Recognized for Excellence in Every Campus Forward Award Category
Esri 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 Esri's unwavering excellence and commitment to providing the best experience for the next generation of talent. Esri 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
The university team at Esri has created an innovative approach by offering a hybrid recruitment strategy incorporating on-campus career fairs at strategic universities, virtual early ID webinars, and attendance at strategic diverse focused conferences such as NSBE, SASE, and Great Minds in STEM. Esri is also incorporating AI tools provided by RippleMatch to reach under-represented students to ensure the student application pipeline is diverse before reaching the hiring team. Once students apply to the Esri internship applications, the team prioritizes a swift candidate experience.
Excellence in Tech Innovation
Esri utilizes the RippleMatch platform to reduce quantity and increase quality of applicants. Esri internship postings are redirected to the RippleMatch company landing page. From there, Esri provided RippleMatch with target degrees, graduation date ranges, experience keywords, and diverse background targets. The RippleMatch Automatch tool uses these keywords to reach students within the network. Esri utilizes tracking links to identify the student source: Esri company landing page, RippleMatch company branded page, Handshake, or RippleMatch Automatch. Esri studies the analytics weekly to ensure the applicant reach includes a mix of student experience combined with cultural and gender diversity. Esri uses application volume and source analytics to gauge where to focus recruitment support versus where to slow. This helps Esri focus on quality over quantity.
Excellence in Candidate Experience
Candidate experience is an opportunity to share Esri’s company’s culture with potential hires. Once an applicant applies to an internship position, their resume is reviewed within 48-hours. At that time, students are notified via automated messaging if their resume has advanced. Once the application advances the Esri recruitment team takes time to match a student resume with a prospective internship project then introduce the student to the hiring manager for 1-2 video interviews. Final candidates receive an offer from an Esri recruiter with ample time to decide. Upon offer acceptance, students are invited to an exclusive communications platform where they are provided with weekly messages and monthly webinars to help them prepare for their internship experience.
Excellence in DE&I
Diversity Equity & Inclusion is key to Esri’s early career strategy and building a diverse student program experience. Esri partners with several national organizations such as NSBE, SWE, SASE, and Grace Hopper to interact with students and build an early ID pathway for students interested in the company/industry that come from under-represented populations. In addition, Esri has key relationships with HBCU’s and HSI’s that are focused on GIS and STEM. Yearly, Esri invites students from these partner universities to the largest annual Esri conferences in Washington, D.C. and San Diego. Esri utilizes the RippleMatch platform to host university agnostic webinars during Spring and Fall recruitment to target underrepresented populations and invite them to workshops that describe early career opportunities and application best practices.
Excellence in Internship Programming
The Esri internship program provides students with an opportunity to work on real-world projects that make a difference. Students are assigned to a project and receive a 1:1 mentor assignment. In addition to their work, the Esri intern team offers daily intern events for students. Esri offers weekly networking events, tech webinars, an executive director speaker series, professional development workshops, and fun team building events. The summer culminates in the annual Weekend of Innovation – Intern Hackathon where students compete to create an app using Esri technology and an opportunity to present on the main stage in front of the entire company. Students are assigned to a University Specialist that help students identify different career paths based on the student’s education and graduation year.
