Congratulations to the 2021 Rally® Award Winners

It’s our honor to announce the winners of the 2021 Rally® Awards! Now in its second year running, the Rally Awards is a global competition that recognizes and celebrates excellence in Recruitment Marketing and employer branding practices by individuals and teams who work in-house at employers.

The aim of the Rally Awards is to recognize the practitioners who are moving the needle at their organization and setting new best practices in our field so that we can share these findings with our community to advance our practice.

Before we get to the winners of each of the 14 featured categories, we’d like to first thank our expert panel of peer judges. Without their expertise, time and generosity, the Rally Awards wouldn’t be possible. So let’s give a big Rally thanks to:

• Deniz Gültekin, Senior Manager of Recruitment Marketing for Instacart
• Rose Marques, Global Talent Brand Lead at Squarespace (2020 Rally Awards winner)
• Darryl Ramey, Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding at HARMAN International
• Eric Clemons, Sr. Manager of Employment Brand Strategies at U.S. Cellular
• Dani Kaufman, Manager, Talent Acquisition Operations and Employment Brand at PetSmart (2020 Rally Recruitment Marketing Rising Star)
• Chloé Rada, Director, Global Recruitment Marketing and Branding at Syneos Health Commercial Solutions (2020 Rally Recruitment Marketer of the Year)

The judging criteria varied according to the category, but in general, nominees were evaluated and scored on 4 principal factors:

• Strategy
• Quality
• Innovation
• Results

Every nominee was deserving, and we congratulate all of them for their accomplishments! There were so many exceptional submissions that this year we have multiple 1st and 2nd place winners in nearly every category. In the coming weeks, we’ll share examples of their winning work on the Rally blog and in our ideabooks, so that everyone in the Rally community can learn from these strategies.

Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for, here are the winners of the 2021 Rally® Awards:

Best Careers Blog

The Best Careers Blog award recognizes a careers blog that had a significant impact on the candidate journey through transparent and captivating employee experience content. 

1st place winner: Workhuman — Christina Spadaro and Jessica Breen — Showcasing our “Life at Workhuman”

2nd place winner: Giant Eagle — It’s not just our everyday stories. It’s so much more. 

Best Careers Social Media

The Best Careers Social Media award recognizes a developed social media presence that not only rivals what a top marketing team could do, but that also serves as a leading source of top-tier talent. 

1st place winner: ADP — Megan Nichols, Liz Kempinski, Kate Klingman, Ingrid Urquijo Bayter and Ivanessa Delgado — What’s Love Got to Do with It? #Everything!

Best Content Marketing Program

The Best Content Marketing Program award recognizes enticing storytelling, effective content distribution and an overall content marketing strategy that can serve as a talent-attracting blueprint for other recruiters. 

1st place winner (tie): Nestlé USA — Driving Audience-First Digital 

1st place winner (tie): PetSmart — Dani Kaufman and Meghan Rozman — #LifeAtPetSmart – Beyond the hashtag

2nd place winner: Newell Brands — Ashley Blackmore — Recruitment Marketing Expert Newell Brands Proves Content is King With Job Seekers

Best Employer Brand Launch

The Best Employer Brand Launch award recognizes a successful launch or re-launch of an authentic employer brand resulting from thorough EVP research and company-wide alignment.

1st place: ADP — Megan Nichols, Liz Kempinski, Kate Klingman, Ingrid Urquijo Bayter and Liz Gelb-O’Connor — ADP Tech Talent Brand

2nd place winner (tie): McGraw Hill — Shelby Stoddart and Jacqui Edwards — Empowering the Curious: Activating Our Employer Brand

2nd place winner (tie): Lockheed Martin — Lockheed Martin’s Experience A Mission That Matters: Best Employer Brand Launch of 2020

Best Employer Brand Video

The Best Employer Brand Video award recognizes powerful video content that conveys the value proposition of a company as an employer in a real, creative, and effective way. 

1st place winner: Nestlé USA — Nestlé Stories

2nd place winner: Cisco — Together, Apart Employer Brand Video

Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign

The Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign award recognizes the successful use of a multi-touch Recruitment Marketing campaign to achieve talent acquisition goals — one that sets the bar for how other employers can run their own campaigns. 

1st place winner: Lockheed Martin — Matt Biester, Jason Boone, Rowan Toffoli, and Anthony Gilbert — Handshake 2 Hire: Military Veteran Engagement

2nd place winner: Land O’Lakes — Land O’Lakes “Feed the Nation” Campaign Gets Critical Jobs Filled Fast

Best Talent Newsletter

The Best Talent Newsletter award recognizes newsletters that go above and beyond the traditional subscriber-employer relationship, complete with valuable content that maintains interest, builds an employer’s talent pipeline, and ultimately drives candidates to apply. 

1st place winner: BAE Systems — An Informed & Engaged Talent Community

2nd place winner: Morley  — Angela Gilson — Morley Talent & Alumni Newsletters

Best Use of Employee Generated Content

The Best Use of Employee Generated Content award recognizes recruiters with a knack for finding amazing employee-generated content and blasting it out through their company’s recruiting channels to build candidate awareness and engagement.

1st place winner: PetSmart — Dani Kaufman and Meghan Rozman — #LifeAtPetSmart – Beyond the Hashtag

2nd place winner: BAE Systems — Marching Forward Through Unparalleled Times

Best Use of Organic Social Media in Recruitment Marketing

The Best Use of Organic Social Media in Recruitment Marketing award recognizes the creation of organic (no budget) content on social media that cuts through the noise to reach the right talent.

1st place winner: Cisco — Carmen Collins, Jen Burns and Kim Dufresne — WeAreCisco TikTok Pilot for Employer Branding

2nd place winner: TTEC Holdings — The Talent Show | Powered by TTEC on LinkedIn Live

Best Use of Paid Social Media in Recruitment Marketing

The Best Use of Paid Social Media in Recruitment Marketing award recognizes the creation of paid social media content to reach target talent audiences. 

1st place winner: UBS — Make a change – consulting but different!

2nd place winner (tie): Nestlé USA — Best Workplace for Innovators

2nd place winner (tie): Sitel Group — National Hiring Day – 6 Hour Live Recruitment on Facebook 

Best Use of Recruitment Marketing Technology

The Best Use of Recruitment Marketing Technology award recognizes the most innovative and effective use of Recruitment Marketing technology to produce results in talent acquisition — results that force other companies to take notice and consider their own technology strategy.

1st place winner: Lockheed Martin — Matt Biester, Jason Boone, Rowan Toffoli and Anthony Gilbert — Handshake 2 Hire: Military Veteran Engagement

2nd place winner (tie): Mercy — Mercy Scales Nurse Recruiting with Cutting-Edge AI Tech

2nd place winner (tie): Syneos Health Commercial Solutions — How Syneos Health uses Recruitment Marketing to transform its recruiting strategy

Best Use of Video in Recruitment Marketing

The Best Use of Video in Recruitment Marketing award recognizes powerful video initiatives that have an undeniable, measurable effect on reaching the right candidates and hiring the right talent. 

1st place winner: Dell Technologies — Our Women in Action by Dell Technologies

2nd place winner (tie): TTEC Holdings — Work From Home Sweet Home

2nd place winner (tie): UBS — Make a change – consulting but different!

2nd place winner (tie): AdventHealth — The “Life at AdventHealth” Virtual Reality Experience

Recruitment Marketing Rising Star

The Recruitment Marketing Rising Star award recognizes future leaders of the industry with between 1-3 years of experience who are already helping to drive brand-led, marketing-driven change in the acquisition strategy of their company. This year, three practitioners were named Rising Stars!

Christina Spadaro, Talent Brand Manager, Workhuman

Tricia Day, Manager, Global Employer Brand, Appian Corporation

Tony Prudente, Senior Specialist, Employer Branding, Recruitment Marketing & Social, Brother USA

Recruitment Marketer of the Year

As our most distinguished award, the Recruitment Marketer of the Year is presented to the practitioner who has distinguished themselves through extraordinary leadership, business impact and pioneering work in Recruitment Marketing or employer branding. As a role model for the industry, their work helps to establish new best practices for all to follow and benefit from. 

Kerry Noone, Director, Employer Branding & Recruitment Marketing, CVS Health 

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Watch the replay of the 2021 Rally® Awards virtual ceremony

 

In addition to our winners and judges, we want to extend our appreciation to everyone who nominated a colleague, customer or client. With your support, the Rally® Awards can continue recognizing, honoring and lifting up Recruitment Marketing and employer branding practitioners everywhere! 

For more information, including how to apply to the 2022 Rally Awards, be sure to visit RallyAwards.com.