Rabe car dealerships inspire young people on a company tour with a difference – the guide is an app.
Rabe, the German car dealerships, have really thought outside the box and come up with a fun way to fill young people with enthusiasm for their business and give them information that sticks: recently, a year 8 class of 13 and 14 year olds became the first to tour the company guided by an app.
The 18 pupils were divided into three groups and led through the various parts of the workplace by the app, based on GPS and other information. At the same time, they had to keep completing exercises and answering questions like "how many car lifts are in the workshop?" Other tasks involved sorting vehicles according to their size or taking selfies in front of a particular car they had to find.
"The pupils became very competitive, everyone wanted to come out on top", says Christine Dachsel, a social education worker at the school who mentors students on transitioning to the labour market. "The playful approach not only meant the pupils had fun, it also made sure that lots of information stuck." In Dachsel's experience, other company tours can just end up a kind of lecture, where students are simply given information that they neither find particularly inspiring, nor retain for any length of time.
In response to repeated requests for company visits, Rabe gave two of its IT staff members the job of developing the entertaining app. "And on the first run, the girls and boys were really enthusiastic about the whole thing", says Thekla Rabe, the company's Head of Marketing. The winners received a stash of chocolate coins – once they found them hidden in the boot of a car.
Following the success of this initial trial, more classes from the same school are due to visit the company too.