Celebrate the Now: Talent Board Announces Winners of 2018 North American Candidate Experience Awards

Those employers with the highest positive ratings in the Talent Board research receive a coveted CandE Award. Companies big and small across industries participate in our annual benchmark program, but it’s not really a literal competition between employers, except for those that are competitors competing for the same people, of course. Instead, it’s a benchmarking program that benefits those who are raising the bar on improving recruiting and candidate experience. And it benefits the entire industry as well as the candidates themselves.

In fact, the good news is that overall improvement in candidate experience continues to trend upward. This means candidates are more willing to increase their business relationship with employers based on their overall experience (see Figure 1). This is based on their overall rating on a 1-5 Likert scale, with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest, and then comparing to their willingness to increase their business relationship.

Employer Brand Academy

Figure 1.

The bad news is that candidate resentment continues to increase (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Even in a buyer’s market, looking the job search is hard on candidates. It takes time and patience and the ability to manage expectations around still little to no feedback. It’s also hard for employers to sustain any recruiting improvements that are made, because there are so many things impacting the business over time – leadership changes, churn on their recruiting team, change in growth priorities, economic changes, mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, regulatory pressures – the list goes on and on.

Talent Board is the first non-profit research organization focused on the promotion and elevation of a quality candidate experience. For eight years we’ve worked with hundreds of employers around the world and we’ve heard from over 750,000 candidates.

We learn something every day from those employers improving their recruiting experience and it’s that time of year again to reveal the winners of the 2018 North American Candidate Experience (CandE) Awards. Two hundred companies registered to participate in the 2018 North American Talent Board CandE Awards benchmark research program, which ultimately collected the thoughts and experiences of over 130,000 job candidates.

Winners were identified through a comprehensive data analysis based on their job candidates’ satisfaction survey scores. To qualify, each company committed to a statistically significant candidate response rate, where the proportion of respondents not hired met or exceeded a set standard. The final analysis included four key questions that had a significant impact on determining the winners: the candidates’ overall ranking of their candidate experience, the likelihood that they would reapply to the organization, whether or not they would refer other job seekers to the organization and how the candidates would change their business relationship status with the organization going forward based on their experience. The final analysis resulted in a final CandE score for each participating organization.

This year an unprecedented 65 organizations that received the highest positive candidate experience ratings in North America. We continue to see an increased focus on Candidate Experience and the value it brings to an organization.

Here are some other 2018 North American CandE winner highlights:

• This year the CandE winning candidates told us in the research that they were extremely likely to apply again 33% more often than all other participating companies
• They also told us they were extremely likely to refer 35% more often than all other participating companies
• And they told us they had a great candidate experience and would increase their relationship with you 33% more often than all other participating companies

The 2018 North American CandE Awards winners are: (alphabetical order)

Adventist Health System
Aerohive Networks, Inc
Air Canada
American Airlines
AT&T
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina
BlueWater Federal Solutions
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Brown-Forman Inc
Celanese
Children’s Mercy Kansas City
Colorado Springs Utilities
Compassion International
Davita Kidney Care
Deluxe Corporation
Eli Lilly
Enterprise Holdings
Exelon
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles
Fresenius Medical Care
Grant Thornton LLP (Canada)
Hilton Worldwide
Humana
Hyland
iCIMS
Ingevity Corporation
Intel
Intermountain Healthcare
Jacobs
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
JetBlue Airways
Johnson & Johnson
Kaiser Associates
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
KPMG Group
Kronos Inc
La Coop fédérée
Linde North America, Inc.
Lithia Motors, Inc.
Lockheed Martin
M&T Bank
Manulife/John Hancock
Marriott International
New Balance Athletics, Inc
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Panasonic Automotive
Penn Medicine Princeton Health
Pratt & Whitney
Procore Technologies
RAI
RevZilla
S&P Global
Sharp HealthCare
Shaw Industries
Sheetz, Inc.
Southwest Airlines
Sundt Construction
Synchrony
Syneos Health (formerly inVentiv Health)
T-Mobile
Trinity Health
Virtusa Corporation
Waste Management
West Monroe Partners
Workiva

Along with the 65 CandE Winners, all employers participating in this year’s Candidate Experience Awards will be celebrated at the 2018 North American Candidate Experience (CandE) Symposium and Awards Gala, taking place on Monday, October 15, 2018 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL. Talent Board will also be releasing the full list of CandE winners by their final ranking order at this year’s event.

Join us for some fantastic speakers and sessions, complete with transformative recruiting and candidate experience insights, as well as the ERE Recruiting Conference following our event. Save $50 with code CE18VIP when you register for this year’s CandE Awards.

We’ve still got the 2018 EMEA and APAC CandE benchmark programs open, so we’ll see if these trends continue around the world. And who knows where we’ll be next year. However, one thing is for sure – it’s always nice to celebrate the now.

–Kevin W. Grossman, President, Talent Board