It’s hard to imagine a more fitting motto: “175 Years of Bertelsmann – The Legacy for Our Future” not only serves as the heading for the media and services company’s big anniversary celebrations this year, but was also the central theme of the two-and-a-half-day career-building event “Talent Meets Bertelsmann.” Hundreds of students had applied, and 51 promising young talents were finally invited to Berlin in the second half of last week to think about and discuss the future of the media and media use. In the end, six groups presented business concepts they had meticulously drawn up in workshops to members of the Bertelsmann Executive Board, who had travelled to Berlin for the occasion. The winning team won a trip to New York.
Following the successful launch of the “Create Your Own Career” recruiting initiative in 2008 with a big kick-off event in Berlin, last year Bertelsmann concentrated on small, targeted events with select students. Now Bertelsmann’s Chairman & CEO Hartmut Ostrowski has resumed his patronage of “Talent Meets Bertelsmann.” “I am particularly pleased that in the year of our 175th anniversary, and following a challenging year in 2009, we can again host a big career-building event, which met with a great deal of advance interest among students,” said the CEO. “We live off our creative and entrepreneurial employees. Being able to recruit them for the future as well is an essential condition for Bertelsmann’s continued success.”
‘Building long-term relationships with top candidates’
Bertelsmann’s Corporate HR Chief Immanuel Hermreck added: “It was especially important to continue the ‘Create Your Own Career’ initiative in 2009 and to show presence to our target group again now with a major event. Our goal is to effectively establish Bertelsmann in young students’ minds as the ‘company of entrepreneurs’ and to cultivate long-term relationships with top candidates” – which is why his department is staying in touch with another 50 candidates who couldn’t be invited to the event itself.After words of welcome by Immanuel Hermreck and Thorsten Strauß, head of Bertelsmann’s Corporate Communications department, who presented the Bertelsmann Group, the event centered on six workshops in which the participants explored current opportunities and challenges in the Group’s various corporate divisions. On Thursday afternoon, the groups presented their results to a jury of senior Bertelsmann executives, including Chairman & CEO Hartmut Ostrowski, CFO Thomas Rabe and Arvato CEO Rolf Buch.
Expectations exceeded by far
And the participants gave their all in the workshops – small wonder, given that they were motivated not only by important contacts to the company, but also by attractive prizes. In the end the ideas and presentations of three teams were particularly well received by the judges. The “Random House group” developed an interesting vision for the Bertelsmann speakers agency, and as a reward for coming in third the team members will take part in an “Innovation Day” at Arvato. The “Arvato group” wowed the judges with a business model for “cloud computing,” and won second prize, an exclusive workshop at the UFA Lab in Berlin. First prize, a trip to New York including visits to the Random House and Bertelsmann Inc. headquarters, went to the “RTL Group group,” which developed an exciting approach for a new programming-related mobile application.Hartmut Ostrowski himself presented the awards to the winners on Thursday evening. On behalf of his fellow judges, he expressed the jury’s delight at the creative ideas, as well as the presentations, which were diversified, appealingly designed, and far exceeded any expectations. Corporate HR Chief Immanuel Hermreck then presented one more prize: the special award for the most creative application for Bertelsmann’s career event went to a female student who will now attend the “TV Summer School” at RTL’s School of Journalism. In addition, all participants received detailed feedback on their concepts and presentations, plus individual career counseling from Bertelsmann’s HR officers.
Summary of footage of the participants
To ensure the flair of a real “event,” the TV presenter Daniel Hartwich had been recruited to introduce the afternoon presentations and emcee the awards ceremony on the evening of the second day, providing first-rate entertainment with his famously unconventional and humorous style. And at the after-event party at Café Moskau, the German soul singer Joy Denalane made an appearance to get guests dancing.Appropriately for the target audience, this year’s recruiting event used social media such as Facebook and Twitter, allowing participants as well as hosts to communicate their experiences and impressions in and to the online communities. A video of this year’s “Talent Meets Bertelsmann” event will be posted on Bertelsmann’s career website at www.createyourowncareer.com shortly. As a foretaste of this, BeNet presents a summary of footage shot by the participants during the get-together on the first day of the event. The only specification given was the topic: “What does ‘Create Your Own Career‘ mean to you?”
Incidentally, a “Talent Meets Bertelsmann 2010 China Workshop” took place in the Chinese capital Beijing at the same time as the event in Berlin.
