MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
April 24 – May 1, 2008 Edition
Bertelsmann Initiative
Seeks to Recruit
Top Young Talent
Gütersloh/4/17/08–Bertelsmann AG, which owns Random House in the US, has announced a new initiative to recruit top talent under the heading “Create Your Own Career.” The name of the program represents the entrepreneurial possibilities and fast track to responsibility that new hires will find at Bertelsmann. Under the heading “Take the Lead,” Bertelsmann AG Chairman & CEO Hartmut Ostrowski has declared talent management a focus in his strategy for Bertelsmann, alongside “Go for Growth” and “Create Value.”
The new initiative kicks off with a “Talent Meets Media” event on June 13 in Berlin. The executive directors of Bertelsmann AG will meet with 100 selected top talents at Bertelsmann Unter den Linden 1. The recent graduates will join executives in workshops dealing with topics that are currently preoccupying the Bertelsmann world, and discuss their results with the Executive Board, in the process demonstrating their entrepreneurial and creative proficiency.
The Bertelsmann AG Executive Board will evaluate the teams’ ideas and presentations and, at an exclusive evening event featuring surprise guests, present awards for the best ones. The winning team will travel to Bertelsmann’s offices in Silicon Valley, the nucleus of the start-up world. Apart from seeing the sights, participants will also spend several days working on an innovation project in the Valley, giving them an opportunity to put their ideas into practice.
In the lead-up to the initiative, Ostrowski declared: “Bertelsmann derives its energy from a corporate culture that has proven its worth as a key to success over many years. Entrepreneurial spirit and the delegation of responsibility are major elements in this culture. We want to actively promote the entrepreneurial freedom that arises from this. The idea is to get top talent even more excited about our company. We want to recruit them, keep them, and foster their development.”
Students who will soon be graduating (from any field of study) are invited to apply, provided they have top scores and creative ideas. The application consists of three elements: a CV, a cover letter and a digital media product or concept for one. Details are posted at www.talentmeetsmedia.de. The deadline for applications is May 19, 2008.
Other elements in the “Create Your Own Career” initiative include the creation and further development of a wide range of management development tools. For instance, the worldwide internship loyalty program “Student Challenge” has been further expanded, and the “Bertelsmann Entrepreneur Program” (BEP) launched as a global top entry program for young entrepreneurs with professional experience. A “CFO Circle” has been set up to foster talent in the finance sector: it prepares promising executives from throughout Bertelsmann for the tasks of a Chief Financial Officer, and includes mentoring by the Group’s CFO Thomas Rabe. The program is broken down into four modules spread over a two-year period.
About Bertelsmann AG
Bertelsmann is an international media company encompassing television (RTL Group), book publishing (Random House), magazine publishing (Gruner + Jahr), music (BMG), media services (Arvato), and media clubs (Direct Group) in more than 50 countries. Bertelsmann’s claim is to inspire people around the world with first-class media and communications offerings – entertainment, information and services – and occupy leading positions in its respective markets. Bertelsmann is comprised of the television channels, television production companies, and radio stations of Europe’s largest entertainment group, RTL Group (RTL Television, M6, Five, Fremantle Media), and the more than 120 publishing houses of Random House, the world’s largest trade book publisher (Alfred A. Knopf, Bantam, Goldmann). Gruner + Jahr is Europe’s number one magazine publisher (Stern, Geo, Neon, Capital).
