How Ingredion Attracted More Diverse Candidates With A Virtual Recruiting Process

WayUp and Ingredion Case Study

Ingredion — a leading multinational ingredient provider — had incredible career opportunities for early-talent in the United States, but with a lean early-talent recruiting team, they had limited internal resources. Before working with WayUp, Ingredion’s recruiting strategy relied heavily on in-person events, like career fairs.

Ingredion wanted to showcase their brand and employer value proposition to candidates in new and innovative ways to connect with top, diverse early-career talent.

Since our collaboration began, Ingredion has attracted candidates from more than 600 universities, increased diversity in their candidate pool, and generated more than 200,000 brand impressions! Read on to learn more about how they did it.

INGREDION HAD THREE MAIN CHALLENGES

Before working with WayUp, Ingredion’s recruiting team needed to overcome three key challenges:

• They wanted to attract more diverse candidates. Ingredion has a strong commitment to diversity and pledged to meet gender parity at their “Manager plus” roles by 2030. They knew a key component was focusing on early-talent to achieve this target, especially within engineering openings.
• Ingredion wanted to expand its reach to more schools – including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). With Virtual Events and targeted sourcing, Ingredion saw the opportunity to tap into WayUp’s diverse user base of 6M students and recent grads across 7,100 campuses, including 103 HBCUs. Given that 71% of WayUp members self-identify as Black, Hispanic, or Female, it was a perfect match for Ingredion’s hiring goals.
• They sought to boost their online presence with Gen Z. Ingredion wanted to boost their online employment brand presence and connect with diverse Gen Z candidates using branded content and digital channels.

HOW INGREDION WORKED WITH WAYUP

By leveraging WayUp’s D&I Sourcing, Automated Sourcing, D&I Analytics Dashboards, Virtual Events, Automated Screening, and Employer Branding, Ingredion digitized and streamlined their campus recruiting process while reaching more diverse candidates than ever before. 

Ingredion was also paired with a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) throughout. The CSM shared best practices, led product training, and ensured that Ingredion was hitting its goals.

“Trying to organize internships within four to six months, I didn’t always have somebody I could bounce ideas off of. It’s been helpful to have this support because I’m not the only one in the room anymore,” said Dillie, of her partners on the WayUp Customer Success Team.

The Results

‍1. Increased diversity and achieved 50/50 gender parity using real-time insights.

Not only did Ingredion hit their 50/50 gender parity goal for engineering intern candidates, but they brought in strong results for ethnic diversity, as well. And with real-time insights, the team could assess their diversity goals in real-time. 

“I’ve been able to see how many people of specific ethnicities are in our candidate pool and — with all of the details — I’m able to have a more informed conversation with our hiring teams about ensuring our candidate slates have qualified, diverse candidate representation.”

Ingredion could see in real-time how their D&I demographic data looked at every stage of their funnel to ensure their process was equitable and their entry-level class was diverse.

‍2. Ingredion’s cross-college virtual events drew attendees from 85 schools.

Ingredion utilized WayUp’s Virtual Events to interact with and meet the best, most diverse, and qualified talent for its roles. WayUp managed all of the sourcing, marketing, registration, screening, and event hosting, while Ingredion managed the content of the event itself. 

Ingredion was thrilled not to need to step on a plane while still meeting candidates from 85 universities — and were thrilled that 25% of attendees were from Minority-Serving Institutions (mainly HBCUs and HSIs). The best part? Ingredion ended up hiring several of the students who attended the Virtual Events. 

According to Dillie, “the Virtual Events were really helpful. We got our name out and even hired some students who attended those events — both internships and full-time.” 

‍3. Ingredion expanded their employers brand to diverse early-talent.

Ingredion went from having little online early-talent presence to garnering 200,000 brand impressions in the first four months of the school year — between their content on WayUp, profile, jobs, and virtual events. 

• Company Profile: Of the people who viewed Ingredion’s Company Profile on WayUp, 29% then applied to a position of theirs (5% higher than the industry average). 
• Branded Content: Ingredion’s branded article was also a huge hit with candidates, which was great because diverse applicants are 37% more likely to convert from job viewer to job applicant when a company has branded content.
• Virtual Events: Ingredion’s Virtual Events drove strong brand recognition — 84% of attendees said they had never interacted with a recruiter from Ingredion before the session, and 92% said they were more interested in working at Ingredion after attending.

All in, Ingredion’s virtual presence enabled them to grow its talent network on WayUp to more than 6,000 candidates — of those users, 35% self-identify as Black, Hispanic, and Mixed Race.