Due to the acute labour shortage, the Hungarian Association of Facility Management and Building Operation Service Providers (LEO) launched an educational and awareness campaign for students in vocational training. The aim was to reach out to vocational secondary schools, vocational schools, to familiarise young people with the organisation, to present the opportunities available to graduates in Hungary in general within the facilities management sector and their member organisations.
One of the elements of this complex, multiyear programme is a school contest in which teams of students must present their plans and ideas about the professions they are training in.
The “I love my profession” competition is partly communicated to students through teachers, who were recruited to the LEO Teacher Advisory Board through a Facebook campaign. In addition to motivating them to participate in the competition, we regularly ask for their opinions and try to support their work.
We also reached students directly, with a short film on YouTube, which took them to a landing page where they could find all the relevant information about the application, along with basic information about LEO and the facilities management profession. The teams that took part in the competition had to make a short film to show what they like about the profession they were studying. The winning team’s school won a workshop upgrade, and the runner-up team won a field trip.
In the first wave of the programme, teams from around 10 vocational schools took part, with the number of applicants increasing every year, and 36 teams competing in the 2020-21 school year. Despite a limited budget, the programme has reached around 40 000 people.
