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Coles

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  • > 100,000 employees

Cole's graduate jobs - 4 stages you need to pass

Coles

 

 

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Justin [00:00:01] And can you tell me a little bit about Coles' graduate program, specifically, how do I get into it? You know, how long after I've graduated? Or can I apply to it while I'm still sort of in university? And most importantly, when do graduate applications actually open? 

Rem [00:00:15] So there's a few answers within that. So first off, we have two graduate programs at Coles and they are quite different. So the first is what we call our store support center graduate program. Within the store support center graduate program, we have what we would describe as our corporate and commercial functions. So your traditional kind of corporate functions like finance and technology. We also have areas of our business like e-commerce, what we call buying and trading or merchandise marketing. All of those, you know, typically well known organizational functions. The store support center graduate program is two years. And in terms of eligibility, you need to have completed at least an undergrad degree. 

Justin [00:01:02] Okay, eligible. 

Rem [00:01:04] As well as having an entitlement to work in Australia. So in particular being an Australian or New Zealand permanent resident or citizen. The other program that we run is our Operations Graduate Program. That one is based in our sites and our stores all around the nation as compared to the Store Support Center grad program, which is based in our store support center in Melbourne. So the operations grad program is designed all around building future operational leaders to lead our sites and our stores around Australia. So that program is a little bit longer. That's a maximum of thirty-three months, there's a little bit of flexibility in that just depending on people's prior experience. And for that one, the eligibility requirements are a little bit more flexible. So what we look for is some kind of tertiary qualification. So that doesn't have to be an undergraduate degree, that could be a relevant certificate or diploma or something of that kind of ilk. And really what we want is we want people that are really passionate about serving our customers on the front line. The corporate and commercial functions are a little bit different, they're a little bit more removed, and they tend to attract people who are more keen on, for example, office-based corporate type work as opposed to working right on the frontline. So in terms of how to get into the Coles graduate program, so aside from those eligibility requirements that I mentioned, we have a fourth stage grad recruitment process at Coles. In some respects it's pretty similar to what many other organizations do and in others it's a little bit different and relevant for us. So the first stage is an online application. So this helps us capture information about our candidates backgrounds, experiences, skills, and we really want to hear from them why they feel like they're the right fit for us. So in addition to why they think they're the right fit, they do need to make sure they meet those eligibility criteria, as I said. So we are basically as long as someone meets the eligibility criteria, they pass that first stage of application and they go straight into online assessment. In the online assessment stage this helps us to understand more about who the person is in a more holistic sense. So it's not just their skills, but it's also preferred ways of working, how they approach certain situations, how they deal with cognitively loaded tasks. And it provides us an opportunity to kind of see how they would react in typical situations that they're going to encounter through the grad program. And it also enables us to get a more holistic view of the person. And so once we're able to do that, we can then give people feedback if they're successful or unsuccessful at that stage of the process. So third stage is a video interview. So this again takes place online and this is where people will record responses to a range of questions for us to review. It allows us to get a really good understanding of people's communication style, and that's the main thing around the video interview. So we will ask questions that a little bit around: "Tell us about the time when..." you know, typical BCI style question, but the primary thing we're looking for is how people communicate. Coles is a big business. We are 130,000 team members roughly, and we serve I think it's 21 million customers every week. And so you are going to be interacting either with colleagues or customers or other members of the community everyday. And so you need to be able to communicate effectively and then. Finally is what we call our Discovery Center. So this is a bit of a Cole's take on the traditional assessment center style format, and we call it a discovery center quite intentionally, because it's not only about us discovering more about our candidates, it's actually allowing them to discover more about Coles. So we give our candidates a chance to interact directly with us, directly with current grads as part of that discovery center. So there's a group activity upfront that's typically on a topic that's very, very important to Coles. So this year was sustainability as an example and we want to hear people's passion for sustainability and that they're thinking about that because that's really important to us. And then they go into an individual and interview. The individual interviews go for about 30 minutes. They're quite short. They're sharp, they're structured and whilst people will undertake an individual interview, others are undertaking a Q&A session. And we have our current grads from the stream that people have chosen to apply for, they're to answer peer to peer, exactly what it's like to work at Coles, what's on people's minds. So they get to hear it directly from people that are living the experience that they have applied for. So those are the four stages.