The Best of In-person Recruiting Goes Virtual: P&G’s STANDOUT Emerging Leaders Camp

Summer interns account for 50% of P&G new hires in the U.S.

That’s kind of a ‘wow’ number. Especially given we hire fewer than 1% of the people who apply for jobs at P&G each year.

So, how do we get such hire-worthy candidates into our Summer Intern program?

We recruit them. Most of this happens on campus and through social media, but last summer our Talent Team took a super-creative approach to recruiting by hosting ‘STANDOUT: Emerging Leaders Camp.’

During this summer camp, college sophomores who are interested in jobs in Brand, IT, HR, Internal Business Services, Product Supply, and Research & Development* functions, get chance to get to know P&G and fellow sophs across the U.S. – up close and personal.

The innovative part?

One. Holding the camp ahead of the prime fall recruiting season to get a head start in showing potential recruits that P&G is a great place to intern.

Two. The immersive way our talent team designed the camp – bringing 200 ‘campers’ together at our headquarters in Cincinnati. They put groups up at different downtown hotels, hosted functional dinners at the city’s hottest restaurants, and took them on tours of our hometown. The campers spent energizing three days at our headquarters learning about P&G and making friends during breaks – and at their hotels.

Day 1 – Meet the C-Suite
Top leaders – CEO David Taylor, Chief HR Officer Tracey Grabowski, Chief Brand Office Marc Pritchard, and Chief Communicators Officer Damon Jones – shared stories about their P&G careers and about the good our brands and our company do in the world. And students got the chance to ask questions of our CEO – really smart questions, too!

Day 2 – Function Up
This was about getting a closer look at our functions. Student could visit booths and chat with employees doing the day-to-day work about exactly what the job entails – and get a sense of who our people are.

Day 3 – Get Professional
The last day was the students’ chance to shine as they interview for an intern spot in our next summer intern class. P&G interview ‘coaches’ were available to them the evening before, and campers who have had a successful interview were offered an internship before they head home.

The students were wow-ed by the experience and the event was so successful, our Talent Team began planning for STANDOUT 2020.

But… COVID happened.

Not to be deterred, the talent team took their best ideas from last year’s camp and learnings from COVID about making virtual connections engaging to host a virtual STANDOUT camp in mid-August of this year.

The talent team used Webex, Intrado (INXPO) and Hopin to create wicked cool places for students to virtually connect with P&G people and fellow campers. They put together video tours of our headquarters and the surrounding area. And created a virtual replica of our headquarters one student called ‘the best virtual experience I’ve seen of this kind.”

‘Virtual P&G’ is where campers got to know one another, upload selfies, play the latest hit songs on a jukebox, attend leader presentations in our auditorium, and ‘meet’ with front-line P&Gers to learn about the work our functions do. And campers still attended dinners, too—virtually, but with vouchers to order meals from restaurant delivery services.

Of the 220 campers attending this year’s camp, 150 were offered spots in our Summer 2021 intern class. We can’t wait to welcome them – and our next-gen STANDOUT campers – next year. Hopefully, in person!

Learn more about ‘STANDOUT: Emerging Leaders Camp’ here.