How Respect for Candidates Led to Adidas Group Winning a Candidate Experience Award

While companies may want to provide a unique candidate experience for job applicants, sometimes keeping things simple works.  When everyone in the hiring process is on the same page, they can continue to deliver a candidate experience that will make them proud.  If done correctly, this experience can earn the respect of job seekers.

At the adidas Group, you’ll find a unique team spirit strengthened by their diversity of thought, cultures, and individuality.  It’s for people who believe sport can make the world a better place.  40 thousand people strong and in over 170 locations worldwide they are united by passion.  They work together to achieve the impossible, they push each other to go that bit further, and they innovate to shape the future of sport.  At the adidas Group, you’ll feel your heart beat like it did when you stepped onto the field, the court, or the track for the very first time.  Because of certain standards it has developed for its candidate experience, the adidas Group was recognized as a 2012 Candidate Experience Award Winner.

Now in its third year, The Candidate Experience (CandE) Awards and benchmarking program is designed to evaluate the job candidate experience companies offer through their recruitment cycles and honor those companies that implement outstanding strategies to provide a consistent and positive experience for jobseekers. The CandE Awards program consists of three survey rounds designed to capture and evaluate a company’s recruitment processes and practices that impact the candidate experience. Companies that complete the first round submission process receive a complimentary Employer Benchmark Report, and those that meet the standard for candidate experience are invited to advance in the competition.  The CandE Awards program is complimentary and confidential, and all CandE Award winners will be celebrated at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago this October.

Employers interested in competing or receiving benchmarking data must complete their applications by June 28, 2013. To learn more about the Candidate Experience Awards and the application process, please visit http://www.thecandes.org/apply.

The Candidate Experience Awards (the CandE Awards) was created by veterans of the recruiting industry to help employment candidates have a better experience when they apply for work.  Although the CandE Awards is a competition, it exists to enable any company to benchmark and improve their candidate experience.  The organization behind the CandE awards is the Talent Board, a non-profit research organization.  The Talent Board recognizes that finding new employment is inherently stressful for most job seekers and their families.  Its mission is to help employers and candidates to have a more effective, efficient, and humane exchange during the recruiting process.  The Talent Board believes that the best way to improve candidate experience is to provide corporations with research that helps them to benchmark and improve their operation.

Here is what Steve Fogarty, Senior Manager of Employer Branding and Digital at Adidas Group, says about why his company applied for the Candidate Experience Award.

We applied for the award for one simple reason, because we believe we can do better.  And to do better we need a benchmark.  We also believe the entire industry can do better when it comes to candidate experience so we are big supporters of the award and the transparency it brings to this subject.

Fogarty also shares what makes his company unique, yet important with respect to the candidate experience.

For us it’s not what we are doing that’s unusual.  It’s about consistently treating candidates with the respect they deserve.  We have over forty thousand employees worldwide, over 170 locations and 100’s of thousands of candidates.  It’s about providing the guidelines, training and systems so all of our recruiters, HR staff and line managers worldwide consistently manage the candidate experience.  And we measure it down to the country, the recruiter, and details including if their experience has affected their consumer status.

–Article by William Frierson, staff writer for CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading niche job board used by college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities. Steven Rothberg, president and founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, is a member of the 2013 Candidate Experience Council which helps to steer the future of the CandEs awards and benchmarking program by drawing on the expertise and knowledge of the HR community’s thought leaders.