Synchrony: “You Have to Go Where the Talent is”

Synchrony’s efforts targeting University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students to fulfill its needs to recruit tech talent was featured in the Wall Street Journal on May 6 (subscription required).

The article cited Synchrony’s partnership with the Datathon at Illinois, a competitive event that exposes students to real-world problem solving in analytics, as one of the creative ways it engages talent.

Synchrony has been a lead sponsor for the event and an active host since the event’s inception, engaging with the statistics department and its very active student organization.

“You have to go to where the talent is,” said Carol Juel, executive vice president and chief information officer at Synchrony Financial, in the Wall Street Journal’s article, “Companies Get Creative in Hunt for AI Talent”.

The partnership came about thanks to Synchrony’s highly engaged Research Park innovation center, where the company  has hired dozens of students.

The Synchrony Emerging Technology Center opened at the Research Park since 2018. In 2019, it doubled its physical space and intern team, pulling from students from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, math, statistics, business, information sciences, and more.

See more about the 2020 Datathon here.