This summer semester, the Chair of Marketing Management (IfM) was once again able to offer students majoring in Marketing the opportunity to participate in a project seminar in cooperation with a renowned company. Together with this year's partner, Deutsche Bahn – Germany's national railway company – a total of 20 students worked on five exciting and current topics related to "Future-Proofing Deutsche Bahn's (Employer) Branding: Diversity, Innovation, and Impact." In doing so, they combined the scientific methods learned throughout their studies with hands-on marketing practice.

The seminar kicked off in early April with an online Zoom session. The event began with a warm welcome by Dr. Victoria Kramer and an overview of the schedule for the coming weeks. Thereafter, Kerstin Wagner, Executive Vice President Talent Acquisition, introduced Deutsche Bahn AG with a focus on employer branding. This was followed by the presentation of the real-world cases by the responsible team members at Deutsche Bahn, covering topics such as the integration of Artificial Intelligence into recruiting processes and reaching students for apprenticeships. The meeting concluded with virtual breakout sessions, in which the groups could clarify initial questions with their respective supervisors and discuss first ideas on their assigned topics.

Throughout the project phase, the students met regularly with their respective supervisors from Deutsche Bahn as well as the IfM, Dr. Victoria Kramer and Madeleen van Veen. Nearly six weeks after the kick-off, they presented an update on their concepts along with an outlook on their further project plans. In addition, the students had the opportunity to discuss questions about scientific work during a Q&A session.

The highlight of the seminar was the final presentation at the beginning of July, for which all participants gathered at Deutsche Bahn's location in Duisburg. After a day of exciting presentations, the supervisors from IfM and Deutsche Bahn praised the consistently high quality of all contributions. "This collaboration has shown how valuable the exchange between science and practice can be. A big thank you to all students for their dedication and the inspiring ideas," said Nathalie Zurhold, Head of Global Employer Branding, at the conclusion of the seminar.

This year's project seminar was a complete success – a sentiment also confirmed by Master's student Julius Eberhardt: "For me, the project seminar with Deutsche Bahn was a true enrichment of my Master's studies. The opportunity to work on a real-world question and develop my own ideas for a practically relevant recruiting problem showed me how valuable the combination of scientific analysis and practical marketing work can be."