American International Group will resume formal on-campus recruiting efforts this year as it prepares for a huge stock sale.
The insurance giant plans to focus on attracting about 75 summer interns from undergraduate programs, according to Kerry Francis, AIG's global head of performance management and training. Specifically, Francis said AIG wants to hire and train property insurance experts.
"We want to fill in areas that we're having trouble filling laterally," Francis said.
Though AIG has hired from campuses in the past two years, it largely froze its formal college recruiting efforts in the U.S. as its executives and government officials worked to sell off business units and stabilize the company's finances.
Last year, headcount at AIG dropped to 63,000 from 96,000, a 34% plummet, as the company sold off 33 business units and continued to wind down its troubled financial products division.
The recruiting effort comes as the firm seeks to buttress investor confidence in advance of a huge stock sale this spring. It could sell up to $20 billion in stock in an ongoing bid to buy out the Treasury's Department's stake in the firm.
Francis said AIG has shed much of the troubled stigma that it struggled with during the crisis and is attracting candidates with a sense of mission and an entrepreneurial bent. "The people who do well at AIG now thrive on ambiguity, and they can think laterally," she said.
Write to Kyle Stock
Related: The Architect of AIG's Turnaround