For the fifth time now, the Worldcom Public Relations Group sent their trainees to get to know each other and exchange thoughts and ideas in the Hungarian capital. The location could not have been better: Budapest is young, vibrant, unconventional and brief – completely different to what you initially imagine. Here the imperial and royal splendor of past times including the soviet charm, Paprika and goulash soup and somewhere in between the city has reinvented itself with many small and trendy shops and cafes, cyclists and vintage backpack straps which are once again new in every European city.

We were very impressed by Budapest and our hosts, András Nagy’s team and the Próbakő agency that made the meeting an enriching experience for us thanks to the perfect organization and exciting content. Agnes, Alfonso and Caroline were the 3 chosen to represent HBI Helga Bailey GmbH at this year’s Worldcom Youth Meeting. The first evening started with a welcome dinner. This gave us the opportunity to get to know our colleagues from England, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Finland, the Czech Republic and Sweden better.

The amount of content increased the next morning with 3 keynote speeches on this year’s main topic: employer branding. In times when well educated professionals are in short supply and the much quoted “Generation Y” encounters new perceptions of entitlement with their employers – the key word is work-life-balance – Businesses must come up with something in order to remain attractive to skilled workers and to score over the competition in the job market. Whether one is perceived as an attractive employer, is first and foremost a question of public perception and the conveyed image. Employer branding belongs exactly here as part of the business marketing strategy and is increasingly becoming the focus of agency work. It was definitely an exciting topic, so exciting in fact, that we decided to introduce it to you again, separately, in one of our next Blog articles.

But first, back to Budapest. The key note speeches were the starting point for the subsequent practical part of the two-day long meeting and delivered necessary background information. Melinda Antal illustrated the meaning of Employer branding from the perspective of a HR and recruiting consultant. As the former head of communications at UPC, one of the largest internet providers in Austria and Hungary, László Szűcs, described the process of rebranding, with the aim of making the business more attractive to potential employees. Additional input was provided by a company survey which was recently carried out by the Worldcom PR Group on the topic of employer branding for businesses in the EMEA region.

The third speaker, Csaba Faix, came straight from the exercise. Csaba took responsibility for the international communication of Prezi, a Hungarian-American Startup. Prezi offers a cloud based, open source presentation software. Despite a trendy image and an innovative workplace concept it is difficult for the business to attract qualified professionals to Budapest. Despite this, the city is already said to be a kind of Silicon Valley in Europe. Our task, working together in teams, was to develop for Prezi an employer branding strategy. So we were able to apply what we had learnt directly to a real example and with it we could profit from our individual experience from agency work at home. After the presentations and rounds of feedback the best concept was chosen by András and Csaba and awarded a prize.

Not only was the Worldcom Youth Meeting professionally a great experience but also there was no shortage of socializing, whether it be together at dinner, bar hopping or the closing sightseeing tour through Budapest. In this sense: until next time – A legközelebbi viszontlátásra!

Cross-media as we are, there is naturally also a Video of this year’s meeting. Enjoy watching!