3.4 Recruitment & Selection Practice Questions

This question is about how businesses select employees.

Text 2 — Brambledown Garden Centres Ltd

Brambledown Garden Centres Ltd owns four garden centres in the south-west of England. Each site sells plants, tools and garden furniture, and has a café. The business employs 140 staff, many of whom are temporary workers taken on for the busy spring season. Staff turnover in the cafés is high, with several employees leaving each year.

The owners plan to open a fifth garden centre in 2026. They also want to begin selling plants online, but no current employee has any experience of running an online store.

When there is a vacancy, Brambledown Garden Centres Ltd advertises on its own website and in the local press. Candidates complete an application form and are then invited to an interview. For plant care roles, candidates also complete a practical test in the potting sheds. References are taken up before any job offer is confirmed.

Year	Vacancies advertised	Applications received
2023	24	1 080
2024	30	1 260
2025	36	1 170

Text 2 — Osmarley Garden Centre Ltd

Osmarley Garden Centre Ltd is a family-owned business in Shropshire employing 48 staff. It sells plants, garden furniture and tools, and has a 70-seat café that is open seven days a week. The business plans to open a second site in 2026.

The owner, Nadia Oyelaran, writes a job description and a person specification for every vacancy. Most sales assistants are recruited externally, using adverts in the local newspaper and on the business's social media pages. Applicants complete an application form and attend an interview, and references are taken up for all successful candidates.

The café supervisor's role is more specialist. The supervisor has to order stock, manage staff rotas and make sure food hygiene standards are met. The post has been advertised twice and is still unfilled. Nadia is now considering paying a recruitment agency to find candidates for the supervisor's job.

Recruitment at Osmarley Garden Centre Ltd, 2025

Role	Vacancies	Applications received	Appointed
Sales assistant	6	94	6
Café assistant	5	38	4
Café supervisor	1	7	0

Text 2 — Cragloft Leisure Ltd

Cragloft Leisure Ltd owns three indoor climbing centres in the north of England. It employs 64 staff, including 28 climbing instructors who teach lessons and supervise customers on the climbing walls. Customer safety is essential, so instructors must be able to demonstrate climbing techniques and check safety equipment correctly.

Last year Cragloft Leisure Ltd advertised 18 instructor vacancies. Applicants complete an online application form. Shortlisted applicants are then invited to an assessment day at one of the centres, which includes a group activity and a practical test on the climbing wall. References are requested for every applicant who is offered a job.

The human resources manager, Tobias Lennox, is now considering asking applicants to send a CV instead of completing the online application form.

Cragloft Leisure Ltd: instructor recruitment last year

	Number
Applications received	480
Applicants shortlisted	72
Instructors appointed	18

Kesterfield Opticians Ltd

Kesterfield Opticians Ltd has nine opticians' shops in Norfolk and employs 72 people. Each shop has a branch manager, optometrists who test customers' eyes, and sales staff who help customers choose glasses.

The business is growing. Two new shops will open in Cambridge next year, and each will need a branch manager and six other staff. The manager of the Norwich shop is retiring in June. Kesterfield also wants to start offering hearing tests, but none of its current staff is qualified to carry them out.

The owner, Daniel Frost, usually fills branch manager posts by promoting sales staff who have worked for the business for several years. Sales staff are trained to help customers choose frames, but they do not deal with staff rotas, budgets or the shop's sales targets until they become managers.

Tarnmoor Outdoor plc

Tarnmoor Outdoor plc sells walking boots, waterproof jackets and camping equipment. It has 90 stores in the UK and Germany, and its website takes 40% of its sales. It employs 1 400 people and takes on around 300 sales assistants each autumn on temporary contracts to cover the busy winter season.

Tarnmoor plans to open 40 new stores over the next two years and needs a store manager for each one. A store manager orders stock, writes the rotas for up to 20 staff and is responsible for the profit of the store. Tarnmoor's sales assistants know the products very well, but few of them have managed a team or controlled a budget.

The human resources director, Ruth Ellison, has written a person specification for the role. She must now decide how to fill the 40 posts.

Table 1: Two ways of filling each store manager post

	Internal recruitment	External recruitment agency
Cost per manager	£4 000 (training)	£3 500 (agency fee)
Time before the manager can start	Six months of training	Immediately (managers from rival outdoor retailers)

Tolland Leisure Ltd

Tolland Leisure Ltd runs four leisure centres in Lincolnshire, each with a swimming pool, a gym and fitness studios. It employs 140 people, including 36 lifeguards and 20 fitness instructors.

The duty manager at its Boston centre is leaving next month. A duty manager runs the centre during each shift, deals with customer complaints and makes sure safety rules are followed. Tolland has put a notice about the vacancy on the staff noticeboard. Several lifeguards have said they are interested, but none of them has managed a team before.

The operations manager, Leon Mitchell, is also thinking about advertising the post on a job website. The website charges £220 for each advert plus £3.50 for each application received. A similar advert last year received 60 applications.

Saltmere Hotel Ltd

Saltmere Hotel Ltd is a 40-bedroom hotel in the coastal town of Redmoor Bay, run by its managing director, Arjun Chakrabarti. It employs 32 people in housekeeping, the kitchen, the restaurant and reception. The hotel restaurant is also open to people who are not staying at the hotel.

The hotel's average score on an online review site has fallen from 4.6 to 3.9 out of 5. Most recent complaints are about slow service in the restaurant and mistakes with food orders.

In the last year, 9 of the 32 employees left, several within three months of starting. When Arjun recruits, he writes a short advert and interviews each applicant for about 15 minutes. He does not use a person specification and does not take up references.

The restaurant manager has now resigned. To select a replacement, Arjun is considering adding one of two methods to his interview: a half-day paid trial shift in the restaurant, or two references from previous employers.

Table 1: Saltmere Hotel Ltd recruitment costs

Cost	Year 1	Year 2
Agency fees	£8 400	£12 600
Job advertising	£1 200	£1 500
Interview and selection costs	£2 400	£2 700