John Deere’s Virtual Career Day
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Many students know this situation: They graduate and the search for the first job becomes more urgent as time passes. There are many potential employers, but what is the right functional area, where is the right place to start one’s career? Useful information on potential employers is difficult to obtain. One way to get to know companies is by visiting a career fair. However, these often take place in stuffy, anonymous exhibition halls – probably not the best place to a have a meaningful conversation about one’s future. Furthermore, it is often the case that an appropriate contact person is not available at this particular fair. Big effort - little effect. A much easier way to get in touch with prospective employers is a virtual career fair – a career event that takes place on an interactive Internet platform. Distance in time and space becomes irrelevant because the participants can gather information comfortably from their homes. John Deere’s virtual career day proved the effectiveness of this formula for success. With ubivent’s help, everyone interested could get an idea of John Deere, the worldwide leading manu- facturer of agricultural machinery, as an employer. The partici- pants had the opportunity to gather information on various func- tional areas, e.g., engineering, marketing, sales, finance, and accounting in all parts of Europe. Moreover, students, who are not yet searching for their first full-time job, could get information on internships and theses. The presentation of all the different John Deere’s Virtual Career Day opportunities that John Deere has to offer has been the goal of the event. The project manager, Patricia Zühlke, comments on this: “John Deere is certainly famous amongst engi- neers. But that we also offer interesting positions for financial managers or marketing experts is by far less known. That’s what we wanted to communicate all across Europe.” This goal has been very well achieved. The project team ensu- red that all participants got easy access to all the information they were searching for. Four video presentations on functional areas allowed the participants to get deeper insight into their field of interest. Live chats were offered after each of these pre- sentations. Ingolf Prüfer, Director of Human Resources, Europe success story „Virtual career fairs are an important tool to present John Deere as employer of choice. With ubivent we could reach this goal on highest standard.“ The main hall – starting point for all online users.
Transcript of John Deere’s Virtual Career Day
Many students know this situation: They graduate and the search for the fi rst job becomes more urgent as time passes. There are many potential employers, but what is the right functional area, where is the right place to start one’s career? Useful information on potential employers is diffi cult to obtain. One way to get to know companies is by visiting a career fair. However, these often take place in stuffy, anonymous exhibition halls – probably not the best place to a have a meaningful conversation about one’s future. Furthermore, it is often the case that an appropriate contact person is not available at this particular fair. Big effort - little effect. A much easier way to get in touch with prospective employers is a virtual career fair – a career event that takes place on an interactive Internet platform. Distance in time and space becomes irrelevant because the participants can gather information comfortably from their homes.
John Deere’s virtual career day proved the effectiveness of this formula for success. With ubivent’s help, everyone interested could get an idea of John Deere, the worldwide leading manu-facturer of agricultural machinery, as an employer. The partici-pants had the opportunity to gather information on various func-tional areas, e.g., engineering, marketing, sales, fi nance, and accounting in all parts of Europe. Moreover, students, who are not yet searching for their fi rst full-time job, could get information on internships and theses. The presentation of all the different
John Deere’s Virtual Career Day
opportunities that John Deere has to offer has been the goal of the event. The project manager, Patricia Zühlke, comments on this: “John Deere is certainly famous amongst engi-neers. But that we also offer interesting positions for fi nancial managers or marketing experts is by far less known. That’s what we wanted to communicate all across Europe.”
This goal has been very well achieved. The project team ensu-red that all participants got easy access to all the information they were searching for. Four video presentations on functional areas allowed the participants to get deeper insight into their fi eld of interest. Live chats were offered after each of these pre-sentations.
Ingolf Prüfer, Director of Human Resources, Europe
success story
„Virtual career fairs are an important tool to present John Deere as employer of choice. With ubivent we could reach this goal on highest standard.“
The main hall – starting point for all online users.
For further information please contact us:
ubivent GmbHJulius-Hatry-Str. 168163 MannheimGERMANY
t. +49 621 5 867 967 - 0f. +49 621 5 867 967 - 1
contact.
ubivent is Europe’s leading virtual event speci-alist. A team of diverse professionals delivers the best possible solution for virtual events. The ubivent platform is a visually appealing, easy to use, high performance, and scalable virtual event solution. The event experience can be individually tailored to fulfi ll all custo-mer specifi c needs. Embrace these advanta-ges by virtualizing public and internal events.
Deere & Company is the world’s leading manu-facturer of farm equipment. Since its establish-ment in 1837 John Deere is dedicated to those who are linked to the land – farmers, ranchers, landowners, builders, and loggers. And Deere has never outgrown nor forgotten its founder‘s original core values: integrity, quality, commit-ment and innovation. Those values determine the way John Deere works, the quality they offer, and the unsurpassed treatment you get as a customer, investor, and employee.
All these discussions lasted more than an hour and were very sti-mulating for both participants and hosts. Although these group discussions left close to no question unanswered, there have been some questions that participants did not want to ask in public. For these questions, John Deere has staffed virtual infor-mation booths.
At each of the virtual booths, John Deere experts on different topics were available all day so that visitors could, for example, discuss the possibilities of gas engines for tractors. This chance for personal interaction was well-received by John Deere as well as the participants. Dr. Thomas Peuntner, Manager Global Uni-versity Relations, confi rmed the fair’s success: ”Participants from all over Europe have visited us, the exchange of information was lively and the platform technolo-gy worked fl awless. The participants’ feedback was very positive and all colleagues had great fun.“
The fun was not only on the side of employees, but also on that of the participants, confi rms a look at the comments given in the feedback questionnaires: For instance, almost all of the participants’ attitude towards John Deere has greatly or even very greatly improved, 98% of the participants said that they would recommend such an event to their friends and 90% as-sessed the available content as “good” or “very good”. Fur-thermore, the application rate picked up signifi cantly after the event, especially for internships and theses. Altogether, John Deere is very satisfi ed with their virtual career day. Ingolf Prü-fer, European Director of Human Resources, gave a summary: “The development towards new media for recruiting is unstoppable. Virtual career fairs are an important tool to present John Deere as employer of choice. With ubivent we could reach this goal on highest standard.”
Direct interaction at virtual booths.
success story
Video presentation in the virtual auditorium.
