The graduate campaign was successfully completed in 2022.
About Samworth Brothers
Samworth Brothers began as a family business founded by George Samworth in 1896. Since that time the company has evolved to be a fourth-generation family business, employing around 9,000 people, with a range of well-known brands, such as Ginsters and Soreen. They truly believe in quality ingredients for their products and quality processes, training, and work environments for their people, operating from modern food manufacturing and retail sites across the UK.
The Relationship with Samworth Brothers
Cohesion and Samworth Brothers has been in partnership since 2019. During this time we’ve developed a collaborative and successful working relationship. At the beginning of our partnership we spoke to existing employees on the Early Talent scheme, to really understand what it means to be on the programme and what the challenges as well as rewards are. Having that knowledge, relationship and real business insight is key to creating a bespoke recruitment message, that helps to prepare potential employees by painting a realistic job preview. This consultation process happens every year, ensuring Cohesion fully understands.
Cohesion created processes and assessments designed to complement the Samworth Brothers ethos and values, and ensured the latest best practice techniques were in place to speed up and enhance the candidate journey, with the ultimate aim to deliver exceptional candidate experience possible whilst recruiting the very best talent.
The Objectives – 2022
Samworth Brothers engaged with Cohesion in November 2021, for the 3rd year in a row to manage and deliver their end to end recruitment process for their Graduate and Industrial Placement programmes. We were tasked with recruiting 6 graduates and 10 industrial placements.
Samworth Brothers wanted to maintain the successful diversity that had been
achieved from the 2021 campaign. This meant at least 50/50 split across gender and ethnicity. Samworth Brothers were also keen to ensure representation from non-Russell Group universities in their process.
The Delivery
Cohesion support Samworth Brothers from university outreach all the way through to candidate assessment centre and outcome/feedback delivery.
We complemented a quick recruitment process with a virtual insight evening and sharing an episode of ‘Inside The Factory’, where the BBC team followed the life of Soreen Malt Loaf. Alongside this we leveraged our strong Cohesion Collaborate network to reach engaged students via our university relationships.
Challenges
Early Careers recruitment in 2022 has not been without challenges, especially in comparison to the previous year from an employer’s perspective.
While candidate engagement remained strong, we saw greater dropouts from our industrial placement assessment centre. And like we’re seeing across the industry now, there was a post-offer renege. We did have to go back out and re-run a short, condensed campaign to re-recruit for the position. Given the positive candidate experience we provide to all, we were able to successfully bring candidates back into the process who didn’t quite make the assessment centre first time round.
We will look to consider creative and realistic approaches to these challenges in 2023, all in collaboration with Samworth Brothers.
The Result
Despite some challenges (faced across all industries in the early talent space), we were still able to deliver excellent candidate experience as well as the expectations of Samworth Brothers.
- Over 100% of candidates considered ‘offer worthy’ quality at assessment centre
- An additional 3 candidates offered opportunities at Samworth Brothers
outside of the graduate scheme - 50/50 gender split across all programmes
- Almost 70% of offers to ethnically diverse candidates
- Almost 70% of offers to candidates from non-Russell Group universities
- Great candidate and client feedback from the campaign
Based on the success of our strong and consistent delivery, we were recommended to another brand within the Samworth Brothers family to support their recruitment on a project basis, where they required graduates in a Team Leader role.
Note from the Client
“The relationship between Samworth Brothers and Cohesion has been very much a partnership. We have had a very successful campaign with both our placements and graduates. From candidate feedback, it is fair to say that the experience and engagement was truly excellent, and candidates have continued to feel very supported.”
Head of Learning and Development, Samworth Brothers
Note from Candidates
“All in all was a great experience throughout and Samworth seemed like a great company, great feel through all assessments”
“It was really nice knowing there was so many people investing in early careers, felt like the role is a valued part of the company”
If you’d like to discuss how Cohesion can collaborate with you on a successful recruitment campaign, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Deborah Edmondson at debbie.edmondson@cohesionrecruitment.com or on 0121 716 3977
