Rally® Recruitment Marketing, the premier community of 50,000 recruitment marketing, employer branding and talent attraction professionals, proudly unveiled the winners of the 2024 Rally® Awards™ today.
Celebrating its fifth year, the Rally Awards is a prestigious global competition that recognizes the most innovative and effective recruitment marketing and employer branding strategies designed to attract top talent. This year, the competition was fiercer than ever with a record number of submissions, showcasing the growing emphasis on sophisticated recruitment marketing and talent branding strategies in today’s competitive labor market.
A total of 29 awards were given across 15 categories to 22 exceptional individuals and teams. Categories included Best Launch of a Recruitment Marketing Strategy, Best Employer Brand Video, Best Use of Organic Social Media in Recruitment Marketing and Best Use of Recruitment Marketing Technology. Special honors were also bestowed for Recruitment Marketing Rising Star and Recruitment Marketer of the Year, highlighting the bright futures and remarkable achievements of the leaders in the field.
“The 2024 Rally Award winners exemplify the critical role that skilled recruitment marketing professionals play in modern talent acquisition,” said Lori Sylvia, Rally’s Founder & CEO. “Today’s successful employers differentiate themselves by crafting compelling employer brands and actively engaging with potential candidates via social media and digital channels, moving beyond the outdated ‘post and pray’ approach. We’re delighted to highlight the innovative contributions of our Rally community members and the profound impact their work has on their organizations’ growth.”
This year, the Rally Awards was sponsored by Ph.Creative, a leading employer brand consultancy and agency. Melanie Murphy, Chief Marketing Officer at Ph.Creative, commented on this year’s program. “As proud sponsors of the Rally Awards, I am thrilled to celebrate this year’s winners who exemplify excellence in recruitment marketing and employer branding. Their creativity, innovative strategies and remarkable results set a high standard in our field, highlighting the immense impact of these dedicated professionals in attracting and engaging top talent. Congratulations to all the winners for their outstanding contributions and for leading the way for our industry,” she said.
Winners were selected by an independent panel of esteemed peer judges, many of whom are previous Rally Award winners:
- Heather Johnson, Employer Branding Lead, Booz Allen Hamilton
- Casie Shimansky, Brand Editor, Cisco
- Anthony Rosato, Global Talent Acquisition Program Manager – Employment Branding, Qurate Retail Group
- Cristal Mikenas, Head of Employer Brand & Recruitment Marketing, Takeda
- Rachel Duran, Head of Global Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- Antonio Stephens, Director, Culture Communications and Talent Brand Marketing, Levi Strauss & Co.
- Christina Spadaro, Talent Branding Manager, Rapid7
- Audree Hall, Talent Brand Attraction Program Manager, Coupa Software
- Robin Dagostino, Employer Branding & Marketing Senior Director, Boston Consulting Group
- Kayla Branham, Senior Manager, Recruitment Marketing, ADT
- Whitney Wallace, TA Marketing and Sourcing Manager, Baylor Scott & White Health (2023 Recruitment Marketing Rising Star)
- Liz Gelb-O’Connor, VP, Global Head Employer Brand & Marketing, ADP (2023 Recruitment Marketer of the Year)
Each entry was judged on strategy, quality, innovation and verified results.
2024 Rally Award winners by category:
Best Employer Brand Video
First Place:
Ford Motor Company — “Movers of the World, Makers of the Future”
Second Place (tie):
Evonik — “Be Part of Something Special”
King — “Making the World Playful”
Third Place:
Grab — “Grab life with both hands”
Best Employee Generated Content
First Place:
HCL Tech, Sahil Mehta, Vivek Garg, Abhimanyu Prathap, Surbhi Sharan, Sudarsana Ganguly — “Empowering People Through Music”
Second Place:
SiteOne Landscape Supply — “Lights, Camera, Action: Engaging Passive Candidates Through the Power of Employee Video Storytelling”
Best Talent E-Newsletter
First Place:
TTEC — “Keeping Smiles Connected: How Our Global Alumni Newsletter Bridges Distance and Fuels Growth”
Second Place:
UBS — “Recruitment Ready with UBS”
Best Use of Organic Social Media in Recruitment Marketing
First Place:
King — “Amplifying the Kingdom on LinkedIn”
Second Place (tie):
Church & Dwight — “Always-On Talent Attraction”
TTEC — “Bringing Smiles to TTEC EMEA’s Facebook Communities”
Best Use of Paid Social Media in Recruitment Marketing
First Place:
Baylor Scott & White Health — “BSWH Paid Social Media”
Best Use of Video in Recruitment Marketing
First Place:
Grab — “Grab life with both hands”
Second Place:
UBS — “UBS Apprenticeship Campaign Video”
Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign
First Place:
UBS — “UBS Apprenticeship Campaign”
Second Place:
Eaton, Raven Hazlett — “Attracting a Manufacturing Workforce in the Digital Age”
Best Content Marketing Program
First Place:
Grab — “Grab life with both hands”
Second Place:
Ascension Health — “Associate Storytelling – Ascension Careers”
Best Employer Brand Launch
First Place (tie):
Dunkin’, Kristen Ferguson, Ashley Fowler — “All ‘In For The Win”
SEB — “SEB Global EVP”
Second Place:
Intuitive — “Proving What’s Possible”
Best Careers Blog
First Place:
Cisco — “WeAreCisco Blog”
Second Place:
Baylor Scott & White Health — “BSWH The Heartbeat Blog”
Best Launch of Recruitment Marketing Strategy (Solo / Small Team)
First Place:
Gerdau North America, Bryce Rioux — “120+ Year Old Steel Manufacturer going All In on Recruitment Marketing”
Second Place:
Cleaver-Brooks — “Ignite your Career with Cleaver-Brooks”
Best Launch of Recruitment Marketing Strategy (Large Team)
First Place:
MetLife — “At MetLife, it’s All Together Possible!”
Best Use of Recruitment Marketing Technology
First Place:
Northwestern Mutual — “The Full Funnel: Northwestern Mutual’s Comprehensive View to Drive Marketing ROI, powered by Talentegy”
Recruitment Marketing Rising Star
Winner:
Sarah Osborne, Mutual of Omaha
Recruitment Marketer of the Year
Winner:
Megan Claar, Sheetz
2024 Rally Award Winner Quotes
Award recipients expressed their gratitude for the honor, highlighting the crucial role of their teams and leadership in championing employer branding and recruitment marketing as key strategic priorities within their organizations.
Rachel Flanders, Director of Talent Acquisition & Development, Cleaver-Brooks
We are incredibly proud of the Cleaver-Brooks Recruitment Marketing team for earning second place in the Best Launch of Recruitment Marketing Strategy, Small Team category. This achievement underscores the vital role of having a dedicated recruitment marketing team in building effective talent attraction campaigns, publicly recognizing our outstanding employees, and highlighting the numerous benefits of being a part of the Cleaver-Brooks family. Your hard work and innovative strategies are instrumental in attracting top talent and showcasing what makes our company a great place to work. Congratulations on this well-deserved recognition!
Kristen Ferguson, Senior Manager-Talent Attraction, Inspire Brands
We are honored to receive the Rally Recruitment Marketing Award for Best Employer Brand Launch. This recognition for Dunkin’s All IN’ for the Win campaign is a testament to the collaborative efforts of our franchisees and the invaluable feedback from Dunkin’ team members. Our franchisees’ insights and dedication to this process exemplify how, at every level within Dunkin’, we are runnIN’, smilIN’, growIN’… all IN’. We are grateful for their partnership and proud to celebrate this achievement together.
Jennifer Blackledge, Employer Branding Communications, Ford Motor Company
Our Talent Attraction team is honored to have our “Movers of the World, Makers of the Future” video series recognized! From the day we covered the wall with sticky notes and had our “aha!” moment, to watching our vision come to life with the help of Communicore, we’ve all been so excited about this campaign. It just felt right and so representative of Ford: proud of our past but even more excited about the future. We’re so grateful to the employees featured in the video for sharing their stories with the world. Thank you, Rally!
Bryce Riou, Recruitment Marketing Leader, Gerdau
I feel truly grateful to be part of a team that is pushing the limits of what can be done to modernize our approach to recruitment marketing and employer branding. Receiving the 1st place award for best launch of recruitment marketing strategy (Solo / Small Team) was a true honor. Our strategy can be summed up as: meet candidates where they are and create a candidate experience that we’d want ourselves. Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to the judges and the Rally team!
Meenakshi Benjwal, Associate Vice President, HCLTech
We’re truly thankful for this recognition in the employee-generated content category at the Rally Awards 2024. Big thanks to our amazing employer brand marketers for their dedication and innovative interventions in making the HCLTech Employee Value Proposition “Find Your Spark” a reality. This award is also special to us as it celebrates the exceptional song created by our talented employees on World Music Day and recognizes how we enable our people to pursue their passion in the workplace.
Richard Gordon, Employer Brand, Associate Director, King
We know that our social content makes a difference to the talent we want to attract, and winning the Best Use of Organic Social Media in Recruitment Marketing category for our work in Amplifying the Kingdom on LinkedIn feels like the best kind of endorsement of all the time, effort and resource we put into creating it. Content that authentically reflects what it’s like to work at King. This is recognition for anybody who contributes to this in any way – be it the Kingsters we feature, our social creative agency or any of the internal functions that help us do what we do!
Karla Diaz, Senior Director, Talent Attraction & Planning, Northwestern Mutual
We’re thrilled to be recognized by Rally Recruitment Marketing for outstanding achievements leveraging recruitment marketing technology to attract top talent. This award is a testament to the team’s dedication, innovation, and commitment to excellence in talent attraction to revolutionize our recruitment marketing strategies and elevate our employer brand to new heights.
Michele Posehn, Sr. Recruiting Manager, Diversity and Early Talent Initiatives, SiteOne Landscape Supply
SiteOne has such a strong work culture and what we needed to attract and engage talent was an outlet to amplify the voices of those who live it and contribute to it every day. We partnered with iCIMS to leverage the power of video, transform our talent experience through authentic testimonials and put the ‘human’ back into ‘human resources.’ As a result, we’re able to create videos featuring our best spokespeople – our associates – to attract new candidates and grow and retain our existing team members.
Jonna Sjövall, Global Head of Talent Attraction and Campus Recruiting, UBS
We’re thrilled to have been honored with three Rally Awards this year. It’s a tough competition where we compete with the best recruitment marketing campaigns globally. This recognition is a testament to the innovative efforts and dedication of our Junior Talent, Recruiting and Talent Attraction teams. We’re proud of our hard work and more motivated than ever to keep engaging with young talent across the globe for the many career paths we offer. Also, a big congrats to all of the 2024 Rally Award winners!
James Barraclough, Employer Branding Project Management Team Lead, SEB
We embarked on this journey to uncover our authentic employer brand and put it into words and visuals, and we did so with the input of thousands of our SEB colleagues globally. We employed a data-led approach, looking to external talent, colleagues and our leaders for the input to shape our direction forward. After that, it’s all about getting our great people to share their experiences, whether through video, social media, articles or events. Ultimately, it’s about using data to build a human, employee centric employer brand. We believe we’ve done that and are already seeing some of the results of that, but we know this is a continuous process, so this is really just the beginning. We would like to thank our main agency partner Universum for their support and the Rally Awards for the honor and recognition!
Sarah Osborne, Sr. Recruitment Marketing Specialist, Talent Acquisition, Mutual of Omaha
Being named this year’s Recruitment Marketing Rising Star is a tremendous honor. Organizations like Rally and the support of the recruitment marketing community have made such an impact on my career, so to be acknowledged by Rally and my peers means the world to me. I couldn’t have achieved this without the continuous support from Mutual of Omaha and my amazing internal partners and talent acquisition team. I look forward to continuing to learn, grow and achieve great things in the field of recruitment marketing.
Megan Claar, Recruitment Marketing & Employer Branding Manager, Sheetz
With so many talented practitioners in Recruitment Marketing, it’s truly an honor to have received the most coveted award in our space. This achievement is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our incredible #WorkFam here at Sheetz. It’s a high-five to all of us and validation of the magic we make when we collaborate and dare to dream big. It’s a humbling experience to be recognized by my peers and I look forward to continuing to lead the way in Recruitment Marketing. Here’s to breaking more molds, shattering ceilings and pushing boundaries in the world of RM!
Supporting Quotes
Support from across the community poured in to congratulate this year’s winners.
Grace Kraemer, Recruitment Marketing Manager, Aspirant RPO
Congratulations to Cleaver-Brooks on their remarkable achievement and all other winners and participants of the 2024 Rally Awards. It’s been an absolute honor and privilege collaborating with their outstanding team. I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity to elevate the employment brand and amplify the recruitment marketing efforts alongside such an exceptional group of professionals.
Jillian O’Malior, VP, Brand and Creative Solutions, Recruitics
We at Recruitics couldn’t be more excited to congratulate our amazing partners at Dunkin’ on winning the Best Employer Brand Launch for their “All ‘IN for the Win” EVP campaign. Working together on this strategic initiative has been a true pleasure, and we’re thrilled to see “All ‘IN” continue to thrive and inspire!
Stephen Quinn, CEO & Founder, Atomic
Working with Grab has been an exciting journey for Atomic and we’re delighted to see the campaign celebrated with 3x Rally Awards. This project let us get creative on a global scale, highlighting what makes Grab’s culture special. We enjoyed capturing real employee stories through videos and social media, showing what it really means to work at Grab. This partnership allowed us to create authentic and engaging content that aligns with Grab’s mission to improve lives.
Carolina Savatier, Strategy Consultant, Universum
At Universum we are thrilled to see SEB win a Rally Award and are proud of our strong collaboration with them throughout the project. Getting to know SEB as an employer was an exciting journey. The final EVP provided SEB with a refreshed employer brand, authentic and forward-looking, which yielded positive results both externally and internally. I’d like to extend my congratulations to the entire SEB team. This achievement underscores the power of strategic employer branding.
Diane Fanelli, Chief Operating Officer, iCIMS
SiteOne Landscape Supply’s successful and innovative approach to recruitment marketing underscores the power of video in creating meaningful connections with today’s talent, even in challenging hiring environments. By leveraging the authentic voices of their own employees, at a lower lift and lighter cost, SiteOne has not only enhanced their employer brand, but also bolstered their team with a recruitment strategy for long-term success. I’m proud of the transformative impact iCIMS Video Studio has had on our customers like SiteOne. We are honored to partner with the TA team on their mission to reach specialized talent and achieve their hiring goals through impactful storytelling and technology.