Colleagues are at the heart of everything we do at Hastings. Getting things right for colleagues is a critical part of us delivering great outcomes for our customers. Our Human Resources team have several ambitious and exciting outcomes to help deliver this.
So we’re passionate about:
Our fast paced, forward-thinking and diverse HR team offers an exciting and varied career for the right people. You’ll receive broad exposure across the whole department and will develop technically, commercially, analytically and hone your leadership skills.
Where you’ll be based
We’re committed to hybrid working and offer a balance of working from home and attending our Leicester and Bexhill offices where required.
We understand that your first graduate role should be more than just a job. Starting your career at Hastings Direct gives you the chance to make your mark in an ambitious, rapidly growing and digitally driven business. A company that genuinely cares about you as an individual, respects your opinions and listens to your ideas. One where you can make a positive difference, because you’re encouraged to look for growth opportunities and achieve your full potential.
We aim to give you the experience and technical knowledge to progress your career. We’ll provide you with a nurturing and challenging environment to help expand your horizons, develop new skills and make new connections.
Most of all, you’ll find all the support you need from people at every level, so you can fulfil your ambitions. From managers who are approachable and supportive, to colleagues who are always ready to help each other out. In short, you’ll have all you need to launch a successful career.
This two-year programme is designed to empower you to become a future Hastings leader. It will consist of a number of rotations through our various departments.
It’s important to us that you have an active voice in your own progression and career path. Each rotation is designed to be hands-on and you’ll work on projects that make a real difference to our colleagues, customers and company, helping us deliver on our ambitious plans.
Recruiting and retaining quality candidates to join us as colleagues is a key contributor to our success. Our colleagues are at the core of who we are and what we do. We take great care to make sure that our recruitment practices allow us to appoint and retain individuals who bring with them a great diversity of skills, experience and knowledge.
Providing specialist advice and guidance to help our leaders to lead their teams effectively throughout their colleague journey. This includes supporting our leaders to understand our colleague policies and processes, and how to correctly implement them so they can lead their teams effectively.
Responsible for managing payroll and benefit administration, pre-employment background checks and colleague checks to ensure our workforce remains compliant. Overall, the HR Operations team plays a crucial role in managing HR processes efficiently, ensuring compliance, and providing support to colleagues for a positive employee experience.
Responsible for implementing and maintaining HR systems and processes, which help Hastings to achieve their goals by improving efficiency, effectiveness, data accuracy, compliance, and employee satisfaction. People analytics can be used to inform business decisions by providing insights into colleague behaviour and workforce trends.
We expect a lot from our colleagues, so we offer a lot in return. Leading on all things reward from looking at how we pay our colleagues to helping them to make the most of our wide range of colleague benefits. Continually developing packages that enable colleagues to choose the benefits that suit their individual needs, including physical, mental and financial wellbeing to a range of fantastic discounts and offers.
Responsible for bringing the Hastings Direct story to life. Ensuring that our colleagues and other key stakeholders remain well informed of what the business is doing, so that they feel motivated to help us achieve our company objectives. They also manage our reputation both internally and externally to help and maintain our positive company profile.
Encouraging our colleagues to take control of their career and personal development by providing them with a range of easy to access tools. Continuing to grow our internal talent and supporting colleagues as they develop varied careers at Hastings.
Leading the implementation of transformational people changes both across the whole business and specific functions.
From the moment you join us, we’ll make sure you have access to a wide variety of opportunities for both personal and professional growth. You’ll be enrolled on our early careers development programme, providing you with a suite of bespoke sessions which develop the strengths we know graduates need to be successful at Hastings Direct. You’ll also have the opportunity to network and meet others in graduate programmes across the business.
To support you in your programme, we offer dedicated development and coaching to build your leadership skills, along with regular formal training to support wider awareness of company, industry and regulatory requirements.
And our inclusive, supportive culture means you’ll have a strong support network around you. From leaders to mentors, buddies to our Early Careers team, you’ll always have someone you can talk to about anything. From your future career at Hastings Direct, to where to get a coffee!
We look for a combination of skills, so you’ll need to have or be:
Qualifications
A degree in any discipline, achieved in the last three years
Skills
Customer centric mindset
Using information effectively
Attention to detail
Behaviours
Can-do approach
People motivated
Ambition and drive
Team player
Always curious
I was initially drawn to the graduate role at Hastings as the programme seemed to have a really flexible approach, tailored to what I wanted to do and what I found interesting. When I was speaking to the recruitment team, it really came across that whilst they had a structure in place, they could adapt the scheme to my interests and this really appealed to me.
Hastings has a brilliant culture; we get through lots of work in a fun way and there is always something new or different that you can try. I would recommend it wholeheartedly as a great place to start building your career!
What first attracted me to a graduate role at Hastings was the rotational aspects, getting a real understanding of how the different teams in our HR function play their part in unlocking our people strategy and contributing to our overall ambitions.
In my final rotation, I was given the space to lead on some really exciting projects in the HR Change team, such as building and launching new career frameworks across our Anti-Fraud teams, ensuring colleagues have a transparent and clear career and progression framework that also supports us to build capability in some of our critical areas.
After each stage, we’ll let you know if you’ve made it to the next one and what to expect. If you haven’t, we’ll be happy to give you feedback.
Choose the right programme for you, then just answer a couple of basic application questions and attach your CV.
We’ll review your application to see if you have what we’re looking for in for your chosen programme.
Your chance to show us how you evaluate, reason and conceptualise, spot patterns, solve problems and use your numerical skills to draw conclusions.
An interview covering why you want to join us, with some technical questions.
From producing case studies and giving presentations, to group and role-specific tasks, this is your chance to shine.
If you’re successful, we’ll offer you a place on one of our programmes and call you to talk through the details.
Absolutely! If you meet our eligibility requirements, everyone is welcome. We suggest that you also speak with your Leader to help support with your application.
Unfortunately, we are currently unable to sponsor visas for our graduate programmes. You will be asked to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK during the selection process, and you must maintain and be able to demonstrate your right to work throughout the duration of your employment with the Company.
If you do have immigration permission (e.g. a graduate visa), this visa must cover you for the two or three-year programme and you’ll need to provide evidence of your course completion from your university before your starting date.
Yes, however throughout the recruitment process we may give you the advice that you're better suited to another programme - we always have your best interests at heart.
Yes, if you can demonstrate your suitability for the role through relevant work experience, projects or modules throughout your degree or additional skills and interests.
Yes – age is just a number although we do ask that applicants have graduated within the past 3 years.
Yes, so long as you meet the minimum requirements for the programme you’d like to apply to, and we do ask that applicants have graduated within the past three years.
This will depend on the programme you are joining. We do typically ask that you are within commutable distance to one of our offices so you benefit from in-person support when you join, further information on which office can be found within the job advert.
We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible. We can make adjustments and offer support throughout the recruitment process to ensure that you have the best chance of success. Furthermore, if you are made an offer, we can then discuss with you the adjustments you might need to get on with the job and develop your career.
Please refer to the recruitment process to find out more about the different stages during the recruitment process which will help you identify whether you will need any support or adjustments at any stage. Please contact us to discuss any support you may require at recruitmentteam@hastingsdirect.com.
Adjustments vary depending on the specific needs or circumstances of the individual and the best way to identify the most suitable adjustments is for us to speak with you, which will allow us to determine what adjustments would be most appropriate.
Examples can include additional time, breaks, adjustable font sizes and subtitles on videos.
Please contact us to discuss any support you may require at recruitmentteam@hastingsdirect.com.
We’ve moved back to face-to-face assessment centres. You’ll be asked to attend an in-person assessment centre, in one of our offices at either Bexhill, Leicester or London.
We will advise you of the scheduled dates for your programme nearer the time so that you can keep the date free.
Each programme will start in September 2024.
If you have immigration permission that will allow you to complete your two or three year programme, you must provide evidence of your course completion from your university before your starting date.
Are you ready for a graduate programme with a fast growing, digitally-focused insurance company? A business with huge ambitions to be the UK’s best and biggest digital insurer?
An organisation that focuses on profitable growth that’s truly sustainable, by doing the right thing for colleagues, customers, the community and the company – our 4Cs? Somewhere that celebrates openness and diversity by encouraging you to be yourself – and was ranked 4th in the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List 2023/24?
Are you ready for a future with Hastings Direct?
Recruitment for our 2024 programmes is now closed – applications will open again in early 2025.
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