How Your Recruitment Agency Can Win Awards for Best Candidate Service 

‘Awards are a waste of time.’ Not true. Here’s the proof, and why your agency can see immediate and long-term benefits from winning.

How Winning Awards Benefits Recruitment Agencies

• Industry Recognition – Wins and shortlisting status from reputable industry bodies, such as the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) serve as a stamp of approval from these respected organisations. With the recruitment sector’s long-held (and in most cases unfair) reputation as male-dominated, ruthless and focused on profit above candidate and client interests, this official check proves that when your consultants make a promise, they will deliver on what they say they’re going to do. Nothing reinforces trustworthiness as much as the endorsement of an independent, unbiased and credible third party that is well-known by your client and candidate base.
• Brand Awareness – An award win reaches scores more of your target audience than your own channels can alone. National and local press will report on your success to millions of readers, and the awarding body will distribute the news across their website, social media and email newsletters. Industry recognition means positive brand awareness on an unprecedented scale, in a far more cost-effective way than spending multiple thousands on advertising, that will truly engage potential clients and candidates who are more receptive to a trusted known source of news and content.
• Relationships – A verified brand is more likely to attract other credible organisations to yours, including suppliers who prioritise ethical, legally compliant processes. Recruiters themselves also want to work for well-established agencies with the positive brand image that helps them get through the door to new clients and candidates much more quickly. Award-winning staffing companies find it easier to attract talent to their teams and foster better relationships with all partners – because they’re able to choose higher quality employees and suppliers in the first place.
• New Business – Our latest report revealed what business leaders really want from their recruitment agencies in 2025. Support with flexible work visas, talent upskilling and training, and a true partnership with recruiters came out on top. With these activities requiring considerable investment and potentially meaning the difference between profit and underperformance for client companies, proven credible recruitment brands will be top of the list when tendering for a new talent acquisition partner.
• Candidate Attraction – Skilled candidates are experiencing more obstacles to career success than ever before, and when considering the right partner to help them tackle their challenges, they have over 40,000 agencies to choose from. Being crowned a leader in candidate care cements your agency’s position as the best choice, meaning candidates flock to your business proactively. Your recruiters can spend less time and resources on persuading candidates to work with them, and focus on preparing skilled contractors for interview and onboarding to improve successful placement rates.

3 Award Winning Strategies for Recruitment Agencies: How to Provide and Prove the Best Candidate Care in the Industry

1. Free Training & Development for Candidates

The 2024 Recruiter Awards category of Best Candidate Care was awarded to This Is Prime. The graduate sales staffing agency adds genuine value to their candidate base at the most crucial time in their professional lives, to set up every individual for the career of their dreams. This Is Prime has delivered free sales training to over 13,000 graduates – over five times as many candidates than the agency has actually recruited – evidencing the organisation’s genuine purpose ahead of profit, a powerful story that attracts and retains promising graduate talent.

The firm’s in-depth training programmes deliver lifelong personal and professional value through:

• Unparalleled Specialist Sales Upskilling – This Is Prime leverage one of the USPs their consultancy was built on: founders Neil Clough, BBC One’s The Apprentice Finalist in 2013 and award-winning trainer, Nicola Plinston, The British Excellence in Sales Management Awards Trainer of the Year 2018. Narrowing down their sales specialism into nation-leading niche training, the organisation’s bespoke Training Days offer group-based and individual in-depth sessions aligned to real live role requirements to upskill candidates for their next opportunity. Trainees are set up with potential employers who are actively recruiting, once they’ve built and honed their new skill set, combining theory and practice to get candidates from graduation right up to the first day of their first job.
• Continuous Improvement – Continual personalised feedback supports every candidate from job application to onboarding and beyond. Individuals constantly grow their skills and knowledge to enhance their chances of success with every new job and career moment.
• Soft Skills – With most having never set foot in an office or even a worksite before, graduate talent requires greater investment of time and people management to prepare for their first experience of working life. This Is Prime delivers the training that most other agencies ignore: soft skills like communication, active listening, organisation, empathy and negotiation. Equipping young people with soft skills is vital to support newfound technical skills with the ability to actually implement them in a diverse team of colleagues and align them to business goals. 
• Career Mapping – This Is Prime takes time to gain in-depth understanding of every graduate’s existing soft skills and technical skills, and map out the distance between where a candidate currently sits and where they want to go. This personalised strategy enables staffing specialists to  successfully match young people to a new employer company that will not just likely provide them with a new job but allow them to thrive and achieve their career goals.
• Personal Support – Every graduate receives expert interview preparation personalised to their ideal role, with one-on-one support throughout the first year in their new job to help them navigate early career challenges and set them up for future success.

90% of This Is Prime’s candidates pass their probation period, evidencing the effectiveness of the training and preparation, and providing astronomical ROI in terms of client satisfaction and retention of both clients and candidates. 

The Recruiter Awards judges comment: ‘We were extremely impressed with the high level of candidate training programmes, particularly in the graduate sales sector. This Is Prime has built their agency around a clear, repeatable and scalable process. The company’s Google and Glassdoor reviews are evidence of excellent candidate care.’

2. Strategically Providing the Best Candidate Experience Through Training & Partnering Clients

Receiving REC’s ‘Best Client & Candidate Experience’ trophy for the past two consecutive years, Rafferty Resourcing uses a more indirect yet more strategic, collaborative and effective approach to providing the best hiring and onboarding experience for their candidates.

Rafferty personalises talent acquisition to every client company, crafting a completely bespoke hiring strategy every time, including training and changing employer hearts and minds by challenging the status quo. The agency trains clients in employee attraction methods including:

• Writing job descriptions that genuinely intrigue candidates and reach a much wider inclusive range of applicants
• Equipping HR teams and hiring managers with guides, tools and templates
• Conducting practice interviews for less experienced hiring managers
• Searching for new channels and methods to attract talent, thinking outside the box to explore unconventional avenues for sourcing diverse applicants.

Rafferty takes pride in going above and beyond throughout the recruitment process, which means also investing in the candidate experience directly to support their client investment. The agency provide:

• CV writing help with personalised editing and adapting for every candidate, tailored to every role 
• Matching candidates to roles based not on their past skills and experience, but assessing employers to ensure the best possible working experience, career progression opportunities and professional satisfaction for candidates for years to come
• Interview preparation with practices to reduce interview nerves and prioritise candidate mental health as standard
• Directly and consistently advocating for candidates throughout the recruitment process, negotiating for the right salary, benefits and career progression package that candidates want and need.

3. Delivering a Unique Approach and Unique Recruitment Process for Every Candidate, Personally & Professionally

The TIARA Talent Solutions Award for Best Early Career Initiative in 2024 was won by the Talent Evolution Group due to their exceptional candidate engagement practices. The agency strives to serve every applicant as an individual, helping them find the role of their dreams by connecting and supporting them as a person and as a jobseeker through:

• Understanding Every Candidate on a 1-2-1 Human Level – Not only conducting psychometric assessments wrapping around the full individual’s ability, skills, and personality, but carefully analysing and providing assessment reports on candidate fit and long-term satisfaction likelihood for both parties. These tailored assessments can then be harnessed by employers to plot the successful candidate’s career trajectory, personal development plan and management support needed to work towards promotions and take on future leadership positions. 
• Sharing Resources & Skills with Universities to Widen Impact – Working with education partners to deliver career support services to students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds who are transitioning into the workplace. The agency collaborates with UK Universities on technical skills workshops, career guidance, CV & interview preparation, job search assistance, career fairs and employer engagement.
• Prioritising Candidate Wellbeing During Interviewing – Training client hiring managers in conducting their own interviews with applicant comfort and positive candidate experience at the heart of every interview, second to assessment. The Group strives to ensure interviews are genuinely interesting, helpful and exactly the right amount of challenging for the candidate, and implement practices to reduce unconscious bias and tackle common beliefs about cultural fit.
• Supporting Candidates Through the Most Difficult Times – The Talent Evolution Group recognises that underneath every jobseeker and employee is a human being with a life, family obligations, challenges, hopes and fears. The agency delivers on its promises to be there when it matters most,  holding the hands of candidates through planned and unplanned redundancies, actively listening to their needs and determining to find them a new role. Outplacement support programmes build both confidence and new skills through training, networking, CV updating and interview practice.

The TIARA Judges comment: ‘The Talent Evolution Group demonstrates outstanding efforts in designing and executing tailored graduate recruitment programmes. Their innovative and inclusive approach, which integrates advanced assessment tools, blind evaluation processes, and personalised candidate support, fosters diversity and ensures alignment with client values.’

How to Write An Award-Winning Entry for Best Candidate Care

When you’ve set and started implementing a strategy worthy of a best candidate care award win, here’s the approach that will highlight your agency as worthy of the gold medal:

• Prepare Your Data – Research awards that you’d like to enter and take a look at the types of questions they ask for the categories you’re interested in. For candidate care this will likely focus around candidate retention rates, methods to prevent application and interview bias, interview-to-offer-to-placement ratios, NPS and recommendation scores, reviews and satisfaction surveys. Regardless of category, most awarding bodies will also require general business and financial data, such as revenue, profit per salesperson, employee base growth over time and sales projections for the next few years, so ensure you read the entry details in full and prepare the data accordingly.
• Alignment – Tailor your entry to the awarding body, the category and each individual question. Although the requirements of most awarding bodies will overlap, candidate care can be assessed very differently by different groups of judges against different criteria and different processes, eg in-person panels, virtual presentations and points-based scorecards. In the same way that candidates tailor their CV to the job description, align your awards entry with what the judges have specifically asked for, to make it as easy as possible for them to approve your entry at the first stage of qualification.
• Make Every Word Count – Awarding bodies will as standard restrict each entry’s questions by word count, forcing entrants to be as clear and concise in their explanation as possible in order to qualify for points. When you’ve written your response to each question, take the time to go through and edit. Ensure every word is used to reinforce the answer rather than just trying to sound impressive. Compelling stories and results speak for themselves; you don’t need adjectives to tell the judges how brilliant something is, but show it instead.

• Craft a Compelling Story – Stats and facts will prove your expertise and ability, but a story will captivate the hearts of your judges as well as their minds. Individuals remember stories much more easily and more positively than facts alone, and this is especially true for judges who may be reading dozens of applications over many days. Go through the case of a candidate you helped to find their ideal role or for whom you solved a problem that had an important impact on their life or career. Map out a narrative from beginning to end: what the challenge was, how you solved it, what you did that was different to competitors, results achieved, how it impacted the candidate positively and what it meant to them.
• Testimonials – No one is better able to evidence excellent candidate care than candidates themselves. Rather than ask for a generic rating number or recommendation, speak to a handful of trusted retained candidates and ask them to share their experience with you in their own words. Take notes on specifically what was different and better about your service than the service provided by your competitors. Retrieve the details of the impact you’ve had on their life, including promotions, skill development, career satisfaction, work/life balance and personal goals, to give a human face to the positive benefits delivered by your agency’s candidate care.

Win Best Candidate Care with the Best Candidate Partners

A vital part of the candidate experience is often overlooked: the service delivered by suppliers and partners beyond the recruitment process itself. Contractors can only give testimonials based on a factual representation of their recruitment and onboarding journey: how they were treated, how they felt, and how they were supported (or not) when they ended it most.

Generate’s payroll and compliance experts serve as career-long partners to every recruiter and candidate. We ensure over 12,000 candidates are paid on time and in full, no matter what. Our specialists help with any and every problem, going above and beyond to solve every challenge and help your agency retain every contractor. We work with many award-winning recruitment agencies – find out how we could help yours. 

Want to improve candidate care quickly and cost-effectively? Discover How to Upskill Underperforming Recruitment Consultants Fast & Forever.