Modern career jungle

Why don’t you study abroad? Why don’t you look for an internship? Why don’t you get a job in country X, where my cousin’s cousin’s friend said that it is sooo great? 

Easy to ask, easy to say, but when you start thinking about it, when you really start looking to build up some international experience, the options, the advice and the application processes are overwhelming, the amount of information is just too much to absorb. At least this is what I felt at times, when trying to find my way through the jungle of offers and opportunities. Finding an internship or a trainee program that really suits your personality, your education and your future professional goals is quite challenging. Germans have a really great saying: ‘Die Qual der Wahl’ which means ‘The torment of having a choice’ and is not far from reality.

Finally, after years of looking, trying and testing, I have found a program that I really enjoy and would like to share some insights of how an international management trainee program looks like, once you’ve found your way in.
Let’s start with a short description of the program, so that you can decide if it’s worth to keep on reading or not. The management trainee program I am in lasts for two years. It is governed by a big player from the steel industry and is accessible to young professionals from all over the world. (I will get to the requirements shortly).

Every two years they choose 5 young professionals to join the program and this year we are a highly international team, from all over the world.

Throughout the program, you will get to work on 4 different projects, each of them lasting for approx. 6 months. Each project will be in a different country, maybe even on a different continent and you will get to work in the main divisions of the company. Too much steel and metal talk? Don’t worry, I didn’t even know how a steel plant looked like when I arrived here and wouldn’t have recognized a furnace if it had hit me in the face! If you are willing to learn and have the ability to do so, you will soon be able to talk about production processes and understand everything that’s going on around you.

The projects you get to work on are extremely varied and depend on your education and experience. You can work in HR, process management, production, logistics, finance, marketing, sales, strategy….it is basically impossible not to find something that you love doing. And be sure that the HR team will make all the efforts to place you somewhere you can perform well and use your skills. The part I enjoy most about the program is the way it is constructed: throughout the 2 years, you get a mentor who will guide and advise you, but you have a lot of freedom when working on a project. You can really create a concept from zero and make it grow in the 6 months, you can structure your work as you wish. Of course, with great freedom comes great responsibility and you have to deliver good results at the end of each 6 month project, but given the fact that absolutely everyone in the company is supportive, it is almost impossible not to.

So, what are their requirements?

- Academic degree in technical/ metallurgical fields, economic studies, law

- Maximum 3 years of proven work experience in one of these fields
- Excellent English language skills (level A1/ B1 European Reference System)
- Experience in working/ studying/ living abroad
- Willingness to change location on a frequent basis: high level of mobility due to regularly changing work placements

The recruitment phase lasted for about 6 months and I had 3 interviews plus a 3 day assessment center at the HQ. The interviews were a lot different than you would have expected and that experience is definitely worth a separate post.

Maybe I did manage to raise your interest for a valuable program and you have some time to think about applying for an international program yourself!