questionnaire is attached to the application form, and collects personal soft facts. The results of this pre-screening that is based on a scientifically founded procedure shows immediately which persons match the requirements of the company and the job, and which do not. The applicants automatically receive feedback about their own personal results, but no information about the status of the application.
High-quality talks
The online-screening procedure was used for all applications in the Austrian branch offices of the company group. The result: the data of 2,610 applicants was screened and evaluated in only eight months. This amounts to 62 percent of all 4,214 online applications that were filed at the branch offices during this time.
»We are very satisfied with the online tool from HILL, because it enables the management in our branch offices to filter the adequate candidates out of countless applications, and thus conduct more high-quality talks with the remaining candidates«, explains Sonja Marchhart, Director of the corporate personnel department at bauMax.
Personnel marketing
She adds: »In addition, HILL_Online Matching is a professional personnel marketing tool. Because every candidate receives an evaluation of the questionnaire immediately after application. The immediate feedback is received positively as we have heard from experience. We have not yet received any negative feedback from our applicants, even though already thousands have applied for a job on our website.«
Multi-lingual use
Next to Austria, bauMax has 56 further branch offices in six Central and Eastern European countries: The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Romania. Due to the positive experience, also the other markets in Central and Eastern Europe were equipped with the online screening procedure. Meanwhile, it is successfully used in 8 languages. The market entrance in Bulgaria, where the first branch offices will be opening in March 2008, is also supported by HILL_Online Matching.
Sonja Marchhart summarizes: »The tool meets all our needs perfectly. It is a tailor-made test procedure that considers the situations in the markets, and covers all important requirements. The test is easy to use, and does not take more than 20 minutes. And last but not least, the procedure is internet-compatible, and differentiates sufficiently between the applications, and fourth, the test procedure is scientifically founded, and provides stable and reliable results.«
