Hiring Supply Chain Graduates in FMCG: What to Assess and How to Assess It

A supply chain graduate in a food, beverage or consumer goods business spends the first year with numbers, deadlines and trade-offs. Mars Australia describes its supply chain stream as keeping products moving from factories to customers and shelves, with work in planning, logistics, warehousing, customer operations or process improvement. That is the job you are selecting for when hiring supply chain graduates, and a polished application tells you very little about it. This guide turns the employer wording into supply chain graduate selection criteria that hold up when every application looks polished, then shows how to test each one live.

Key Takeaways

• Employers describe supply chain graduate work as planning, logistics, warehousing and day-to-day problem-solving, so select for numeracy and judgement under constraints before product knowledge.
• A data-reading task, a short scenario and a structured interview, all done live, show more than an application that an AI tool can polish.
• Graduates have little paid history, so ask for evidence from placements, part-time warehouse work and university projects, and let a referee confirm it.
• A scoring sheet with a written anchor for each score keeps every interviewer measuring the same thing.

What the job asks for

Read the description of Mars Australia's supply chain stream and the work is practical: its page says the team solves problems every day so products arrive in the right place at the right time. The preferred background is listed as open to all degrees. The page also says applications will reopen in 2027 for the 2028 program, so the intake is closed for now.

Other employers publish a similar shape. According to Bega Group's graduate page, its pathways include Logistics & Planning and Procurement, subject to change, inside a two-year rotational program with three eight-month rotations and a dedicated rotational manager in each function. Asahi Beverages' graduate page lists Supply Chain and Logistics streams, and says its logistics graduates work with the commercial team to develop accurate demand plans. That page shows "Applications closed" today.

Fonterra lists Supply Chain as one of three streams. On Fonterra's graduate page, the company says it produces more than two million tons of dairy ingredients, specialty ingredients and consumer products each year, with 95 percent of these exported. Those are Fonterra's own figures, so check the page for the current intake.

From these descriptions, here are five example tasks to build your own exercises around. They are examples, not a published job list:

• Reading a demand forecast and spotting the week that looks wrong.
• Handling a late truck when a customer order is due.
• Reconciling stock figures that differ between the warehouse and the system.
• Choosing between two suppliers on cost, quality and delivery time.
• Suggesting one small process improvement in a dispatch bay or on a packing line.

What to assess and how to assess it

To assess planning and logistics graduates fairly, work in this order: numeracy and data reading, judgement under constraints, then communication with people who are busy. Product knowledge comes last, because a graduate can learn your range on the job.

Numeracy and data reading

This works as a simple graduate demand planning skills test. Give candidates one page with four weeks of sales for four products and the stock on hand. Ask five or six questions: which product runs out first, how much did sales change week on week, and what order would you suggest and why? Score accuracy, and also whether they state their assumptions. Time it at 20 to 30 minutes and run it live or supervised, so you know the work is theirs.

If you want an online screen, you can describe the role and skills in the skill tests library, which Righteo says will surface the most relevant tests. Check that a test matches your demand planning tasks before you rely on it. A larger option is the AI skills assessment tool, where Righteo's page says you can start from a library, generate an assessment from a job description or build your own, with anti-cheating monitoring built in. The basics of general early-career screening are covered in the guide to entry-level skills assessment.

A short scenario exercise

Try this example. A truck carrying 20 pallets for a major customer is four hours late. The warehouse holds 12 pallets of the same product, the next production run is tomorrow, and two other customers have orders due today. What do you do first, what do you ask, and who do you tell?

There is no single right answer. Score whether the candidate asks for facts, ranks the orders by consequence and plans how to tell the customer. Watch for people who go straight to a solution without asking what is known.

A structured interview

Use the same questions, in the same order, for every candidate, and score each answer on the sheet below. Ask about a time they found a number that did not add up, what they did and what changed. For wider questions on teamwork and communication, this guide to evaluating graduate soft skills covers situational judgement tests that apply here too.

Why test live instead of trusting the application

Applications written or polished with AI tools can read alike, and they show how well a candidate edits, not how they read a table. Asahi's published process runs online cognitive, verbal and critical reasoning tests, a one-way video interview and an assessment centre after the application, so Asahi does not rely on the application alone. You can copy the idea at a smaller scale with a 30-minute task. It also guards against choosing on a famous name, a risk this post on role-specific skill testing explains well.

Evidence to ask for

An FMCG operations graduate often has no paid supply chain history at all, so ask for what graduates do have: a placement or internship, part-time work in a warehouse, stock room or kitchen, and a university project in operations or logistics. For each, ask what the candidate's part was, which numbers they handled, what went wrong and what they changed. A referee such as a placement supervisor or a warehouse shift manager can confirm dates, role, reliability and the tasks done. A separate article on placement supervisor reference checks for graduates covers the questions to put to them.

A scoring sheet you can copy

Score each criterion from 1 to 4 before the panel compares notes. Weight numeracy and judgement most for planning roles. For a warehouse and logistics graduate assessment, weight attention to detail and follow-through most, because small slips in counting and labelling become late or wrong deliveries.

• Numeracy and data reading - Evidence from: Data-reading task; Score 1 looks like: Makes arithmetic errors and does not check the result.; Score 4 looks like: Gets the figures right, states assumptions and flags what looks odd.
• Judgement under constraints - Evidence from: Late truck scenario; Score 1 looks like: Jumps to one fix without asking questions.; Score 4 looks like: Asks for facts, ranks orders by consequence and names a fallback.
• Communication under pressure - Evidence from: Scenario and interview; Score 1 looks like: Vague about who to tell and when.; Score 4 looks like: Gives a clear, short message to the customer and the team.
• Attention to detail - Evidence from: Stock reconciliation question; Score 1 looks like: Misses a mismatch that is in plain sight.; Score 4 looks like: Finds the mismatch and suggests how to trace it.
• Follow-through - Evidence from: Placement, part-time work, referee; Score 1 looks like: Cannot say what their own part was.; Score 4 looks like: Describes a result they delivered, confirmed by a referee.

Related Resources

• Skill tests library
• AI skills assessment
• Role-specific skill testing
• Evaluating graduate soft skills
• Entry-level skills assessment guide
• Mars Australia graduate program
• Bega Group graduate program

Common Questions About Hiring Supply Chain Graduates

1. What should I test first when hiring supply chain graduates?

Start with numeracy and data reading. Planning, stock and supplier work all depend on reading figures accurately and noticing what does not fit. Use a short, timed task with a real-looking table, and score assumptions as well as answers. Test product knowledge last, because a graduate can learn your range once they are in the role.

2. Do supply chain graduates need a logistics degree?

Employers differ. Mars's page lists its supply chain stream as open to all degrees, while Asahi's page lists Logistics & Supply Chain as highly desired for its logistics stream, with Business and Commerce also listed. Decide whether a degree is essential or only preferred, write the reason down, and assess the skill itself.

3. How long should the scenario exercise take?

Fifteen to twenty minutes is enough for one scenario, plus ten minutes to discuss the answer. Use the same scenario for every candidate and the same follow-up questions, so the scores are comparable. Keep to one scenario, so every candidate gets the same time and nobody is marked on how fast they talk.

4. How do I deal with AI-polished applications?

Treat the application as a way to get to the next step, not as the evidence. Run the data task and scenario live or supervised, and ask follow-up questions about details in the CV, such as which numbers they handled on a placement. A candidate who wrote their own application can explain it.

Test the work, then score it

Hiring supply chain graduates well means testing the tasks the job is made of: reading numbers, ranking competing demands and explaining a decision clearly. Ask for evidence from placements and part-time work, and let a referee confirm it. Score every candidate on the same sheet before the panel talks. This week, write one late-truck scenario from a real delay at your own site and try it on a current planner.