Welcome to the 2024 CandE Winner Case Study series.
Each year, the CandE Benchmark Research Program collects case studies from CandE Winners – the employers with above-average candidate experience ratings in our research. These CandE Winners answer the following questions:
- What recruiting and candidate experience improvements have you made?
- How did you build support and commitment to make these improvements?
- Which improvements were the most innovative?
- How will you use your CandE Award in your employer branding?
- Do you use any of your CandE data to quantify business impact?
These are the employers from our 2024 CandE Program that invested in improving their recruiting, hiring, and candidate experience, reaping the ultimate benefits of a positive business impact – candidates more likely to apply again, to refer others, to be a brand advocate, and to be a customer for consumer-based businesses.
This case study was from IDP Education. IDP Education is an international education organisation offering student placement in Australia, New Zealand, United States, United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada.
If you’re interested in participating in the 2025 CandE Benchmark Research Program, you can learn more about it here.
1. What recruiting processes and candidate experience key improvements have you identified and completed in the past 6-12 months? What data or evidence prompted you to make these changes? (Be as specific as possible with examples for each.)
Over the past four years, we have remained resilient and receptive to feedback through the CandE process. For us, we have seen it as an opportunity for learning, discovery, and growth, and have stayed committed to refining our talent acquisition processes to make the experience better for our people leaders and candidates. Our efforts have been driven by feedback garnered through the CandE process, NPS surveys, and the implementation of several initiatives, which include:
Over the past four years, we have remained resilient and receptive to feedback through the CandE process. For us, we have seen it as an opportunity for learning, discovery, and growth, and have stayed committed to refining our talent acquisition processes to make the experience better for our people leaders and candidates. Our efforts have been driven by feedback garnered through the CandE process, NPS surveys, and the implementation of several initiatives, which include:
Brand Ambassador Programs: We have converted our talent into brand ambassadors, boosting our LinkedIn following and spreading the word about what it’s like to work at IDP.
Refreshed Corporate and Careers Website: We’ve been using engaging and accessible content that attracts more visitors and increases the time they spend on our site.
Stronger Branding: We now have consistent and compelling branding, with a clear EVP that resonates with candidates, making our organisation stand out.
New Recruitment and Onboarding System: We have Implemented a new Recruitment and Onboarding system (SuccessFactors) which has streamlined processes ensuring a smooth experience for new hires.
Informative Documents: We now have clear and helpful resources that guide candidates through the recruitment journey, setting the right expectations so everyone knows exactly what to expect at every stage.
Comprehensive Information Sharing: Our talent team presents a holistic view of our organisation and its benefits, giving candidates a complete picture.
Consistent Candidate Engagement: Our talent team has frequent touchpoints to build rapport and minimize difficult moments, showing candidates that we care.
Defined EVP: We now have established our organisation as the preferred employer, making it clear why candidates should choose us.
2. How did you build support and commitment within your team and the broader organization to make these improvements? How did you demonstrate and report on the importance of a quality candidate experience with your leadership team? (Be as specific as possible with examples.)
We continue to be agile and adapt our recruitment process to empower our hiring leaders. This means quicker decision-making and more streamlined interactions for both our team and potential candidates.
Our hiring leaders are clear about who we are and what we are looking for, following a consistent interview guide to make the interview experience engaging as well as efficient and professionally motivating.
Our Talent team has adopted a more hands-on approach, reducing agency involvement, taking full ownership of the end-to-end recruitment process. This shift has allowed us to have a closer and engaging relationship with leaders and candidates.
Implementing a new recruitment and onboarding system has helped with real time intelligence to optimize our processes.
With engagement, the motto has been more is less! Besides calling out the interview process we’ve guided with interview prep and more frequent touchpoints to keep the lines of communication open and establish a stronger connection.
3. Which of these improvements do you think are the most unique and innovative and why? How do you know that your changes are making a difference? What data or evidence validates the innovative improvements you made? (Be as specific as possible with examples for each based on your people, your processes, and your technologies, and include any candidate quotes that validate the improvements made.)
We are a People-first organisation and strive to offer a consistent candidate experience characterized by transparency, fairness and genuine engagement. As our potential Brand Ambassadors, we strive to make candidates feel supported, informed, valued, and excited about staying in touch, following us or referring us to their networks.
Our approach to consistent engagement, transparency across the process and interview collateral to educate and empower the applicant are carved towards setting them up for success. This we believe is a distinguishing part of our recruitment experience.
We continue to work on the data (and feedback) collected via the benchmark exercise to work on initiatives to convert a neutral/negative experience to a positive one. A dedicated team working on insights and analytics has helped us stay close to feedback to carve better experiences from application to onboarding. Our resentment rate at 2% and NPS score of 73 are testament to this.
Receiving feedback from candidates to the stellar role our talent team has played in setting expectations of the role and how it fits the broader organizational objectives and the transparency through the process has been heartwarming for us. We are delighted that we are seen as an organization with a culturally strong foundation and a growth mindset.
4. Whether you’ve won your first CandE Award or multiple CandE Awards, how will you publicly use the CandE Award, and what it represents, in your employer branding and recruitment marketing? (Be as specific as possible with examples.)
A summary of what it means and the benefits to us include:
Attracting Top Talent: Earning CandE awards shows that we prioritise our candidates, drawing in high-quality applicants keen to join our team.
Building a Positive Brand Image: Being recognised for our candidate-centric approach fosters positive word-of-mouth, enhancing our overall reputation.
Employee Engagement: Candidates who enjoy a great hiring experience are more likely to become future brand ambassadors, engaged, productive, and committed team members, directly impacting our business performance.
Efficiency and Cost Savings: Efficient candidate experiences result in shorter time-to-fill job vacancies, translating to cost savings and quicker access to talent. They also help create a talent pool for future hiring needs.
Standing Out in a Competitive Market: Winning CandE awards sets us apart in a fiercely competitive job market, demonstrating our dedication to excellence in candidate experience. This recognition not only boosts our talent acquisition efforts but also aligns with our broader business goals, a happy team drives productivity and fosters a positive culture.
Note: Our Global leadership team was elated to have won the CandE award for the second year in a row! The Corporate Communications team is working on amplifying this win to further communicate with our team and future candidates. We see this as a great opportunity to weave our values into our employer branding and recruitment marketing initiatives, showcasing the accolade and setting ourselves apart as an employer of choice.
5. Do you use any of your candidate experience benchmark data to quantify and demonstrate financial, referral, and/or employer branding business impact to your leadership team, your recruiting, and/or hiring managers? If yes, how? (Be as specific as possible with examples.)
Our new recruitment & onboarding system is equipped to capture data to present reports for Talent and hiring teams. We are developing a reporting module to present real time dashboards through PowerBI that tell the business how we could optimize our hiring operations. We propose to employ predictable insights to demonstrate a financial impact to our employer branding.
