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The Pillars of an Award-Winning Program
Leidos 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
Leidos believes that the energy, ideas, and new ways of thinking that interns and recent college grads bring to the company are incredibly valuable. When young professionals are merged with Leidos experts who have years and decades of experience, it results in exciting and innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing our world today. Leidos’ strategic internal mobility program is a key component in keeping young talent within the company, and allows for the employees to experience different types of opportunities across the enterprise and add valuable experience and knowledge to their portfolio.
Innovative and Multi-Faceted Approach to University Recruitment
Leidos is known across the country for its on-campus recruiting strategy, and has been identified as having the preeminent campus strategy for recruiting. Leidos’ focus is not only on traditional recruiting events, but also social networking events, professional student organization and diversity student organization partnerships, and career center/faculty/staff relationships. With the new environment, Leidos pivoted to a hybrid approach, in which it continues to focus on campus and National Diversity Conference activities, but also expanded the number of virtual activities. This allows the company to reach more students and build deeply-rooted relationships with them. Leidos uses additional tools to reach out to students at schools where they are not able to visit in person, such as Handshake and WayUp, which provide an avenue to reach even more diverse and geographically dispersed candidates. These tools allowed Leidos to be recognized by Forbes Magazine 2022 as a “Best Employer for New Grads”.
Overarching Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion
Leidos has a deeply-rooted strategic approach with college diversity recruiting and has a number of branches. Firstly, Leidos has relationships with numerous HSIs and HBCUs across the country. From traditional recruiting to relationship building to joint research, these schools provide a strong source of candidates. Leidos also supports, and in many cases sponsors, 10 National Diversity Conferences that focus on college students (AISES, BEYA, Grace Hopper, GMIS, NSBE, oSTEM, SASE, SHPE, SWE, and WoC). The level of effort for these conferences varies and can include career fairs, networking events, hospitality suites, workshops, awards, scholarships, board membership, and more. Diversity student organizations on majority campuses are another focus of activities for the company, and these relationships can range from sponsorship to networking. Leidos partners with 10 different national student organizations across the 51 portfolio skills. Handshake and WayUp also are used for intentional outreach to students of diversity at schools that are not part of the Leidos portfolio of schools.
Impactful Internship Program
Leidos interns are given over 40 networking opportunities to participate in, which includes activities such as business group presentations, intern meet and greets, monthly all intern social hour (virtual and in-person), small group coffee and chats, social outings (hiking, biking, sporting events), Young Professional Network ERG activities, community service, learning seminars, and more. The most visible and popular event is the Annual Intern Celebration, where interns are treated to an outdoor catered BBQ and the chance to meet the CEO and his Executive Staff. Managers provide interns a real-world experience working on real-world programs, both independently and in a team setting. Feeling engaged and being given meaningful work in an inclusive environment has led to the most recent intern survey indicating that 98.6% of the intern respondents had interest in returning for another internship with Leidos or to convert to a full-time employee upon graduation.
Growth and Development of the Next Generation of Talent
Through the Leidos Career Development Program, interns learn important skills such as how to have career discussions with recent college hires, managers, and executives. Interns are also given the tools to start the process of managing their careers through internal resources, and have access to thousands of on-demand training courses and are able to participate in professional development workshops. Interns are also assigned buddies and can select a mentor from a large profile of Leidos employees who will fit their needs. As interns are gathered together at the conclusion of their onboarding event, they also have an opportunity to network with each other and learn about some of the opportunities that will be available to them during their internship. Some of those items include the schedule of intern events, the dedicated intern program manager introduction, how to access the INTERN COLLABORATION PAGE and find bi-weekly intern newsletters, spotlights, interns by school, corporate information videos, and schedule for Leidos spirit week.