Ever since its conception in 2010, The Concept Stadium has grown from a team of two, made up of myself and my dearest co-Founder and friend Jonathan Chetcuti, to a team of now 28 Commercial Creatives. While seeing The Concept Stadium, grow, evolve, and build client trust throughout the years has been a great source of pride, I would still say that the element I am proudest of is seeing every team member’s growth journey both as Commercial Creatives but also as human beings.
I had the opportunity to reflect on this even more as I worked with my Brand Communications team on the activation for our participation at the University of Malta’s Freshers’ Week that led to our latest intern recruit, Kimberly Cachia. Through our campaign, we wanted to identify ways through which we could attract students towards joining an agency such as ours, by getting internship experience that could lead to an eventual job offer at the end of their studies. This led to it being themed “Growing Success Stories since 2010”.
Apart from showcasing the opportunities that The Concept Stadium is ready to offer, and the Company Culture and strong reputation it has built along the years, we have decided to put our own team members’ success stories as the face of the campaign directed at students. We wanted to showcase how what we are offering is not just a possibility, but it is the reality of several members of our team, such as Alice, Kyle, and Stephy. By way of example, I remember how during the Covid-19 period we received an internship request from Alice Battistino. At the time she was in her final year of studies at the University of Malta, reading for a Bachelor’s in Communications Degree. Whilst, as the rest of the world, our team was working fully remotely, we still made sure to give Alice the opportunity to work with us as an intern. Despite the difficulties that come along with a job that is fully online, she still managed to impress us, which led us to offer her a full-time job post the end of her studies. From a remote internship, she joined the team full time as a Junior, and a year after was promoted to Social Media and Client Partner within the Digital & Social Media Team. Nowadays Alice, handles clients such as Nestle as well as other companies in dairy and cosmetics.
Each member’s success story is not just positive for the specific team member, but it is also positive for The Concept Stadium as a company, as it continues to prove that it does not simply offer a job to an individual looking for one. The Concept Stadium offers a home to individuals who are not scared of letting their creativity run wild, out-of-the-box thinkers that also understand the importance of being commercial and that are also ambitious outside of the work environment, always seeking to grow and become a better version of themselves. ‘This job sucks the life out of me’ is a phrase we never want to hear any one of our team members saying!
This kind of corporate attitude all boils down to the strength of a company’s culture. One thing that definitely helps The Concept Stadium attract young individuals such as Alice and Kimberly is that it offers the kind of work environment that young people are looking for. By this I don’t mean doing the bare minimum and giving out merchandise or other fringe benefits. While these are nice to have, they’re not the key factors of a strong company culture, they are simply what they are called – benefits. Company culture means an added level of awareness of your team members, understanding them, their aspirations in life, their needs, knowing their skill set and placing them in an environment that helps and gives them the liberty to grow. Company culture means creating a space where one can spread their wings, and not have someone ready to clip them the second they venture outside what is normal practice.
If you’re a CEO and you’re struggling to attract young talent towards your company, it might be time for an internal assessment to see exactly why this is happening. Start with asking yourself the following three questions:
- What is my company doing to build success stories for all individuals within it?
- Do I truly know the people I am employing and what are their aspirations in life?
- Am I allowing a space for my team members to grow both professionally but also as human beings?
Once you have the answers for these three questions, move on to ask yourself and most importantly your team members “what can I do to positively change that?” Every business can offer an environment that hones success stories for each team member, my question to you would be: Are you ready to provide it?
