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From Healthcare to Retail: Organizations Leverage AI to Transform Traditional HR into Strategic Powerhouse for Growth and Innovation
Phenom Announces 2025 Talent Experience Award Winners: Global Enterprises Set New HR Benchmarks
Jennifer Lyons
Phenom
267-379-5066
jennifer.lyons@phenom.com
Phenom today unveiled the winners of its 2025 Talent Experience awards. The awards celebrate the extraordinary achievements by organizations, teams and individuals using intelligence, automation and experience to hire, develop and retain employees with unmatched efficiency while maintaining meaningful human interactions.
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Phenom unveiled its 2025 Talent Experience awards winners — celebrating the extraordinary achievements by organizations, teams and individuals using intelligence, automation and experience to hire, develop and retain employees with unmatched efficiency while maintaining meaningful human interactions. (Graphic: Business Wire)
Award winners were announced onsite at this year’s IAMPHENOM — the must-attend conference for human resources professionals taking place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia March 11-13. Winners spanned industries including healthcare, retail, manufacturing, financial services, technology and education, demonstrating the universal impact of intelligent talent solutions.
Organizations achieving phenomenal results by leveraging the Phenom platform to successfully reach their hiring and retention goals include:
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Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany — Top Talent Experience
Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, transformed its entire talent experience strategy, creating seamless journeys for both prospective and current employees. Their modernized career site engages candidates with personalized experiences and intelligent automation. Internally, over 36,000 employees — well over half of the workforce — are actively utilizing the platform, with more than 14,000 having created individual profiles and more than 200,000 skills entered. The platform centralizes more than 29,000 learning offerings, fosters internal mobility and already enables more than 1,000 mentorships. With this data-driven approach, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany demonstrates how intelligent technology can enhance both recruitment and development, setting new standards for what’s possible in talent experience.
Team Achievements:
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Baylor Scott & White Health — Talent Acquisition Team of the Year
Committed to continuously improving healthcare recruitment, Baylor Scott & White Health transcended traditional hiring methods to craft an experience that preserves essential human connection at every interaction. Their reimagined career site drove a 15% spike in applications, while their AI-powered fast-track hiring cut offer times by more than half; reduced hiring manager interview volume by 52%; and saved over 1,040 hours of recruiting time with one-way interviews alone. Their chatbot became a 24/7 career guide — connecting thousands to their dream roles — and their own employees became their greatest talent ambassadors, with referrals accounting for 21% of all external hires.
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Truist — Talent Management Team of the Year
Truist is redefining internal mobility through its “Career Discovery Hub” — an internal talent marketplace that empowers employees to forge meaningful career paths with transparency and support. In under one year, Truist engaged 70% of their workforce, who activated 19,000 unique skills. This skills-first approach — combined with seamlessly integrated career coaching, mentoring and comprehensive development resources — enabled them to fill 47% of roles internally. This success reflects Truist’s commitment to continuous growth, enabling employees to explore roles across the organization while identifying skill gaps and accessing targeted learning recommendations. Their “When You Grow, We Grow” philosophy has created a culture where career development is an ongoing journey rather than a periodic discussion.
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HelloFresh — Employer Brand of the Year
HelloFresh elevated its global talent acquisition strategy through two innovative employer brand campaigns that drove unprecedented engagement and growth. “Cooking Eggs” showcased regional leaders preparing dishes while highlighting local culture, driving a 174% increase in career site traffic and 40% surge in external applications. Their “Cooking Up a Career” initiative celebrated internal mobility success stories, leading to internal candidates comprising nearly 33% of total applications. Maximizing Phenom’s suite of tools for personalized engagement and analytics, HelloFresh created a cohesive employer brand that resonates across markets while delivering measurable impact on both recruitment and retention.
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Thermo Fisher Scientific — Best Use of AI and Automation
Thermo Fisher Scientific is transforming the HR landscape by strategically employing generative AI across the candidate lifecycle. From crafting inclusive job descriptions to reimagining candidate engagement and enhancing the interview experience, their advanced technology amplifies human potential at every step. With AI-driven interview intelligence initiated on over 1,100 candidate conversations, they’ve unlocked faster, data-driven hiring decisions and freed interviewers to focus on meaningful dialogue. By slashing screening time from 16 days to just 7 minutes, Thermo Fisher revolutionized how quickly top talent is identified — fueling a 23% increase in monthly hires and saving over 9,000 hours through automated scheduling. This foundation of intelligent hiring demonstrates how innovation can drive broader transformation.
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Kohl’s, Inc. — Best Early Talent Recruiting
Kohl’s Early Talent team creates a seamless recruitment experience that puts candidates first while driving marked efficiencies. By leveraging smart tech tools for event management and automated scheduling, the team processed several thousand event registrations across two semesters — delivering interview invitations within 24 hours of each event. This reimagined approach reduced interview scheduling time by 155 hours per semester, with candidates securing interview slots within 18 hours on average. This fall, the team managed more than 2,000 interviews, minimizing support inquires by 40% while ensuring personalized communication that reflects Kohl’s commitment to treating every candidate as a valued customer.
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HUGO BOSS — Top Collaborator of the Year
HUGO BOSS transformed its talent acquisition strategy by breaking down barriers between candidates and their dynamic workplace culture. Through authentic employee video testimonials and intelligent streamlined navigation in six languages, they created consistent yet personalized experiences across all touchpoints. Their career site innovations reduced application time to under 4 minutes and led to a 28% boost in engagement, while their internal talent marketplace facilitated thousands of employee referrals — showcasing the strength of their employer brand. Underpinning these achievements, AI-powered candidate matching resulted in a 34% increase in top-matched talent, ensuring quality at scale.
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Dallas College — Rookie of the Year
Dallas College set out to create an exceptional, seamless experience for candidates while strengthening their ability to attract and engage top talent. In just six months, they achieved this goal while cutting time to fill for staff and administrator positions by 50%. The college’s enhanced digital presence is resonating strongly with job seekers — attracting more than double the industry benchmark for career site visits and generating 32% more leads than competitors. With application clicks exceeding averages by 19% and engagement metrics consistently surpassing industry standards, the college exemplifies how intelligent technology and streamlined processes can elevate an organization’s hiring capabilities.
Individual Achievements:
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Matthias Leitzmann VP, Talent Acquisition at Mastercard — Talent Acquisition Leader of the Year
Mastercard’s Talent Acquisition function has undergone significant transformation, driven by a strategic focus on data, innovation, and technology. Matthias Leitzmann, as the leader of the global Talent Discovery team, played a pivotal role in designing and executing the strategies that fueled this transformation. His team’s data-driven and consumer-marketing oriented approach resulted in their talent community growing from an initial 50K to over 1.6M profiles by the end of 2024, influencing 35% of all external hires globally. By selectively integrating AI-powered automation with personalized candidate engagement, these initiatives reduced interview scheduling time by 87% while cutting career site bounce rates in half. Additionally, his team launched Mastercard’s official Alumni Network, which yielded 1.6K boomerang applications, demonstrating how innovative talent discovery can deliver measurable business impact at scale.
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Tim Lippincott, VP People Strategy at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield — Talent Management Leader of the Year
Faced with post-pandemic hiring demands, Tim Lippincott saw beyond immediate recruitment needs at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield. As VP of People Strategy, he championed a focus on internal mobility and a skills-first approach that is redefining career development across the organization. Under his leadership, Excellus built comprehensive AI-driven talent profiles capturing over 80,000 skills — with 34% of employees actively adding their capabilities and 33% updating their experience. His vision for internal mobility is materializing through a seamlessly integrated new mentorship program, transparent career pathways and a validation process that’s reshaping how the company develops talent from within.
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Grant Smith, Global Recruitment Marketing Specialist at TD SYNNEX — Talent Marketer of the Year
At TD SYNNEX, Grant Smith elevated global talent acquisition through strategic recruitment marketing that produced remarkable results. His redesign of the company’s global career site drove a 68% increase in job seekers and earned two Gold distinctions in the Website Redesign category, recognized by the 2024 Hermes Creative Awards and DotCOMM Awards. Smith’s data-driven approach led to a 60% influx in web traffic, generating over 2 million page views in the first year. His innovative email campaigns achieved a 60% open rate — triple the industry standard — while his optimization efforts significantly enhanced the candidate experience, reducing bounce and exit rates, ensuring a smoother journey for job seekers. Smith credits much of his success to the collaboration and support of his exceptional talent acquisition team, whose partnership helped turn bold ideas into measurable results.
Partner Achievements:
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SAP SuccessFactors — Technology Partner of the Year
SAP and Phenom’s strategic partnership continues to set new benchmarks in HR technology excellence. With over 70 mutual customers benefiting from seamless data connectivity and exceptional candidate experiences, the alliance achieved remarkable momentum in 2024 — delivering 700% year-over-year growth while maintaining zero customer churn. Organizations leveraging this integrated solution are transforming how they hire through AI and automation. The partnership’s success stems from deep alignment across strategy, product development and sales initiatives, demonstrated through collaborative thought leadership, customer success stories and joint market presence.
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Deloitte Consulting LLP — Advisory Partner of the Year
This recognition is a testament to Deloitte’s exceptional commitment to its strategic alliance with Phenom — bringing talent experience innovation to new heights globally. Over the past year, the two organizations collaborated on bringing over 15 initiatives to life. Through Deloitte’s virtually unparalleled Human Capital expertise and Phenom’s AI-powered platform, a new gold standard has been set for how enterprises attract, develop and retain top talent. Deloitte’s commitment to thought leadership and Phenom’s Customer Advisory Board has been instrumental in advancing intelligent talent solutions and accelerating their adoption worldwide. Their dedication and visionary insights have not only elevated this alliance but also established a blueprint for organizational excellence.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) — Innovation Partner of the Year
The strategic partnership between AWS and Phenom has revolutionized how enterprises approach talent experience technology. As an elite ISV Accelerate Partner, AWS has helped Phenom expand its reach to technical decision-makers while strengthening the platform’s compliance and security capabilities. The collaboration has resolved over 1,100 compliance requirements, enabling organizations across various industries to confidently deploy AI-powered talent solutions. Together, AWS and Phenom are helping businesses accelerate their talent transformation through robust cloud infrastructure and seamless integration capabilities.
“This year’s Talent Experience Award winners represent a turning point in HR transformation,” said Christina Brown, Vice President, Global Customer Value at Phenom. “They’ve proven that AI isn’t just about efficiency and scale — it’s about amplifying human potential and creating connections that drive both business growth and individual success.”
To learn more about winners of the 2025 Talent Experience awards, click here.
About Phenom
Phenom has a purpose of helping a billion people find the right work. Through AI-powered talent experiences, employers use Phenom to hire and onboard employees faster, develop them to their full potential, and retain them longer. The Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience platform seamlessly connects candidates, employees, recruiters, talent marketers, talent leaders, hiring managers, HR and HRIT — empowering diverse and global enterprises with innovative products including Phenom X+ Generative AI, Career Site, Chatbot, CMS, Talent CRM, X+ Screening, Automated Interview Scheduling, Interview Intelligence, Talent Experience Engine, Campaigns, University Recruiting, Contingent Talent Hiring, Onboarding, Talent Marketplace, Workforce Intelligence, Career Pathing, Gigs, Mentoring, and Referrals.
Phenom has earned accolades including: Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing companies (5 consecutive years), Deloitte Technology's Fast 500 (4 consecutive years), 11 Brandon Hall ‘Excellence in Technology’ awards including Gold for ‘Best Advance in Generative AI for Business Impact,’ Business Intelligence Group’s Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards (3 consecutive years), The Cloud Awards 2025/2024, The A.I. Awards 2024, and a regional Timmy Award for launching and optimizing HelpOneBillion.com (2020).
Headquartered in Greater Philadelphia, Phenom also has offices in India, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.
For more information, please visit www.phenom.com. Connect with Phenom on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
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“This year’s Talent Experience Award winners represent a turning point in HR transformation,” said Christina Brown, VP, Global Customer Value, Phenom. “They’ve proven that AI isn’t just about efficiency and scale — it’s about amplifying human potential.”
