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 CandE Case Study was from Arup. Arup is a global collective of designers, engineers and technical experts. They use imagination, technology and rigour to shape a more sustainable world.
- 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.)
At Arup, we received feedback from our ERE candidate experience benchmark survey results indicating a lack of clarity in our recruitment process. As a result, we updated our guidance to candidates to provide more clarity and transparency. Candidates can now view our process prior to applying, directly on our Careers home page (pictured below). https://www.arup.com/careers/recruitment-process/ (see Example 1 in appendix)
Additionally, when speaking with candidates for the first time during our phone screening process, recruiters are transparent and communicate what candidates can expect as they go through the recruitment process. Recruiters act as a concierge to candidates to help them navigate the process, advocate for them, and make sure they are getting what they need from Arup as they go through the interview and hiring process.
- 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.)
Candidate experience is a global key priority at Arup. To be a truly inclusive workplace, we must listen to not only the voice of our current members but our future members as well. Participating in the CandE Benchmark process has given us the data and insights to report on areas of strength and opportunity within our application process. These insights help us to shape our talent acquisition strategy and ensure we keep candidate experience as a focus area.
- 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.)
Creating an easier and more efficient process has been a priority focus for Arup. We have focused on adding automation where routine administrative tasks take time away from human-centric opportunities to engage with candidates. As an example, recruiters use scheduling automation tools to allow candidates to schedule phone screens with recruiters versus an email, text message, or phone call with a recruiter. We also implemented pre-recorded video interviews, which enable candidates to spotlight their experience, knowledge, and skills in addition to their resumes as the first step of our hiring process rather than having recruiters rely on resumes alone to make screening decisions.
We continue to navigate AI in recruitment. We have intentionally not implemented AI as it relates to making decisions about candidates. As we explore the use of AI, we will continue to focus on ensuring that we maintain a human-centric approach to recruitment. The human-centric approach is something that we pride ourselves on and that candidates appreciate. Through our benchmarking metrics, we have found that candidates clearly want one-on-one interaction with team members. In fact, in places where we have added technology with pre-recorded video interviewing to create efficiency, candidates perceive that the process has become less personal. Candidates who were screened out after that step in the process have shared that they prefer more personal interaction and don’t want decisions to be based on a process where they don’t get to interact with a recruiter. We have learned through this feedback that it is critical that we communicate more clearly on the front end of our process, explaining why we are asking candidates to take these more automated and AI-driven steps and clarifying for them that these required first steps lead to better quality engagement and personal interaction as they move through next steps in the process. In fact, this first step allows recruiters to make better informed decisions on whether to progress candidates to the next step.
- 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.)
We are proud to be recognized by ERE for the CandE Award. It represents that we can not only positively impact someone’s experience but can connect personally and truly get to know more about the candidate, resulting in higher quality outcomes. Recognition is important to us at Arup because it means we are growing and improving, aligning with our values. Recruiters include the CandE Award recognition as a banner on their emails, highlighting the importance of candidate experience to our firm and that we are proud to be recognized. We will also be promoting this achievement through our internal communication channels and potentially on our website and social media channels. (See Example 2 – Email Signature in appendix)
- 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.)
Through our candidate benchmark data, we take the feedback to our larger recruitment teams during our yearly debrief meeting to improve our process. As an example, some of the benchmarking data this year has included larger themes such as “long and tedious process” and “inadequate transparency on role details.” These are pieces of feedback where tangible changes can be made through our recruitment and hiring teams and we have worked to address them. On a positive note, firm values and recruitment experience are positive pieces of data that will be shared with our Employer Branding team as areas where we can continue to push forward Arup’s external brand as it relates to talent attraction.
APPENDIX
Example 1 – Application process
Example 2 – Email signature
