Ben is a Corporate Trainee Program Recruiting Coordinator for Quad/Graphics, a Wisconsin-based commercial printing company. Although Ben is currently stationed in the corporate communication department, he is most often out of the office working to recruit new talent to the company. Visiting career fairs once a week, Ben’s mission is to spread information about Quad/Graphics as well as recruit graduating students to the very same Corporate Trainee Program he himself is a participant in.
Transcript
My name is Ben Knapp, I work at Quad/Graphics, headquartered in Sussex, Wisconsin. I am a Corporate Trainee. We have a rotational program where you rotate around and learn different parts of the business. So, right now, I actually work in our Corporate Communications Department, so, how do we efficiently communicate within our company, as well as outside of the company. And, on top of that, I have a role where I am the Recruiting Coordinator for our Corporate Training Program. So, I'm able to travel and recruit for the position and kind of talk with candidates about what career opportunities are, here, at Quad/Graphics. For recruiting, its actually interesting, because we hire all year round. So, within our Corporate Training program, we're trying to bring a diverse group of talent into the company on an ongoing basis. So, we have groups start all throughout the year. So, for May graduates, we have start groups of Corporate Trainees start in June, July and August, as well as, November. And, then, for December graduates, we start trainees in January and March. So, we're trying to bring an incoming stream of talent that really is going to touch all aspects of the company. So, the project starts in September, when we open up our job posting and it goes through the entire academic year until the year end. So, we'll start hiring for our December graduates, as well as May graduates, right away and, it'll go through about April or May. Right now, I usually go to, at least, one career fair per week, so a lot of them will be in Wisconsin, so it might just be 30 minutes away. Minnesota, you know, is a five hour drive. So, most weeks I will go to, at least, one career fair recruiting event to kind of spread word about the program and talk with potential candidates. On top of that, for the recruiting side of my role, we have a lot of strategy thinking about how many trainees do we need to bring in, what sort of backgrounds, what sort of skill sets are going to be required to help us function as a company within the next one to three years and help us innovate. So, kind of thinking about the strategy and working with my team, I report to the manager of the program, as well as the VP of Talent. So, we have some discussions about how we can efficiently recruit the diverse group of talent that's gonna help us succeed. Within that, I also host candidates, I do phone screens, I interview candidates whether it be on the phone or an on-campus interview. I take candidates out to dinner, and if they make it to the final interview, and I host them for the final interview and kind of give them a full picture of what we have to offer as a company, as well as, a program.
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