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 Sunrun. Sunrun is the largest residential solar, storage, and energy services company in the U.S.
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.)
Each initiative, shaped by data and candidate feedback, reflects our commitment to an inclusive, engaging, and seamlessly connected hiring journey at Sunrun. Over the years, our participation in CandE research has highlighted communication and interview gaps in our experience. This year, we’ve seen remarkable improvement—our NPS score jumped from -7 in 2023 to +26, with more candidates surveyed than ever before. Here are some key improvements Sunrun People Acquisition and Project Management teams have implemented to make the most impact:
- Our first major enhancement involved a full revamp of our Careers site. With our refreshed Sunrun brand, we improved navigation and streamlined the interface, creating a user-centric platform that allows candidates to explore roles more intuitively. This new design, which drew on candidate feedback and engagement metrics, has made it easier for candidates to find the right fit at Sunrun.
- To ensure a consistent brand voice, we revamped our Workday communication flow to be both automated and branded. Now, every candidate receives clear, consistent updates and reminders, reducing uncertainty and increasing their connection to Sunrun’s brand from the first point of contact.
- We also committed to ongoing recruiter training with an internal, recruiter-led training team, an initiative providing regular workshops for recruiters on interviewing best practices, expectations, recruitment performance, and strategies to avoid candidate “ghosting.” This proactive approach helps our recruiters bridge any gaps with hiring managers, ensuring smoother interviews and more effective follow-ups. A great example of this training in action is with our retail sales roles, where we’ve empowered recruiters to make direct offers, taking on a larger role in the hiring process and decreasing delays.
- Next, we created branded recruiting materials that capture Sunrun’s unique culture, offering candidates a glimpse into what it means to be part of our team.
- Alongside, we collaborated with the Onboarding Governance Team to build a more cohesive onboarding process. This internal stakeholder group was started so that each new hire’s experience remains positive and well-structured from offer acceptance through their first day. One way to ensure a good experience is a new hire survey (sent at day 7 and day 45) with a dedicated individual handling items that need follow-up and coaching to better the candidate experience.
- Broadening our talent reach has been another key priority, so we diversified our sourcing strategies to include a wider range of channels. By reaching into broader talent pools, we’ve connected with a variety of highly skilled candidates that align well with Sunrun’s mission.
- To capture attention and engage from the start, we redesigned our job descriptions with a focus on clarity, ensuring that they not only communicate the role but also our excitement for the candidate’s journey. For higher-level roles, we introduced a red carpet experience, ensuring that executive candidates feel valued and respected throughout their process with personalized, standout touches.
- Additionally, we offered a unique “trading card” style introduction for our interviewers, which adds a personal touch, helping candidates feel more connected to those they’ll begin working with.
- Finally, we expanded our reach by hosting both virtual and in-person hiring events, recognizing that flexibility in engagement methods increases accessibility and appeal.
- 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.)
At the end of 2023, we set team commitments to elevate our candidate experience to best-in-class standards, fully aligning with Sunrun’s strategic commitments, building the best team on the planet. With support from key stakeholders—People Operations (Sunrun Onboarding), Learning & Development, Recruitment Operations, and Talent Brand teams—we focused on essential improvements like accurate job descriptions, a refreshed Careers site with advanced descriptions, and branded communications throughout the recruiting journey.
Throughout 2024, we conducted continuous check-ins with our team, sharing market trends, emphasizing the importance of a positive candidate experience, and spotlighting impactful candidate feedback success stories. New hire surveys were instrumental in identifying and celebrating recruiter successes, where positive candidate stories highlighted the real impact of our team’s efforts. On the contrary, we deescalated those that reacted with a poor experience, hoping to teach and repair where necessary. Recognizing recruiters for these successes reinforced our commitment and inspired further dedication to delivering exceptional candidate experiences.
- 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.)
In 2024, we made significant strides in our Talent Brand function by partnering with Radancy to elevate Sunrun’s Careers website. This collaboration brought impressive growth in site engagement, including increased job views and apply clicks. We also enhanced candidate experience by creating advanced job descriptions for 10 key roles, providing candidates with a more insightful view into these opportunities. Key outcomes of this initiative:
- 13% increase in job visits (2023 to 2024, Jan-Oct)
- 12% increase in apply clicks (2023 to 2024, Jan-Oct)
- 2024 metrics (Jan-Oct):
- Total Visits: 683,667
- New Visits: 624,917
- Apply Clicks: 34,712
- Apply Click Rate: 5%
- Job Alert Sign-Ups: 2,471
- New Website Pages (Life at Sunrun, Inclusion, Perks & Benefits, and Job Explorer)
To address gaps in our retail sales hiring process, we implemented a structured approach that empowers recruiters to make offers and conduct their own interviews, creating a more consistent and positive candidate experience. This approach addresses common feedback from past surveys, such as missed interviews and insufficient role information, and ensures candidates feel informed and valued. All recruiters have been conducting interviews using a Retail Sales Interview Guide for consistent conversations and interview experiences.
To make the process more engaging, we introduced a “Hiring Manager Trading Card”—a creative, branded card that adds a personal touch to manager introductions for new hires. Additionally, each hiring manager is equipped with a branded “Talk Track” to guide introductory calls with new hires. This ensures new team members receive a warm welcome, insights into their day one experience, and a clear path into the team culture.
This revamped approach has led to significant improvements: accelerated time-to-fill for retail sales roles, a rise in reaching headcount goals, and high satisfaction among hiring managers/recruiter relationships and positive candidate feedback. These changes reflect our commitment to innovation and delivering a candidate-centered hiring journey.
- 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.)
- Candidate Experience Winner banner on our Careers site
- Recruiters were invited to use the candidate experience award in their email signatures
- Social media posts
- 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, we actively use candidate experience benchmark data to quantify and highlight the business impact of our recruitment strategies. By analyzing survey results, NPS scores, and comparisons to both internal and external industry standards, we can clearly communicate our progress and successes to our leadership team, recruiters, and hiring managers.
For example, tracking NPS and candidate feedback allows us to pinpoint areas needing improvement, enhancing processes like interview scheduling and recruiter communication. These improvements not only drive higher satisfaction but also reduce time-to-fill, leading to cost savings on open roles. Additionally, we use candidate feedback to strengthen our referral program by highlighting positive candidate experiences, which has helped increase referral rates and, in turn, reduced sourcing costs.
Through participation in industry research, we also monitor our employer brand perception and adjust our strategies accordingly, keeping our brand competitive and attractive in the market.