How Wincanton took time-to-offer from four weeks to 24 hours.

Wincanton hires into the hardest corner of the UK labour market. At the time, more than 1.1 million frontline roles sat unfilled nationally, with distribution among the sectors hit hardest, and colleagues had more choice than ever about where to work. In that market, every candidate in the funnel is expensive to replace, and Wincanton’s funnel was leaking at every stage. Candidates dropped out before interview, during the process, and sometimes after accepting an offer. The average time to make an offer ran up to four weeks, and in a market where candidates hold the options, four weeks is an invitation to take the other job.

The cost wasn’t only in lost candidates. Site managers were spending their days CV sifting, telephone screening, and interviewing instead of managing. And the candidates who did make it through weren’t always prepared for the reality of the role: some accepted, absorbed weeks of paid training, and then left because the job simply wasn’t what they’d pictured.

The brief was bigger than a vendor purchase. Through W² Labs, Wincanton’s programme for partnering with disruptive companies on industry challenges, Wincanton and ThriveMap set out to build a tool: something that could assess at speed, show candidates the real job, and give managers their days back.

The partnership produced Recruiter, a digital hiring tool with ThriveMap’s Realistic Job Assessment at its core. Candidates see the working environment for themselves through day-in-the-life videos and interactive activities: a virtual look at an average day in the role they’ve applied for, not a questionnaire about their personality. As one candidate put it, “The assessment is interesting and makes you feel like you are already working there!” Those who realise the role isn’t for them can step out at any stage, before the business has invested in training them.

The other half of the build was speed. Recruiter automates the assessment process, integrates with Wincanton’s systems, and scores candidates automatically, so the recruitment team can extend offers to suitable candidates on the strength of the assessment score. The digitised process also removed unconscious bias from screening decisions, contributing to a more diverse intake that better represents the communities Wincanton works in.

The result that reframes what an assessment is for: job offers increased by 150%, from the same talent pool. Recruiter didn’t shrink the funnel, it found the suitable candidates who were previously being lost in CV piles or walking away from a slow process. Top-of-funnel conversion improved by 50%, with drop-off reduced at every stage. And time to offer collapsed from up to four weeks to around 24 hours, a 96% reduction, which in a competitive market means Wincanton makes its offer before rivals have finished screening.

Retention followed. In Wincanton’s words, the link between using Recruiter and retaining new hires in their first six months has been clearly demonstrated, saving significant cost on the training investment that early leavers used to take with them.

The counterintuitive result is the 150%. Adding an assessment to a hiring process is supposed to narrow the funnel: another hurdle, more drop-off, fewer people through. Recruiter did the opposite, and the mechanism is worth understanding. The suitable candidates were always in the applicant pool. What lost them was everything around the assessment: CV sifts that overlooked them, phone-screen queues they dropped out of, and four-week silences during which they took another offer. Automatic, job-relevant scoring surfaced them immediately, and a 24-hour offer reached them while they were still interested.

Candidates noticed the difference. 91% reported the assessment as a positive experience, 9% neutral, and not one candidate reported a negative one. “Very professional and easy to complete.” “It opened my mind to the realities of the job.” For a screening stage, in a labour shortage, zero negative feedback is its own kind of result.