Apply today for the industry's most prestigious recruiting award

This is your chance to share how your recruiting success is helping your business — and in many cases furthering the recruiting profession. Whether it's your your careers website, your referral program, retention program, military recruiting program (a new category this year), your branding initiative, or another talent strategy, this is your best chance to showcase what's working at your organization.

ERE Media is getting ready to accept applications for the annual ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. All entries are due January 6 by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time - the end of the day. We very strongly recommend you apply a few days earlier, in case you have any technical issues.

The winners will be announced at ERE's upcoming conference in San Diego. Here's a video of the 2011 honorees as well as a brief look at the finalists.

Don't miss this opportunity to put your recruiting deparment's best practices in the spotlight. You can join an illustrious group of past winners, such as Accenture, Cisco, Enterprise, Deloitte, DaVita, Sodexo, the Naval Sea System Command, Ernst & Young, and Whirlpool, as leaders in the recruiting field.

Big companies, small companies -- they all are given a chance. We've had honorees (like Rosetta, in the 2010 awards) with just a fraction of the budget and employee base as larger corporations. Don't let your hard work go unrecognized.

We are currently accepting applications in eight categories. To view the complete of categories visit www.ereawards.com/categories-and-criteria/.

Here's what one of the past winners has to share about his award: "Being recognized for our work at Microsoft by our peers is a very encouraging experience (given the great work that is being done by recruiting departments around the globe). It is also serves to challenge us to continue to explore, discover and pioneer." - Marvin Smith Talent Community Evangelist Microsoft Entertainment & Devices