How Providing a Personal Touch to Candidates Led to Stryker Winning a Candidate Experience Award

In the past when applying for a job online, did you feel that the company cared about you, the job seeker?  Whether it is receiving timely feedback, or having a memorable experience in the interview process, you want to feel like a priority.  It also doesn’t hurt when a potential employer considers your family as part of the candidate experience.

Stryker is one of the world’s leading medical technology companies and is dedicated to helping healthcare professionals perform their jobs more efficiently while enhancing patient care.  The company offers a diverse array of innovative medical technologies, including reconstructive, medical and surgical, and neurotechnology and spine products to help people lead more active and more satisfying lives.  For more information about Stryker, please visit www.stryker.com.

The way Stryker treats job candidates helps them stand out 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 Emily Southard, Candidate Care Lead at Stryker, says about why her company applied for the Candidate Experience Award.

At Stryker, we know our greatest resources are our employees. To attract and engage great talent and maintain our strong culture, it is important to study what other companies are doing to achieve these goals. Applying to the CandEs award lets us benchmark our talent acquisition practices with some of the best companies in the world.

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

Our interview process is thorough, but there are many personalized touches that set Stryker aside from other companies in the search for talent. We have a national “Candidate Care” team devoted to creating a best-in-class on-site interview experience when someone is invited to any one of our U.S. based facilities. In addition to the special attention while at Stryker, we often partner with local businesses to provide tailored community tours for relocating candidates and their families.

–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.