Judges

Who are the judges?

The Employer Brand Management Awards is judged by a broad range of in-house industry experts in employer branding, internal communications, HR and corporate communications.

Each year we invite the previous year's winners of the 'Best creative execution of the employer brand' and the 'Grand prix' awards to join the panel and these judges fill two agency slots.

 


How does the judging system work?

Scoring is based on a points system and the judges submit these scores anonymously. The judges mark the entries against the criteria mentioned within the entry and information guide: objective, research and planning, creativity and innovation, strategy and implementation and results.

Our judging system is rigorous and fair. If a judge has entered a specific category they will be exempt from reviewing that category, to avoid a conflict of interest.

Winners are determined by the scores they receive and the entries that score high enough will be shortlisted, invited to attend the awards ceremony and awarded with a trophy. If requested, we also provide detailed feedback on agencies’ work after the awards evening, which proves useful for future entries.

 


Interested in joining the panel?

If you are interested in the opportunity to judge and believe you have the necessary background, please email Melanie at melanie.han@cravenhillpublishing.com with a short biography for consideration.

 


Take a look at the esteemed 2024 panel below. More judges will be announced shortly.

Alexandra Bairstow

Alexandra Bairstow

Global Employer Brand/Recruitment Marketing Manager, JLR

Alex is an award-winning recruitment marketing and employer brand professional, with over 20 years’ experience working on the ad agency side and more recently in-house, within Boots and now JLR. Alex believes that employer brand is critical to bringing to life what it’s really like to work at an organisation, showcasing the culture and encouraging employees to be true brand advocates by telling and sharing their stories. At JLR, Alex manages a small team in the UK, connecting with the wider global HR teams to promote Life at JLR via social media, recruitment marketing digital activities, employee advocacy and more. She has recently been part of a team developing a new EVP for JLR and is about to start work on the creation of the new employer brand.

Phil Catcheside

Phil Catcheside

Employer brand manager, Nationwide Building Society

Phil's experience in employer branding includes the well recognised names of Network Rail, and now Nationwide where he is the employer brand manager. With previous experience in consumer marketing and in house recruitment, the world of employer brand has felt like a natural and enjoyable evolution in his career.
Outside of work, Phil's energy is firmly rooted in family, fitness and adventure.

Neil Daly

Neil Daly

Head of Employer Brand & HR Communications, RWE

Neil is a highly experienced employer brand manager who has worked for some of the world’s largest energy & utility companies, helping them to define and promote their reputation and image as an employer and place to work. He has created, designed and implemented global Employee Value Propositions that can be segmented to suit the needs of distinct parts of these organisations, developing recruitment marketing campaigns to attract, develop and retain key, target audiences.

He has won a number of awards for his use of innovation in talent acquisition and retention, implementing pioneering digital and social media strategies.

Neil’s career has seen him develop the training he received as a Broadcast Journalist with the BBC into a communications expert. He moved into the energy sector recruitment industry as a brand communicator and digital expert, helping companies, from multi-nationals to start-ups, source and engage with candidates through brand marketing strategies and digital & social communications before becoming an expert in the creation & development of global employer brands.

Helen Durkin

Helen Durkin

Head of Recruitment Marketing - EMEA, Microsoft

Helen is Recruitment Marketing Lead at Microsoft across EMEA. In a brand-new role and function within the Talent Acquisition team, Helen’s role covers everything from creating from scratch and activating the GTM strategy for recruitment marketing across differing roles and countries, running job posting and advocacy training, writing copy, to activating their new employer brand work. With over 15 years’ experience starting agency side and then working across Tech, Oil and Gas and Retail, Helen has experienced most of the challenges within the recruitment marketing and employer brand space. 

 

Annie Ellis

Annie Ellis

Senior Brand Manager- Employer Brand, Grant Thornton UK LLP

Annie leads on all things employer brand at Grant Thornton, whether it’s external brand activation, creating moments that matter through the candidate journey or ensuring the employer brand resonates internally – you’ll find Annie, or her team, involved.

An inherently nosy person, this turned out to be a great trait for her career, as she is always listening and asking questions, with a love of bringing people’s stories to life through different forms.

Before joining Grant Thornton in 2021, Annie worked agency-side for 13 years, and has experience working on award-winning graduate clients and high-volume recruitment campaigns. As much as she loved the agency world, she’s found her home in-house at Grant Thornton.

Outside of work, you’ll find Annie running, sometimes alone, more often after her two children, down the allotment for some peace or hunting down the best places to eat in the local area.

Michael Ham

Michael Ham

International lead for employer brand and talent attraction, AECOM

With a hybrid career in headhunting, recruitment and digital marketing, Michael has been delivering award winning social media, digital communications, content marketing and employer branding programs across a variety of sectors since 2009. Michael has a passion for real people ‘story telling’ to bring EB and EVP to life, allied to implementing measurable, impactful recruitment marketing and communications strategies and plans to ensure business growth targets are met.


Joining AECOM in 2022, Michael has an international remit for Employer Brand, Recruitment Marketing and TA operations. With nearly 55,000 employees globally, AECOM is the world’s trusted infrastructure consulting firm.
Michael is always ‘horizon scanning’ to ensure employer branding initiatives and talent attraction approaches are on point, as well as ensuring optimisation and adoption across TA functions to different markets and cultures. Michael has a passion for the environment, ED&I, and outside of work loves travel, the outdoors, experiencing new cultures and is a consummate ‘foodie’.

Rhian Kiernan

Rhian Kiernan

Global head of employer brand and recruitment marketing, Haleon

Rhian is the Global Head of Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing at Haleon and has specialised in these areas for the past 20+ years. Her career has seen her work over several sectors to include Retail, FMCG, Technology and mobile comms. She has been a RADS judge and part of award-winning teams in the past five years. Rhian’s experience has seen her work across EVP activation, careers site implementation, Recruitment marketing content strategy and early careers attraction.

At Haleon, Rhian leads on the global employer brand and Recruitment Marketing content strategy, candidate attraction which drives brand awareness and communicates key messaging pillars using innovating creative and activation on social channels.

Kornelia Kiss

Kornelia Kiss

Global employer branding manager, TUI

Kornelia is an experienced employer branding professional who worked on brands from small startups to corporations with thousands of colleagues.

Kornelia has joined TUI in 2023 to help launch the company's now award-winning employer brand. Before that she developed and launched the first global employer branding and EVP for global mobility tech company, Flix.

She loves good storytelling and helping people find their voice and courage to tell their authentic stories. She's a techie in disguise who is always interested in new solutions to provide an excellent experience for candidates and colleagues alike.

Münteha Mangan

Münteha Mangan

Former Chief of employer branding, Turkish Aerospace

Münteha is Chief of Employer Branding at Turkish Aerospace since 2019.  He first met with "Employer Branding" while he was working for a digital employer branding platform in 2008. After 15 years of operations and communications experience including 12 years of mid-level and top-level management experience with a proven success in different functions across several sectors, he is now leading Employer Brand Communications of the sector’s fastest-growing company of Türkiye with a record-breaking and award-winning performance.

Lee Nicholls (2)

Lee Nicholls

Global head of recruitment marketing and attraction, Reckitt

Lee has been playing in the employer brand space for more years than he’d like to admit. He’s had a varied career so far in creative agency and in-house EB, recruitment marketing and employee experience roles. He’s worked with some amazing award-winning brands across the globe and is currently loving his role as Reckitt’s global recruitment marketing after joining the team two-years ago.

Tom Portingale

Tom Portingale

Head of employer brand marketing, Global, RS Group plc

Tom is an accomplished and award-winning communications, brand PR, and marketing professional. Currently serving as the Global Head of Employer Brand Marketing for RS Group, a FSTE-100 global industrial and electrical solutions provider. His expertise spans across highly regulated sectors, including financial services, alcohol and tobacco, showcased through a distinguished career in both the UK and international markets. He also holds an mMBA in Brand Management & is a CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) Accredited PR Practitioner.

Elliott Richards

Elliott Richards

Senior creative copywriter, Tonic Agency

Elliott is not your standard copywriter. His previous experience at Pink Squid and now as a senior copywriter at Tonic, combined with his commercial knowledge from leading account development teams, means he sees both sides of what good looks like. A lover of head-turning creative work that works. And particularly enjoying beautiful simplicity backed by insightful strategy. Previously a judge for the RMAs, he is excited to see this year's entries.

Danny Stacy

Danny Stacy

Head of talent intelligence, UK, Indeed.com

From project management roles within the UK government to consulting for LinkedIn, Danny is now Indeed’s go-to person for telling their story to the market – on stage at events, during industry-wide webcasts and in conference rooms at various companies around the globe.

Indeed are the world's number one job matching platform and Danny shares their story by pairing platform data with industry trend analysis to bring the value of the company’s programs and solutions to life, helping businesses to optimise their recruitment and retention tactics.

Alice Stewart

Alice Stewart

Senior Brand Manager, SKY

As Senior Brand Manager at Sky, Alice is responsible for providing branding and attraction expertise to drive the employer brand in the UK and across the Sky Group. Prior to her current role, Alice was Employer Brand Manager at professional services firm EY, leading the employer brand activity for early careers in UK&I. She has a passion for creating engaging content, digital marketing, and using data and insights to deliver successful employer brand campaigns and recruitment marketing activity.