New Belgium engaging the right job candidates

New Belgium found the right candidates faster, enabled collaborative hiring, and support company growth with Cornerstone.

New Belgium Brewing is a nationally renowned craft brewery that produces high-quality, Belgian-inspired beers. In just over two decades, New Belgium has grown to become the third-largest craft brewery in the U.S. The company is recognized as one of Outside magazine’s “Best Places to Work” and one of the Wall Street Journal’s “Best Small Businesses.”

New Belgium is known for its high involvement culture—employees receive benefits such as paid sabbaticals and trips to Belgium after milestone anniversaries. The company’s unique management style makes the sourcing and recruiting process more intensive, as supporting this environment requires evaluating both a candidate’s skill and their potential fit within the company’s culture. As an added challenge, the company’s recent growth— construction of a second brewery in Asheville, North Carolina, and an expansion of their sales force—means recruiters must increase sourcing efforts while simultaneously reducing time to hire.

Why Cornerstone

With Cornerstone Recruiting, New Belgium found a highly configurable, integrated solution that is flexible enough to adapt to the company's existing recruiting process. The solution also will easily expand with the company as business and workforce needs increase. "One of the most important aspects of Cornerstone Recruiting is its flexibility," said Greg Churchman, talent sage for New Belgium. "Every organization is different in how they recruit. The recruiting solution adapts to us."

With Cornerstone Recruiting, New Belgium can go beyond merely tracking and evaluating candidates, to creating ready talent pools, building custom career sites and leveraging employee referrals. New Belgium is currently integrating Cornerstone Recruiting with Cornerstone Learning, Cornerstone Connect and Cornerstone Performance, key to managing the entire employee lifecycle.

The Results

Find the right people for the right jobs, in less time. With the Cornerstone Recruiting, New Belgium can find candidates who are both a skill and cultural match much faster. “We’re fortunate to get 200 to 300 applicants for any job opening. Our challenge is how we get through those applicants to find the people who really want to work here and self-select into our culture,” said Jennifer Briggs, HR director for New Belgium. “Cornerstone enables us do that in less time, which means we have more time to engage with the right candidates.”

Enable hiring collaboration. Hiring new employees is a team effort at New Belgium, and company leaders rely on the recruiting solution to support collaboration on candidate assessments. "Our teams across the country can now work together to make joint hiring decisions,” said Briggs. "When we hire people, we have teams of people who look at applicants to say, 'should we hire that person into our team?' Even if we have a remote team of five people, that team is able to collaborate. They can see the same data and operate from the same place."

Review remote candidates and support hiring needs throughout current and future expansions. With a growing national sales force and expansion into a second brewery thousands of miles away, New Belgium relies on Cornerstone Recruiting to engage with and review remote candidates. "We're looking to add some wonderful salespeople to grow our brand across the country,” said Briggs. "Cornerstone provides us with a one-stop-shop to source and recruit great candidates, independent of their location or ours."