A professional services firm that claims 80,000 international employees and caters to more than half of the world's Fortune 500 companies must do a lot of things right to stay in the game.

But when it comes to finding the right college graduate to fill company openings, it turns out that Deloitte is no better than anyone else.

To overcome the challenge, the company recently contracted with Partners Creative, a Missoula-based marketing and communications firm, to invent and design an online tool to help job applicants navigate a career with Deloitte.

The tool was launched last year and has grown in popularity among recruiters and prospective employees. Last week, it also earned the 2017 Web Award for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development by the Web Marketers Association.

“From the beginning, we knew we wanted to create something that was genuinely valuable and unique for prospective employees and for Deloitte,” said Sean Benton, creative director of Partners Creative. “Doing that required not only delivering an experience that was creatively interesting, but also felt valid and worthwhile to those who spent the time to do it.”

Benton, who shared the award with several other employees at Partners Creative, said the online tool was born from two primary problems facing Deloitte.

One, it wasn't easy to find quality graduates to fill thousands of job openings within the company each year, including highly specialized roles. On the flip side, many college graduates look to enter the workforce without a clear understanding of the jobs that best fit their degrees and passions.

The resulting tool, dubbed “Explore Your Fit,” uses hiring data and survey results from Deloitte employees to help guide prospective applicants toward company careers that best fit their interests and skills.

Based on how the applicant answers a series of questions, the tool provides the user with a custom portal, providing suggestions for best-fit careers. It also introduces graduates to leadership articles, internships and potential employment.

“Recruiters have really embraced Explore Your Fit,” said Liane Bilicki, national recruitment branding leader at Deloitte. “They’ve been asking students to run through the tool and bring their results to their appointments in order to have a more meaningful conversation about a future at Deloitte.”

Benton said the tool averaged more than 3,300 unique users per month during the first five months and earned an average user rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

It also has added to the company's growth. Over the past two years, Benton said, Partners Creative has doubled its staff and added a number of large national accounts, including Stanley Black & Decker and Commvault, a data protection company. Regional clients now include the Montana State Fund and Missoula Federal Credit Union.

“We’ve invested heavily in growing our digital capabilities and finding the right people so that we can serve any client, anywhere,” Benton said. “It’s great to see those investments being recognized outside of Missoula now.”

Along with Benton, art directors Steve Falen and Jon Gelder, also shared in the web award, as did digital director Tony Ferrini, digital designer Lou Ghaddar, and digital developers Zach Falen, Kara Shapiro and Jesse Sindler.

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