Tesco plans to create 11,000 jobs in the UK this year through the opening of new stores, plus 7,300 in construction, maintenance and related areas as well as an additional 15,000 worldwide.

The retail giant revealed a 10% year-on-year growth in profit before tax this week. Speaking at the announcement of Tesco's full year results this week, chief executive Sir Terry Leahy suggested the number of redundancies in the financial sector could be beneficial for recruitment in the company. He said: "We have the complete pick of people in the financial services sector. In ordinary times they would have been either really expensive to attract or not possible to get."

In the past year, 65% of Tesco's senior management team were appointed internally and 3,741 new managers were appointed in stores - 86% coming from within the company.