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The Pillars of an Award-Winning Program
adidas was selected as a 2023 Campus Forward Award Winner for their unwavering commitment to seeking out and hiring early career talent, their emphasis on diversity & inclusion, and investments in nurturing and retaining the next generation of talent. Please see below for the highlights of their approach to early career recruitment.
Demonstrated Investment in Early Career Hiring
adidas wants to be the employer of choice with top early career talent and offer a diverse future leadership pipeline for entry-level positions. The Early Career Talent Acquisition team’s goal is to attract, hire, and develop top early career talent through a premium candidate experience. With early career talent, the team emphasizes potential over experience. This means a focus on transferrable skillsets, motivation, and adidas’ people values. Where others see the impossible, adidas sees the possibilities. And where others only see an intern, the Early Career Talent Acquisition team sees the next CEO.
Innovative and Multi-Faceted Approach to University Recruitment
The Early Career Talent Acquisition team at adidas utilizes two distinct pipelines to recruit for the internship program. To engage with university students, the team crafted a variety of virtual events available to students at universities across the country, ranging from info sessions and business panels to upskilling sessions around resume building and preparing for interviews. Additionally, the team planned an HBCU ;Know Your Power’ virtual event where HBCU alumni within the company were invited to meet with and speak to students about their career journey. The second pipeline utilized to source and recruit early career talent is through a unique program called ‘Unlimited’. adidas Unlimited is an inclusive program designed to break down corporate barriers for retail talent and offer a career path into corporate. The program recruits from retail stores across the country and offers internships for retail employees.
Overarching Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion
As a global sportswear company, adidas has commitments to fight racism and accelerate inclusion globally. adidas’ United Against Racism commitments focus on embracing and enabling greater diversity, equity, and inclusion within the company, talent processes, and communities. The Early Career Talent Acquisition team strives to attract, recruit, promote, and retain the best talent that reflects a diverse workforce across the business. That is why in 2021, the adidas Early Career Talent Acquisition team kicked-off the first HBCU recruitment strategy focused on increasing HBCU candidates in the internship pipeline. Two events were created, one in-house event titled, ‘Know Your Power’ with over 300 students from 30 HBCUs attending, and a partnership with the HBCU Career Development Marketplace.
Impactful Internship Program
At adidas, interns begin their internship by developing their 90-day plan with their line managers. This creates a target for both the intern and line manager to work toward during the internship program. As a result, more than 80% of interns are recommended for hire due to their performance on their 90-day plan. 90-day plans also include room for 10% of their schedule to be focused on professional development — and this can be either weekly coffee chats, internal upskilling, or LinkedIn Learning courses. Additionally, interns get a chance to work cross-functionally during a Hackathon, which is a business case sponsored by an adidas business unit. Interns work in teams to develop a proposal to the business challenge, present it to the sponsoring business unit, and obtain feedback. Winning teams are then able to present their ideas to senior leadership, including adidas North America President Rupert Campbell.
Growth and Development of the Next Generation of Talent
The adidas People Promise has been developed to make it clear what the brand stands for as a company — supporting employees to truly own the game. It’s all about creating a culture and environment where employees can consistently thrive, be successful, feel they belong, and ultimately enjoy coming to work. The People Promise is built around three pillars: 1) Leadership – grow all employees to act as leaders and all people managers to empower their teams to realize possibilities, 2) Betterment – committed to providing learning opportunities to upskill and reskill for the future, as adidas believes in a mindset of continuous learning and improvement, and 3) Performance – building the best teams that play to win and recognizing and rewarding both individual and team performances.