Recruiting · Production

Walmart hires more than 400k new associates using Virtual Job Tryout pre-hire assessment

The problem

Walmart needed a scientifically rigorous, high-volume pre-hire assessment capable of processing thousands of daily applicants while maintaining validity as the job and work environment changed, and delivering a positive candidate experience — especially because Walmart's applicants are also its customers.

Workflow diagram · grounded in source
1
Candidate enters high-volume pipeline
trigger
“Thousands of applicants a day”
2
Virtual Job Tryout simulation
ai_action
“it presents candidates with a day-in-the-life experience, gathers considerable and varied job-relevant information during the assessment and tracks candidate feedback”
3
Science-based scoring and validation
validation
“we sought a pre-hire assessment that would be developed based on a rigorous job analysis and supported by a large concurrent validation study”
4
Hiring manager selection review
human_review
“candidate scores on the Retail Associate Assessment are a top factor in their selection decisions for interviews and hires”
5
ML-driven continuous improvement
feedback_loop
“We plan to continue developing new items, algorithms, and methodology (including machine-learning techniques) to continually improve prediction while maintaining fairness and minimizing applicant time”
Reported outcome

Walmart hired more than 400k new associates using the Retail Associate Assessment, achieving 95% completion rates and near-unanimous candidate recommendation rates, while generating a multi-million return on investment by eliminating replacement costs from not hiring the lowest-scoring candidates.

Reported metrics
Assessment completion rate95%
candidates recommending Walmart to othersnearly 100%
Return on investment from improved hiringmulti-million return on investment
New associates hired within monthsmore than 400k
Show all 7 reported metrics
assessment completion rate95%
candidates recommending Walmart to othersnearly 100%
return on investment from improved hiringmulti-million return on investment
new associates hired within monthsmore than 400k
new associates hired since March 2020500,000
associates promoted in 2019more than 215,000
store managers initially hired as hourly associatesAbout 8 in 10
Reported stack
Virtual Job TryoutModern HireHireVue
Source
https://www.hirevue.com/case-studies/walmart-virtual-job-tryout
Read source ↗

Frequently asked questions

What did this team achieve with this AI workflow?

Walmart hired more than 400k new associates using the Retail Associate Assessment, achieving 95% completion rates and near-unanimous candidate recommendation rates, while generating a multi-million return on investmen…

What tools did this team use?

Virtual Job Tryout, Modern Hire, HireVue.

What results were reported?

Assessment completion rate: 95%; candidates recommending Walmart to others: nearly 100%; Return on investment from improved hiring: multi-million return on investment; New associates hired within months: more than 400k (source-reported, not independently verified).

How is this recruiting AI workflow structured?

Candidate enters high-volume pipeline → Virtual Job Tryout simulation → Science-based scoring and validation → Hiring manager selection review → ML-driven continuous improvement.

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