A Speed Date with a Job
Meeting, knowing, liking and then ... Recruiting Dates, a format to allow students to meet employers inaugurated in November 2012, are modeled on speed dates and are dedicated to industries that are growing or are particularly important for the students.
The next event, Waiting for ... EXPO! (15 April, registrations closes upon reaching the maximum number of participants), is a special initiative, dedicated to the food & beverage industry, to companies that offer solutions for agriculture and to international organization in the field of nutrition: a score of firms including the brands present on all Italian tables.
MSc students (or recent graduates up to three years) sign up for the event and have the opportunity to introduce themselves at the desks of companies selected from a particular sector, which collect resumes and impressions. Students register for the event, not for a date with an individual employer, and then move around and choose whom to talk to. When the spark flies, usually students hear from the companies in a very short time.
One who was able to trigger a spark is Sara Groppi, who'll receive her degree in Economics and Management in Arts, Culture, Media and Entertainment in the April session. She attended Recruiting Date Retail on 11 March 2015 and is going to start an internship at IKEA soon. "The day of the event," she recalls, "I had already selected 4 or 5 companies I wanted to contact and I met them. They got some knowledge of me and I could evaluate what they had to offer. In a couple of cases it was clear it couldn't work, others suggested I take a look at the University portal, where they publish their offers, whereas with IKEA we liked each other. They had two open positions to conduct research on sustainability and customer relationship management, I was interested in the opportunity, they were interested in me and thus they called me a couple of days later and I had an interview in a week."
For Recruiting Dates the University invites companies of every size. The sector that inaugurated the format in 2012 was fashion and luxury; in 2013 financial services and web companies were added, in 2014 retail.
"The format fosters an informal atmosphere", says Anna Airoldi, the person in charge of the initiative, "that seems to be appreciated both by companies and students. Last year we had 73 firms and nearly 1,200 students. Companies publish their profiles in advance on our website and students can thus prepare for the meeting. At the desks they introduce themselves and discover which internships and jobs companies have to offer".