CONMED’s Candidate Experience Performs 14% Higher Than Industry Average

The Challenge

We believe in the power of engaged talent.

That’s the value that drives talent acquisition at medical technology company CONMED, a global employer with facilities in 19 countries and employees in 26 countries. Despite its 50+ year history, TA is a relatively new function at CONMED.

In 2017, a Talent Acquisition function was first introduced at CONMED. Facing exponential growth, they knew they wanted to better engage people right from the start, beginning with an improved candidate experience for faster, easier hiring of high-quality talent.

CONMED primarily sought a solution that would transform the look, functionality, and performance of their career site, while giving it the solid company branding that was missing. “That was number one,” said Erica Flynn, Talent Acquisition Business Partner at CONMED. “We needed to enhance our career site, which didn’t have any branding.”

When the team found Phenom, they quickly saw the potential of its Intelligent Talent Experience platform to not only improve their career site, but to elevate the company’s entire TA process and candidate journey.

The Solution

Drawn to Phenom’s array of capabilities, user-friendly experience, and rave reviews from other clients, the team felt confident the platform would provide a longterm solution that could grow with them and deliver the solutions — and results — they needed:

Dynamic, on-brand career site. CONMED’s updated Phenom Career Site features new images, fonts, and consistent branding that mirrors the corporate website. According to Flynn, rebranding the site using the Phenom CMS was so easy that they were able to launch the career site before the rebranded corporate site. Now, with the touch of a button, the team can continuously ensure content stays fresh. The ability to easily populate the home page, job description pages, and category pages with video is a major value-add from a content and branding perspective.

Global online presence. CONMED’s international colleagues are also starting to leverage the career site, creating specific landing pages and content for candidates in different countries. Flynn and Pence noted that being able to showcase region- and language-specific content — while staying unified with the corporate brand — reflects CONMED’s global reach in a way not previously achievable.

Personalized, seamless experience. The AI-supported Phenom Chatbot gives job seekers another way to navigate the career site and quickly apply for a job based on their skills, experience, location, and more. By remembering candidate information, interactions feel relevant and keep people moving efficiently through the site. “I often hear candidates say how intuitive the chatbot is,” noted Kim Pence, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at CONMED, who plans to continue optimizing their FAQ knowledge base to handle more questions and save recruiters valuable time.

In addition, Phenom’s hosted apply functionality and API integration with CONMED’s Workday Recruiting ATS means job seekers can complete the entire application process without ever leaving the career site experience — significantly increasing completed applies.

Successful recruiting events. “Phenom is making our events process so much easier for attendees and for us,” Flynn said. Using Phenom University Recruiting and Phenom Campaigns, the team can quickly spin up an event landing page and promote and manage onsite or virtual recruiting events. Candidates receive tailored messages inviting them to attend and subsequent automated communication via email or text with pertinent reminders and additional information.

The Results

The CONMED TA team is seeing the value of their investment in Phenom with above-industry averages in applications, website traffic, and candidate engagement.

Especially of note is their 31% conversion rate of career site job visits to apply clicks — nearly 14% above the industry average. An overview of CONMED’s apply funnel also shows that over 80% of candidates who start an application complete it, ~6% higher than the industry average.

Also notable: 13% of chatbot conversations turned into leads, and nearly half of applications started through the chatbot were completed. Plus, job seekers are coming back and re-engaging with the brand. In the first half of the year, 31% of total career site visits were made by returning job seekers, which is 7% higher than the industry average.

The CONMED talent community also has grown substantially in the past year, adding 84% more subscribers YOY.

• ↑14%

  Higher than industry average apply conversion rates

• +13%

  More leads from chatbot conversations

• 31%

  Returning job seekers

• >80%

  Application completion rate

The Future

As CONMED continues to evolve its partnership with Phenom to drive ROI, Flynn and Pence noted the following immediate initiatives.

Video will play an even bigger part of their career site strategy. They plan to include targeted videos on job description pages that will feature role-specific employee testimonials.

Also on the list? Implementing more rigorous SMS campaigns — which recruiters are already piloting with significant success — and rolling out a military career site page with a military search feature that helps match veteran candidates to civilian jobs.

Complementing that effort, the team wants to dive into Phenom Talent Discovery, which can source and match their best internal and external candidates using Phenom AI. Talent Discovery can find the bestf it talent from CONMED’s previous applicants, active leads, and internal employees based on their skills, experience, previous titles, and location.