How Agilent Technologies Hires Qualified Female Talent Through Fairygodboss

“We needed a better approach to reaching qualified female job seekers,” said Giovanna Morandi, the Global Talent Acquisition & Mobility Strategic Programs at Agilent Technologies.

Agilent Technologies, a global leader in life sciences, diagnostics and applied chemical markets, knew that in order to be more gender diverse and successful, they needed to attract female job seekers more efficiently. But the question was how?

We interviewed Morandi to learn how Agilent Technologies leveraged Fairygodboss, the largest career community of women, to reach their target audience and hire experienced female talent.

Why conferences and events were too expensive and time consuming

With the challenge of reaching more women in front of them, the Agilent team initially set out to connect with candidates in person at career fairs, national events and on college campuses.  They would go to recruiting events with attendees from across the United States  and also work directly with campus program managers to reach soon-to-graduate diverse student populations.

The problem: Career fairs and events — although high touch —were expensive and time consuming.

Streamlining their approach to finding female talent

“It was clear we needed a digital platform that could streamline the process of reaching diverse female candidates,” said Morandi. “And that’s exactly where Fairygodboss came in.”

When Agilent Technologies turned to Fairygodboss, a key metric they were focused on was measuring the number of female applicants in their hiring funnel, and also the number of women who went on to become employees. 

“Striving for gender diversity is a must at Agilent, so it was critical that we expanded our reach and improve these metrics,” said Morandi. “That was our biggest goal.”

Hiring qualified women for hard-to-fill positions

Fairygodboss became instrumental in helping Agilent find and hire qualified women. “Fairygodboss is great because it attracts active female job seekers, which was exactly who we were looking for,” said Morandi. “The Fairygodboss platform, including their signature Virtual Career Fair event, impressed our recruiters and gave us the ability to engage and target a qualified audience. It offered us a tangible ROI.” 

On the hiring front, Agilent has engaged Fairygodboss to connect with their target audience of female job seekers. They’ve seen close to 2,500 apply starts from female candidates interested in positions like Research Assistant, Account Manager, Program Manager and Data Analyst. Agilent has also hired hard-to-fill spots, including a female Marketing Specialist located on the East Coast, a female Finance Manager located on the West Coast, among others. 

“Having Fairygodboss’ diverse pool of qualified female talent in front of you saves recruiters so much time — that  kind of talent is not easy to find.”

Going beyond the job board to reach female job seekers

“Put simply, there’s no equivalent platform out there that offers companies access to this kind of targeted audience of female talent,” said Morandi.

Today, Morandi also puts stock in Fairygodboss’ thought leadership and voice in the industry. “When it comes to diversity and inclusion, Fairygodboss has their thumb on the pulse of what’s relevant and what’s trending,” she said. “As a partner, that’s important because it’s clear that they understand the voice of the customer.”

Morandi also believes that companies looking to hire more women get different and better opportunities when working with Fairygodboss. “Fairygodboss goes beyond just a page a job posting,” she said. 

Today, when you become a Fairygodboss partner, companies can leverage a range of channels and platforms to reach female job seekers — including social media takeovers, webinars, articles, podcasts and more. “It’s a multi-channel and multi-tactic approach to reaching the audience you’re looking for,” said Morandi. “It’s amazing and not something you find very often in a partner.”

Agilent Technologies By the Numbers*

*Source: Internal Analytics, Imply (January 2019 - December 2019)