Recognized for Excellence in Every Campus Forward Award Category
Belden Inc. received a Campus Forward Award for Excellence in Recruitment Strategies, Tech Innovation, Candidate Experience, DE&I, and Internship Programming.
Receiving an award for each category reflects Belden Inc.'s unwavering excellence and commitment to providing the best experience for the next generation of talent. Belden Inc. invests in innovative recruitment strategies, cutting-edge technology, thoughtful candidate experiences, inclusive recruitment practices, and standout internship programs. See below for the highlights of their strategies in each one of these categories.
Excellence in Recruitment Strategies
Belden’s early career recruiting team is focused on continuous improvement while sourcing, recruiting, and engaging early talent. The team’s recruitment efforts have shifted in recent years to focus on building meaningful relationships with each partner school including student organizations & groups, faculty/staff, and a mostly in-person event environment. The team has continued to fine-tune a robust diversity recruiting plan to include minority-focused student groups at current partner schools and scoping out new relationships at HBCUs and HSIs. The early career team is also dedicated to ensuring an engaging candidate experience through frequent and personal contact at each recruitment stage, to include sharing about the recruitment process overall and providing updates throughout. Early talent is plugged into their chosen function from the 1st step in the process by meeting and then interviewing with leaders directly to deepen relationships and knowledge around what it is truly like to work in that function at Belden. Once a candidate accepts, the team provides networking opportunities to engage further with the organization and to meet fellow incoming hires.
Excellence in Tech Innovation
Embracing and leveraging technologies in the recruitment process and beyond has been a critical component to a successful strategy and experience for all involved. The Belden early career team utilizes RippleMatch’s automatch tool to enable connections and facilitate conversations with students across the country, most importantly, doing so in a fashion that allows the team to focus on under-represented individuals. This tool provides the organization a much wider range of candidate diversity for early career opportunities to include diversity of schools, background, thought, race/ethnicity, gender, and more. The team has updated the assessment process to utilize an online gamified assessment that has provided a much more user-friendly, efficient, and even sometimes fun experience for candidates and hiring teams alike. The team and EC recruitment stakeholders now also utilize Yello - an event management tool that significantly streamlines pipelines, communications, and data tracking.
Excellence in Candidate Experience
Creating a process for positive candidate experiences doesn’t have to be overly complicated – early career talent has shown the team that personalized, regular, and clear communication are paramount to be successful. That is what the Belden early career recruiting team strives for. It starts with connecting with students where they are – on campus and offering different ways to engage, communicate, and build relationships. During the recruitment process, the team tries to be crisp and clear about what to expect, offering tips and guidance to ensure an informed and logistically smooth process. Other supporting processes including the tracking of the dates of interviews/activities, time lapsed between stages, and when a personalized note at the end of the process has been delivered. Measuring candidate satisfaction through surveys is taken seriously and efforts are made to improve based on that feedback.
Excellence in DE&I
The Belden early career recruiting team is dedicated to ensuring a diverse pipeline of candidates and building an inclusive, fair recruitment process for all throughout. The team, along with supporting leadership, has made particular positive strides in building relationships with minority student groups and organizations at current partner schools, diversifying recruitment representation (on-campus event representation as well as interview panels). Succession planning with the organization leans heavily on promoting from within, so the team knows that incorporating more diverse hires into early career roles will make positive impacts to the innovating teams in the organization not only now, but also going forward into the future as the team looks to the rotational program to build future business leaders.
Excellence in Internship Programming
Previous Belden interns have shared that their time, opinions, and ideas were respected and appreciated. "Interns are not treated like interns" at Belden – they are valuable members of the team, working alongside folks to solve problems, create content, and evaluate data. Belden internships are project based, with interesting & challenging opportunities to present impactful deliverables to the teams. Intern managers provide structured feedback – informal and formal – throughout the summer. Flexible work arrangements usually mean interns working remotely throughout the week and provide ample opportunity to connect with colleagues in and out of the office. A summer calendar offers event opportunities including virtual networking calls with other interns across the US, leadership lunch & learns, interactive learning sessions, and more. Interns enjoy a robust onboarding session as well as offboarding “capstone” experience to present achievements and experiences to senior leaders.
