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 Entrada Therapeutics. Headquartered in Boston’s Seaport community, Entrada Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company aiming to transform the lives of patients.
If you’re interested in participating in the 2025 CandE Benchmark Research Program, you can learn more about it here.
- 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.)
Recruiting process changes:
- Anyone who applies to any role at Entrada receives either a next step or disposition email 48 hours after their application. This is a direct implementation from last year’s feedback on our survey that candidates were not hearing back from us in time or at all.
- We created email templates for each step in our interview process (hiring manager screen, on-site interview panel, Zoom interview panel, etc.) to ensure that everyone who went through our interview process was given the same communication and the same instructions.
- Used interview matrixes for every role. These interview matrixes provide sample questions on our core values and specific key skills that align with each open role.
- Diversified our interview panels so that every panel contains individuals of different genders, levels, and ethnicity.
- We hold weekly meetings to ensure the entire team is looped in, including HR business partners, the head of HR, and the entire TA team. This ensures that everyone is aware of any potential issues and can provide support.
- The TA team meets twice a week to ensure that we do not have too many interviews happening at the same time, roles are progressing forward okay, and that we are all aligned on what each member of the team is working on.
Candidate experience:
- Anyone who comes on-site for an interview receives a text message from the coordinator 30 minutes to one hour before their interview. This text explains that they should let the coordinator know if they have any trouble finding the building or parking. This has gotten a lot of positive feedback on easing anxiety for candidates upon arrival and helps us plan better if candidates are running late.
- Every candidate is sent an interview agenda outlining the interviewers, their titles, and any other additional information they may need. For the on-site interview agenda there are detailed arrival instructions, outlining where to park and how to get to our office from the parking garage.
- After 1.5 hours of interviewing, we provide a minimum 30-minute break for the candidate to eat lunch that we provide them, use the bathroom, or just relax
- If any interviewer is appearing via Zoom but the candidate is coming on-site, we provide the candidate with the choice to take the Zoom from home on a different day instead of sitting in the office on Zoom.
- 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.)
Last year, we shared the CandE feedback, data, and suggestions, which helped us show our team that improvements needed to be made, and we provided a PowerPoint on how we were going to implement those changes and what our goals for 2024 were. Our improvements included:
- New ATS (Greenhouse)
- Additional support (new head of TA)
- Additional recruiter added
- A lot of SOPS and process maps were created to show everyone what the hiring process will look like.
- Clear expectations as a team that we wanted to be a winner of the 2024 CandE Award.
The data and feedback we got last year made it clear that candidates were not happy with their experience. We gained support for our team internally but realized that we needed to find ways to support our interviewers and hiring managers as well. Some changes we have made:
- All jobs have a kick-off meeting with the hiring manager before the job is posted. This is to ensure that hiring managers know their expectations and that the role we are filling aligns with what the business needs.
- Phone interview skills training is provided to every upcoming hiring manager in a quarterly cycle.
- Feedback told us that this is often an individual’s first time being a hiring manager and they are not sure what they should be looking for in these calls.
- Interview skills training for anyone who is on an interview panel helps ensure candidates are getting positive and diverse conversations when they interview. It also gives our interviewers confidence in what they can and cannot talk about.
Our team strongly values a positive candidate experience, which means we often put the candidate’s experience first when problems or conflicts arise. As an organization, we commit to showing we value our interviewers as well by rolling out:
- Manager communication workshops
- Leadership communication workshops
- Kickstart Entrada (a program that follows all new hires through their first 90 days)
We present much of our data to our board and senior leadership team directly. We track the quality of hire and the volume of applicants as well. Due to our improved candidate experience, we have the choice of whom we hire instead of relying on previous candidates choosing whether they want to accept our offer. This year we only had one offer declined compared to last year, when we had eight. We are lucky to have a leadership team that really values the candidate’s experience by wanting quarterly updates on how our hiring is going.
- 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.)
Our new application tracking system:
We customized Greenhouse to fit the new hiring process that we wanted to implement while we rolled out this new system. The Greenhouse system is extremely customizable and we used that to our advantage:
- Every job was set up to have a stage that mapped our candidate’s lifestyle:
- Job kick-off stage
- Shortlist (candidates we want to reach out to but haven’t yet)
- Reference Check
- Follow Up Screens
- New offer letter process to ensure that those we hire are set up for success with the right compensation that aligns with their internal peer group.
- Interview request templates that outline the entire interview process and give an expectation of what to expect from the interviews.
- Easier tracking of candidates and whatever stage they are in.
Interview Matrix:
For every job, the interview panel is given a matrix that assigns them one of our company’s core values and a key skill for the job:
- Ensure interviews feel prepared for the interview and know what to ask.
- Candidates have diverse conversations with each interviewer.
- Use this matrix in the debrief to ensure that candidates are being evaluated fairly. (For those who score lower for certain skills, we inform the team so that during onboarding we can better set them up for success.)
- 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 used last year’s data as a benchmark for ways that we can improve, and we plan to continue doing that. Becoming CandE winners was a department goal of ours and we want to ensure this continues.
Social media: Showcase that Entrada participated in this survey and won on platforms such as LinkedIn and other job post boards. Showing that we participated proves to future candidates that we do care about their interaction with our brand.
Internal company-wide announcement: We would not have won this award if it was not for all the interviewers who participated in making a difference in our candidate experience. We had a company-wide meeting where we announced we were CandE winners and thanked those who helped us achieve this award.
Telling our candidates when they interview: Being able to tell our candidates that we participate in a survey like this—and that we won a CandE Award—shows that we value their input.
Bring the award to recruiting events we attend: Displaying the Award at recruiting booths and events we hold showcases that we value feedback from job seekers as well as proving we do have a positive candidate experience.
- 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.)
Yes, our board is very engaged when it comes to our hiring process and what we do as a team. We report quarterly to our board on our hiring data. This data can be anything from the cost per hire to the quality of hire. We partner with our Communication and Investor Relations team to ensure that our branding and employee value proposition align with our candidate experience and values.