The challenge
Punch Pubs & Co operates over 1,300 leased and tenanted pubs across England and Wales. Recruiting pub managers who are driven, conscientious and passionate about hospitality is the single biggest factor in their success. But those qualities don't show up on a CV, and interviewing tens of thousands of applicants wasn't scalable.
The 3 dimensions assessed
SWIPE – Personality. The candidate's natural behaviours: how they act, communicate and handle their emotions day to day.
DRIVE – Motivations. What energises and engages the candidate: the role, the team and management, and the company culture.
BRAIN – Reasoning. The ability to learn, solve problems and build skills, and how quickly.
Predictive model built from real data
AssessFirst built a role-specific model from behavioural and motivational data collected on 27 existing pub managers. The model was then validated against 160 hires, showing an 18 percentage-point performance gap between recommended and non-recommended profiles.
Unbiased, scientific hiring decisions
Every candidate completes the same assessments. Hiring managers receive uniform, objective data instead of relying on gut feeling. The 0.88 gender impact ratio (above the EEOC 0.80 benchmark) confirms fair recommendations for men and women alike.
86% assessment completion
Nearly 9 in 10 candidates completed at least two assessments. 58% rated the experience a perfect 5/5. Smooth, engaging, respectful of candidates' time.
Confident recruitment managers
Two in-depth training sessions gave the team the skills to interpret candidate data and present qualified profiles to operations managers with full confidence.
Measured results
£704K savings generated
30x ROI
78% performance rate
-34% turnover reduction
4.3/5 candidate satisfaction
“We're looking for driven, passionate people that can run our pubs. That's not information we can get from a CV. AssessFirst gives us that unbiased, scientific data. Our recruitment managers love it, because they've got the confidence to hand over a quality candidate.”
— Vicky Brown, National Recruitment Manager, Punch Pubs & Co
