The Australian Football League (AFL) is one of Australia’s most recognised sporting organisations, responsible for elite competitions, talent pathways and large-scale development programs that support the game and administration of the AFL. To support the demand of one of their talent programs – the AFL Grad Program, the AFL partnered with Vervoe to deliver a graduate assessment experience that could scale quickly while remaining candidate-friendly and aligning to the AFL’s values.
The focus was clear – create an assessment process that engaged candidates, assessed capability and could be delivered efficiently without adding operational complexity.
The Challenge
With high application volumes, the AFL was eager to provide every applicant a fair opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities, without relying solely on CV screening or increasing manual workload for the recruitment team.
The solution needed to:
- Drive strong candidate engagement and completion
- Support consistent, skills-based evaluation
- Be implemented quickly and collaboratively
- Invite all applicants to participate in the assessment.
An in-person assessment remains a core part of the AFL’s graduate selection process and by introducing skills based screening earlier, the AFL was able to make their assessment day more focused and efficient, with candidates already demonstrating job-relevant capability before progressing.
“Vervoe supported us to evolve our recruitment process and better assess candidate skill and capability”.
The AFL Recruitment Team
The Results
AFL and Vervoe worked closely together to build and launch a custom graduate assessment aligned to AFL’s values and core competencies. The solution was delivered in under two weeks and achieved immediate engagement.
- More than 1,800 candidates started the assessment
- 83% invite-to-start ratio
- 97% start-to-completion rate
- 1,700 completed assessments
- 4.6 out of 5 Candidate Satisfaction
By inviting every applicant to participate, the AFL surfaced high performing, better quality candidates, reinforcing the impact of early capability assessments.
The collaborative setup between AFL and Vervoe ensured the assessment was delivered smoothly, with strong buy-in from the recruitment team and a seamless experience for candidates. The AFL Grad Program recruitment process delivers strong candidate engagement, and consistent skills-based evaluation at scale.
See how skills-based hiring can work for your team, like it did for the AFL. Book a demo today!
