Ecolab is a Campus Forward Award Winner

Ecolab is the global leader in water, hygiene and infection prevention solutions and services. Every day, we help make the world cleaner, safer and healthier – protecting people and vital resources. From restaurants and hotels to power and manufacturing facilities, Ecolab’s more than 25,000 sales-and-service associates, the industry’s largest and best-trained direct sales-and-service force, help customers solve their cleaning, sanitizing and water and energy management challenges. Many of the world’s most recognizable brands rely on Ecolab to help ensure operational efficiencies, product integrity and brand reputation.

Visit Ecolab's Career page here.

Building an Innovative and Multi-Faceted Approach to University Recruiting

With growing pressure in a competitive candidate marketplace, the Ecolab team focused on a robust sourcing strategy that guarantees all candidates are aware of the diverse set of opportunities available at Ecolab. The Ecolab Early Careers Campus Recruiting team refocused attention to local and national partnerships for a more targeted approach to building their intern class. The team engaged with new nonprofit partners that provide access to students from diverse backgrounds and allowed for in-depth information about Ecolab to be shared informally. Additionally, the team invited a targeted group of students to attend curated virtual information sessions to prepare them for the upcoming interview processes. They also rolled out “Ecolab Elevate”, a leadership summit provided to a select group of sophomore students to both educate on opportunities as well as provide preparation for the students’ upcoming fall recruiting season regarding personal branding, interviewing, and career pathing.

Crafting a Standout Candidate Experience

The Early Careers Campus Recruiting team at Ecolab invests extra time in guaranteeing that the candidate experience is thorough and unique for each student. The team demonstrates their commitment to student experience in providing information sessions where former interns (now current associates) share personal experiences with Ecolab and the career journey they have embarked on at the company. The team spends time ramping up their internal stakeholders to guarantee that all Ecolab associates who engage with students are prepared to have productive conversations regarding sophomore leadership events, internships and full-time opportunities. Trainings are required for any campus rep from Ecolab to help them understand the diverse backgrounds that students come from. The team tops off these comprehensive interactions by providing prompt and consistent communication to candidates.

Moving the Needle on Diversity & Inclusion

Ecolab maintains ambitious diversity goals and invests the time, energy, and dollars to guarantee access to diverse students. The Early Careers Campus Recruiting team has a comprehensive set of national partnerships not limited to SWE, NSBE, NSN, O4U, etc. to guarantee this commitment. To recruit a diverse slate of candidates, the team has formed new partnerships with local and national nonprofits as well as HBCUs and HSIs that provide intensive relationship-building practices with students from a variety of backgrounds. Ecolab’s intern and early career students are exposed to ERGs, mentoring programs, and an annual development week where associates step away from their day-to-day jobs and participate in professional and skill-development focused workshops. Overall, the team consistently reflects on the question “How do we make our programs accessible to more students from diverse backgrounds?” that has led to a ~50% increase in diversity in Ecolab’s intern class for the second year in a row.

Investing in Impactful Internship Programs

The internship program is the pride and joy of the Early Careers Campus Recruiting team at Ecolab. Each of Ecolab’s 250+ interns take on a live-time business project that has direct impact on the bottom line for the division or function they are supporting. Throughout the internship, each student is provided with both localized programming and support as well as enterprise events to increase their individual knowledge and experiences. Interns are provided the unique opportunity to have a Q&A session with Ecolab’s CEO as well as participation in summits where interns meet a variety of business leaders, former interns turned full-time associates, as well as showcasing the customer experience center. At the end of the summer, Ecolab’s interns present on their work and learnings to their leadership teams and are considered for a full-time opportunity to return to Ecolab after graduation. This robust experience has led to a consistent YOY competitive conversion rate.

Supporting the Growth and Development of Entry-Level Talent

Ecolab focuses intensively on guaranteeing that their full-time campus hires are setup for a long-term leadership career trajectory and take on roles that directly impact business results. As a majority of incoming full-time campus hires are conversions from Ecolab’s internship program, these new hires have a robust network rallying behind their success from intern to full-time hire. There are a variety of rotational development programs available to full-time campus hires that provide both new job rotational experiences and the opportunity to experience a new Ecolab site (plant or corporate) to gain full perspective on the organization. There is intensive time spent with the Early Careers Campus Recruiting team to guarantee that incoming hires feel supported in understanding Ecolab’s corporate culture, benefits, accessibility to mentoring programs, ERG involvement and exposure to leadership.

Congratulations to the team at Ecolab for being selected as one of the winners of RippleMatch's 2022 Campus Forward Awards!

RippleMatch's Campus Forward Awards recognizes the top early career teams and programs in the nation. Through a detailed application process, early career teams shared their approach to recruitment, candidate experience, D&I, and internship & entry-level programming. The programs picked for this award represent the best of the best, selected from applications submitted by campus recruiting teams across industries.

See all Award Winners for the category of Large Early Career Programs, Large Team below