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Applications: Preparation from A to Z

The winter semester’s program of the Elite Graduate Program “Honors in Business, Economics and Information Systems” has started into the new calendar year 2020 for 15 students with an application seminar at the Regensburg office of KPMG. No fewer than four KPMG-employees gave an insight into the in-house recruitment process, the "dos and don'ts" when applying for a job and examined the students' application documents in preparation for future applications.

What is important to recruiters?

On January 10, 2020, 15 students of the Elite Graduate Program “Honors in Business, Economics and Information Systems" had the opportunity to gain an insight into the recruitment process at KPMG. The exciting application training covered both the employer's perspective and the associated expectations for a successful application as well as practical exercises in preparation for future applications.

The application training seminar in Re­gens­burg began with a brief overview of the com­pa­ny and the five major business units of KPMG moderated by the four speak­ers Julia Weigert, Arno Stranegger, Dr. Sandro Urban and the recruiting specialist Alexandra Kurz, who had travelled from Munich especially for the seminar. After­wards, the internal per­son­nel selection process was presented, from receiving the ap­pli­ca­tion, through the centrally managed pre-selection by a screen­ing team, to the interview with the cor­re­spond­ing de­part­ment. Some exciting dis­cus­sions arose about whether the traditional letter of application was already outdated or how a good CV needs be de­sign­ed to replace a motivation letter. The hints on how to properly create a letter of application so that it would pass a computer-based pre-screening were also interesting.

Applying what has been learned

Thereafter, Alexandra Kurz, together with the students, reviewed the preliminary sub­mit­ted application documents regarding typical mistakes and possible suggestions for im­provement. The seminar was completed by the simulation of job interviews. In each of the small groups, one speaker conducted a fictional interview with a student. For both the "applicants" and the observers it was exciting to witness which unusual questions could be asked and how to keep calm in this case.

The concluding joint lunch offered another opportunity to exchange personal ex­peri­ences and questions related to the topic of applications.

Text:
Thomas Rußer, Elite Graduate Program "Honors in Business, Economics and Information Systems”