How Treating Applicants the Same as Customers Led to Providge Consulting Winning a Candidate Experience Award

When a business treats its customers with respect, it can leave a lasting impression.  The same can be said about job applicants during the recruitment process.  Making them feel like customers provides a memorable candidate experience.

Providge Consulting is a professional services firm providing information technology and business consulting to clients in a variety of industries in the U.S. and abroad.  Founded in 2002 by industry leaders, Providge Consulting applies deep expertise with an innovative edge. The dynamic team at Providge Consulting has exceeded client expectations with the guiding objective to leverage talent, provide advanced solutions, and ultimately, deliver measurable results.

They have successfully developed and implemented unique solutions for Fortune 500 clients in various industries. Each one is derived from a combination of the vast industry knowledge of the founding executives, and the fresh perspectives of their diverse employee base to reach clients’ goals.

Providge Consulting has vast experience in Oracle and PeopleSoft Applications. Their Enterprise Application consultants have unrivaled technical knowledge, along with the business experience to finish a project with a full featured solution. Providge Consulting has the tools to turn talent into results.

Providing equal service to candidates, as well as customers earned Providge Consulting recognition 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 Tara Teaford, Associate Partner and Director of Operations at Providge Consulting, says about why her company applied for the Candidate Experience Award.

Services firms compete for talent, and the CandE award is an indicator that we are an organization worth considering for employment.  We also believe that providing an all-around level of service is a positive indicator to prospective clients, and the award helps us send that message.

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

Believe it or not, responding to each and every candidate is unusual, but it is an imperative within our team’s culture.  We make it a point to treat our candidates as customers of our Talent Acquisition department, and provide each with timely and professional updates throughout the application process.  In addition, we try to establish relationships with candidates we would like to hire, even if we don’t have an opening for them at the time that they apply.  We believe that this helps to make the candidates feel valued – even before they become an employee! – and helps us fill positions faster than we would if we started from scratch with each new opening.

–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.