For three days from 2pm (CET) on April 25th, over 350 MBA students from some of Europe’s leading business schools will take part in the European MBA Virtual Career Fair, an innovative, entirely digitally-based careers event.
“We wanted to create a platform which will enable our students to explore roles in a number of companies with diverse career opportunities,” says Andrew Bagshaw, MBA career relationship manager at the UK's Lancaster University Management School.
Lancaster is one of a group of seven triple-accredited business schools participating in the collaborative venture, including France’s EMLYON and Grenoble École de Management, Spain’s EADA, Italy’s MIP Politecnico di Milano, UCD Smurfit School in Ireland, and Aston Business School in the UK.
“Students will get to engage with organizations from across Europe, to find out what they do, what roles are available and what they’re looking for in applicants,” Andrew says.
Already, a variety of top employers have signed up. Among them, luxury goods leader Louis Vuitton, pharma giant GSK, global hospitality company Hyatt, recruitment consultancies Hayes and Global Career Company, Fin-Tech firm Kantox and a number of leading consulting firms including Mars & Co, OEE Consulting and Camelot.
The benefits over a traditional careers fair are simple: “Companies can engage with students, promote their brand and opportunities, all from the comfort of their own office,” Andrew explains.
Paul Schoonenberg, head of MBA careers at Aston Business School, agrees: "Bringing diverse, multi-lingual talent from across the globe in front of some of Europe's leading employers provides both MBAs and employers of MBAs a new and user friendly platform to connect for mutual benefit," he says.
The virtual career fair is open to all MBA students at the participating schools. Based on a consolidated cross-cohort average, companies can expect to have access to a professionally and culturally diverse group; 45% of European nationality, 25% South American and 17% Asian. The students – 40% of them women - have an average of six years professional experience.
The first-time initative - run through virtual event platform vFairs - represents the latest innovation in the trend towards the digitization of corporate recruitment. Companies can use live text, audio and video chat features as well as presentation tools to engage with the participating students.
“Ultimately, we hope that they’ll recruit some of our schools’ brightest talents,” Andrew says.
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