Congratulations to Our Rally Awards 2020 Winners

I’m thrilled to announce this year’s winners of the 2020 Rally® Awards, a global competition recognizing and celebrating excellence in recruitment marketing and employer branding practices by individuals, teams and employers.

We presented 13 categories showcasing the use of digital marketing and social media strategies which are now essential to attract, engage and recruit talent. Nominees could choose to attribute the award to the entire team, to one or more people on the team, or to themselves. There were also two distinguished awards for rising star and Recruitment Marketer of the year.

The judges of the 2020 Rally® Awards selected the winners based on scoring criteria that varied according to the category. Overall, they were looking for:

• Strategy
• Quality
• Innovation
• Results

The competition was impressive, and we selected second place winners across several categories. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll also share examples of their winning work on the Rally blog, so that everyone in the Rally community can learn from these strategies.

Want to see it for yourself? You can jump to the bottom of this blog to watch the replay of the live ceremony.

But before I share the winners with you, I want to give a big thanks to our panel of esteemed judges who themselves are accomplished practitioners.

Without further adieu, here are the winners of our 2020 Rally® Awards:

Best Content Marketing Program

Content marketing is a key strategy to effectively tell your story as an employer, and our winners set a new bar for how to attract talent to a company and jobs through messaging and storytelling.

1st Place Winner – Pulling Back the Curtain on the Stories that Fuel Nestlé, Nestlé USA

2nd Place Winner – Campus Presentations Don’t Have to Suck, PwC

Best Careers Blog

This award recognizes teams that activated employees to share their experience and expertise through a careers blog that’s used as a key touchpoint to influence the candidate journey.

1st Place Winner – Life at Cisco, Cisco

2nd Place Winner – From Personas to Blog Posts, Intel

Best Employer Brand Video

The award for Best Employer Brand Video recognizes the power of using video to tell an employer’s value proposition with content that’s authentic, creative, impactful and unique.

1st Place Winner – Be You. With Us. #WeAreSicsoc Employer Brand Video Set, Cisco

2nd Place Winner – Ask Me Anything at Nestlé USA, Nestlé USA

Best Use of Video in Recruitment Marketing

This award recognizes all forms and uses of video in recruitment marketing that had a measurable impact on attracting talent for a key hiring initiative.

1st Place Winner – A Glimpse Into Shipbuilding at BAE Systems Sunnie Rock, BAE Systems

2nd Place Winner – Real Food. Real People. The Wendy’s Company

Best Enhanced Job Description

With many candidates starting their job search on a job description, a boring list of text bullets won’t differentiate your brand. This category recognizes turning a plain job description into a visual story that captures a candidate’s interest and converts more views into applicants.

1st Place Winner – Do what you love. Love what you do. Megan O’Shea, Dorel Sports

2nd Place Winner – HR and Marketing Work Hand-in-Hand to Drive Results, Danielle Raquet, Auto Club Group

Best Use of Employee Generated Content

We all know the influence of employees talking positively about working at your company. This award recognizes what you do with that content to build awareness and engagement.

1st Place Winner – Code Review, SQSP Engineering Blog, Squarespace

2nd Place Winner – Bringing the Yellowstone Employee to Life Through Instagram, Kelly Burns, Sarah Bierschwale, Rick Hoeninghausen, Xanterra

Best Use of Paid Social Media

This award recognizes paid content that out-performed expectations to attract the right talent.

1st Place Winner – Product Design Q3 Pipeline Builder, Squarespace

2nd Place Winner – Booz Allen Paid LinkedIn Strategy, Booz Allen Hamilton

Best Use of Organic Social Media

The next award is for Best Use of Organic Social Media, in other words, social posts with no budget behind them.

1st Place Winner – #LoveWhereYouWork LinkedIn Live Cisco

2nd Place Winner – A Look Inside 14 West, How We Use Instagram, Paige Tester, 14 West

Best Social Careers Channel

This award recognizes the team that created a social careers channel that not only rivals the social presence of any marketing team, it also has been a proven top source of talent attraction.

1st Place Winner – Make It Go Social: Instagram Mondelez

Best Employer Brand Launch

We all know that an employer brand isn’t something that you define in a silo. This award recognizes collaboration across teams to uncover your employer value proposition and aligning it with your corporate brand to successfully launch or re-launch an authentic employer brand that makes your company truly stand out.

1st Place Winner – Make it @ Mondelēz, Mondelēz

2nd Place Winner – For the Good of Entertainment GVC

2nd Place Winner (tie) – Putting Corteva Employees at The Center of the Employer Brand, Paul Boylett, Dan McElroy, Jennifer Struck, Angie Boyce, and Ben Stone, Corteva

Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign

Our next category is Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign. This award recognizes excellence in creating and executing a multi-touch recruitment marketing campaign that made a big impact on achieving talent acquisition goals and that proves the effectiveness of recruitment marketing strategy.

1st Place Winner– #WeAreCisco, National Intern Week, Cisco

1st Place Winner (tie) – #YouBelongHere, Michael McCarry, Meaghan Lynch, and Brynn Zech at TE Connectivity

Recruitment Marketing Rising Star

The Recruitment Marketing Rising Star award is given to a practitioner with between 1 to 3 years of experience in a full-time recruitment marketing or employer branding role. The award recognizes an individual who has already made an impact by helping to transform talent acquisition strategy at their company into one that’s brand-led and marketing-driven, distinguishing this person as a future leader of our profession.

Winner – Dani Kaufman, PetSmart

Recruitment Marketer of the Year

This prestigious award is presented to the practitioner who has distinguished themselves through extraordinary leadership, business impact and pioneering work in recruitment marketing and employer branding that establishes a new best practice for our industry and who serves as a role model for raising up our entire profession.

Winner – Chloé Rada, Sodexo

Watch a replay of the 2020 Rally Awards Virtual Ceremony:

Congratulations again to our 2020 Rally® Awards winners! And in addition to our appreciation for our judges, we also want to thank our readers, team, and our supporters.

We would love to see you at our next Rally Awards competition for 2021! You can learn more about the awards by visiting RallyAwards.com.