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The Pillars of an Award-Winning Program
Albemarle Corporation was selected as a 2024 Campus Forward Award Winner for their unwavering commitment to seeking out and hiring early career talent and investments in nurturing and retaining the next generation of diverse talent. Please see below for the highlights of their approach to early career recruitment.
Standout Candidate Experience
The Early Career Attraction team at Albemarle knows that a best-in-class candidate experience is an essential element in the recruiting process. The team ensures a standout experience during interviews at college/university career fairs, ensuring a candidate feels confident in understanding each step of the interview process, offering conversations with engineers and team leaders if a candidate wants to learn more about their potential day to day, and keeping candidates warm throughout the recruiting period up until offers are made. In addition to robust communication strategy throughout the recruiting period, the team consistently looks for areas of improvement within the recruiting process and proactively reaches out to candidates gaining valuable feedback for program improvements and ensuring lasting change.
Overarching Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion
Albemarle recognizes that people are the most important strength in achieving the company's purpose—to enable a more resilient world. The Early Talent is committed to recruiting strategies that build the diverse workforce of the future. They take a multifaceted approach to recruiting targeting both HBCU recruitment and diversity based national conferences. Through partnership with the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion team, the Early Talent Attraction team attends and recruits at events including the Society for Women Engineers, Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, Society for Asian Scientists and Engineers, Prospanica, and National Black MBA. In addition to recruiting nationally, Albemarle's Early Talent team targets two regional HBCUs, North Carolina A&T University and Hampton University in Virginia. At the beginning of 2023, the team set an ambitious goal to increase female intern placements from 23.3% to 30%. As of August 2023, they have surpassed that goal increasing female placements to 43%! In addition to specialized recruiting efforts, once onboarded, interns have the opportunity to attend a variety of Connect Group events including Black Connect, Women Connect, Asian and Middle Eastern Connect, PRIDE connect, and several others.
Impactful Internship Program
Albemarle is committed to providing meaningful and developmental experiences to all interns and co-ops. Students are empowered to harness their potential through projects that directly correlate to business outcomes. At the end of each term, students present to senior leaders within their business unit highlighting their accomplishments, key learnings and next steps. Senior level students are given a unique opportunity during this period; flying to the corporate headquarters in Charlotte, NC to present their project presentations in person to c-suite leaders. In addition to contributing to key projects throughout the company, students have the opportunity to participate in several engagement programs throughout the session. Students have an opportunity to participate in interactive coffee chats lead by the HR intern, listen in to the Lunch with a Leader series while learning career advice and best practices from senior leaders including the company CEO, along with attending social events that include visits to local theme parks, arcades, amongst others.