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The Pillars of an Award-Winning Program
Expedia Group 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
Passion for early careers talent is widespread across Expedia Group. It originates from its mission: to power travel for everyone, everywhere. To make travel accessible to everyone, it must represent all travelers. Early careers talent provides a source of individuals who represent the next-generation of travelers, and employees, bringing diversity of thought, fresh innovative ideas, and inclusive outlooks. A core component of its hiring strategy has been to develop sustainable people growth, and organizational health, for the company. The team works toward this by getting invaluable buy-in from senior leaders on the importance of early careers talent. Its investment in this talent remained throughout the pandemic, and is increasing year-on-year as they grow their intern and graduate population, in a wider variety of role profiles.
Innovative and Multi-Faceted Approach to University Recruitment
In early career recruitment, it’s easy to get left behind in the talent market and miss out on some wonderful talent by repeating the same steps each cycle. Expedia’s campus engagement is varied, regularly reviewed, and data-led, based on student population diversity and underrepresented community clubs and societies. Its college partnerships are based on sponsorship levels: platinum, gold, and silver, which defines the activities it engages in. Expedia delivers high-touch workshops with Platinum schools, with Gold, it opens up virtual events to be more inclusive (meaning Expedia can meet a wide variety of students), and for Silver, the team empowers Expedians to visit their alumni schools. Expedia’s social media activity is “always on”, which means candidates can engage with its Early Careers stories all-year — not just during the hiring window. Partnering with current Graduates, Expedia created a YouTube playlist, providing regular, fun, and informative YouTube Shorts videos.
Overarching Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion
Expedia has hands-on partnerships with HBCUs & HSIs each recruitment season. Within the schools themselves, Expedia hosts skills and development workshops, such as mock interviews and Q&A panels with student-led clubs and societies that promote underrepresented communities. The team built meaningful partnerships with Handshake & WayUp, focused on sourcing for diversity hiring. It recently introduced a more inclusive strengths-based assessment stage to the application process, which assesses potential, and not experience, and provides a detailed feedback report on their strengths. Alongside this, Expedia doesn’t screen candidates based on schools, or degree majors. Prior to the interview stage, the team provides mentorship preparation calls for candidates to ease any nerves, helps them prepare, and enables the interviews to be more equitable for everyone. To retain talent, Expedia has extremely well-established and active Inclusion Business Groups, and introduces hires to these communities before they arrive, and during the programs.
Impactful Internship Program
The Early Careers team packs a lot into the 10-week summer internship program. Guided by multiple generations of interns and managers, the team tailored the experience to be an invaluable career opportunity. The key feedback the team always receives from interns is the amount of responsibility they are trusted with. By providing interns with bespoke, meaningful projects, they gain a sense of accomplishment and conclude the program by presenting their achievements to the Expedia community. They complete a robust onboarding week with professional and technical skills workshops to set them up for success, and are encouraged to immerse themselves in all of Expedia’s initiatives and communities. On-the-job learning is delivered via learning workshops covering ally-skills, mental health, growth mindset, and more. Furthermore, interns also have exclusive Q&A meetings with C-Level leaders, including Expedia’s CEO. A very high proportion of interns receive an offer to return for their graduate program.
Growth and Development of the Next Generation of Talent
The Expedia Group Graduate Program was designed to accelerate the career of grad hires, and to retain them. There are very tangible components of the program that serve this purpose, including: Launchpad, which is 2-3 weeks of onboarding training and socials for the whole graduate cohort, which builds an incredible community by bringing grads together from each office to the Seattle HQ. The program builds on core successes of the internship program by continuing technical and professional learning workshops, as well as connects with C-level leaders. Multiple team rotations are fundamental to the program to help grads learn what type of team and role suits their career aspirations best, and more about the company. Grads can access their mentorship program from day 1, where they select mentors who match their ambitions. After successful completion of the program, grads are next-level-ready and move to their permanent roles at Expedia.