Press release

Cielo celebrates bringing better talent experiences for all

Feb 28, 2023

BROOKFIELD, WI – 2022 was a year of evolution for global talent acquisition partner Cielo: in strategy, identity, and services. We continue to help businesses successfully navigate the fluctuating market by creating new ways to engage talent and expanding our tech-enabled offerings. By increasing our global footprint, we’re enhancing our ability to serve clients worldwide with timely, strategic talent solutions. And we followed a record year in 2021 with new heights in customer retention in 2022, retaining over 92% of clients across service lines – all while owning our place as a market leader.

“To say the past year was a success for Cielo would be an understatement,” said CEO Marissa Geist. “As we renew our unique ability to humanize the talent acquisition process, we’re embracing change and strengthening our promise to illuminate talent for our clients. It’s exciting to reflect on what we’ve achieved together, and where we’re primed to go in the future. Being the most-awarded talent acquisition partner underscores the collective efforts we’ve made to create better talent experiences for all.”

As we move into a new era of energizing products and services, we’re celebrating what Cielo teams, clients and industry partners have accomplished together over the past year.

Refreshing Cielo with a new growth strategy

Kicking off the first of several big changes was Founder and Chief Executive Officer Sue Marks turning over the CEO role to Marissa Geist. From there, the shifting talent market inspired us to redefine our brand promise and create a new growth strategy to accelerate better talent outcomes.

Deliberately shifting our business structure around the industries we serve allows us to better deliver strategic, sector-based outcomes to talent partners in healthcare, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, technology, retail, consumer goods, and business services. Cielo’s new multi-year growth strategy reinforces the value, agility and flexibility we offer clients, supporting TA leaders by:

  1. Ongoing investment in expertise and insights into industry-specific hiring dynamics
  2. Innovating and expanding products and services to target tomorrow’s talent issues
  3. Creating scalable solutions using increasingly tech-forward approaches

We put clients first – always. Our new strategy provides them with access to expertise where and when required, allowing them to succeed in the fluctuating talent landscape.

Celebrating Cielo’s people & igniting success

Our people are at the heart of our success. Diverse, talented, and original, they shine and imagine better every day. To create a brighter future for employees both personally and professionally, we introduced a new employee value proposition that cements our commitment to growing – and glowing – together.

We also launched Cielo University, a unique educational platform that prepares new hires and upskills existing team members to be the top talent in the TA industry. Global employees can take advantage of multiple programs, such as a recruiter training program that includes both e-learning and live sessions. In addition, we rolled out a market-leading learning platform for Cielo recruiters and hiring teams, to understand best practices and access external market perspectives from over 80 industry experts and more than 800 learning courses.

Finding new ways to engage employees is part of our mission to foster a sense of belonging and pride – and employee engagement remains high. Over the past year, team members were encouraged to share how they uncover original ideas and light the way toward advancements in the talent acquisition industry. We held almost 500 interactive sessions to educate team members about their role in ensuring Cielo remains the market leader in talent acquisition, giving them the opportunity to join in the excitement of where we’re headed – together.

In recognition of the culture and collaborative community within Cielo, we were named a Best & Brightest Company to Work For®, one of Glassdoor’s Top 100 Best Places to Work, and a Top Workplace in the U.S. We were also a finalist in the EMEA Inspiring Workplaces awards.

Expanding services to maximize value

Companies have achieved incredible results with our proven talent solutions, demonstrating the value of working with Cielo – and increasing demand worldwide. In response, we opened a new office in India, made strategic investments in other key geographies, and expanded our existing services to continue to spotlight great talent for clients.

  • The shifting talent landscape has more businesses seeking the benefits of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). Our enterprise RPO solution offers best-in-class strategy and support tailored to regions, industries, business units, or roles – creating 227,000 new careers through our partnerships in 2022. To provide clients with more flexibility, we now have modular RPO service offerings that give companies the ability to plug in expertise at specific steps in the recruitment value chain, wherever they need support or scale. With our collective RPO expertise, we continue to provide the cutting-edge technology needed to attract and retain the best talent with our proprietary platform Cielo TalentCloud. We’re evolving our features, including more robotic process automation, enhanced language processing and comprehensive audio screening – all to improve the experience of hiring managers and candidates alike.

  • Our Consulting practice was remodeled to better support clients in transforming their hiring and engagement approach through business and talent strategy, employer brand, technology, DEI, data and change management:

    • Companies are increasingly seeking insightful guidance from Consulting in the form of Talent & HR Strategic Advisory. From defining future state to optimizing across the full talent spectrum, we remain committed to providing robust options to support clients as they address the ever-evolving talent market.

    • We’ve expanded Employer Branding & Talent Marketing Consulting to help clients craft winning branding solutions and increase engagement through the strategic use of data and technology. Notable achievements include an Inova Health Registered Nurse campaign that resulted in 9.1 million targeted impressions and over 1,600 applications. Clients Charles River and BD saw strong gains from a revised employer brand, netting both a MarCom Gold Award.

    • Technology & Digital Consulting saw continued growth as companies seek the benefits of smarter, optimized investments in HR tech – from hiring to payroll – to deliver their TA outcomes. We acquired global technology consulting firm Peridus Group, enhancing our Workday, technical HR and data capabilities to help clients stay ahead of the curve.

    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Consulting remains a proven service in cultivating inclusivity in the workplace through DEI strategies, journey mapping, and learning and development. We’re helping clients – more than double the year before – chart a clear path forward using DEI assessments. With enhanced reporting technology and clear visibility into the entire process, businesses can measure and track each segment of diversity across their global recruitment process for the most impactful results.

  • With an unpredictable hiring landscape, we’ve advanced our Executive Search services to secure leadership talent fast and efficiently for clients worldwide. We launched an Executive Search Outsourcing (ESO) offering, supporting our largest ESO partnership with a dedicated team that saved the client over $2 million compared to using third-party search agencies. We’re also expanding our Project Search product, which supports hiring for difficult-to-fill senior leadership roles within challenging timeframes to accelerate revenue growth, cost saving or service transformations. We continue to build on Cielo’s reputation as a bright alternative to traditional search companies.

  • Our Contingent Workforce solutions provide a total workforce and talent market view focused on bringing the right talent to work, regardless of type of talent or source of candidate. We help our clients create talent communities of gig, temporary and retained talent by bringing our expertise and market access to recruit and manage the hiring process through direct sourcing in a single system. With the data, governance and proven attraction strategies, we scale our solutions from headcount tracking and visibility on spend and resource usage to more holistic approaches at an enterprise hiring level.​

Cielo’s the most awarded TA partner

Commitment to innovation, industry-led services, and excellent execution for clients earned us top awards and recognition from several leading analysts:

New advancements, fresh strategies, and reinforcing Cielo’s guiding light. They all add up to one purpose: creating outstanding results for our partners and people. No matter what challenges the economy and talent market bring, we remain committed to helping companies build a shining talent acquisition approach.

About Cielo

Cielo Logo

Cielo is the world's leading Talent Acquisition Partner. We deliver a better talent experience for everyone through Talent Acquisition, Search, Consulting, and Digital Accelerators™. With our fresh approach – we design and build comprehensive, proven solutions inspired by technology to find and keep the unique talent that elevates our clients above the competition. To learn more, visit cielotalent.com.

Media contact

Annamarie Andrews

marketing@cielotalent.com