Come take a seat & Let me tell you about my Background
I started this job like many others in this field, purely by chance.
As the only engineer in a family of salespeople and healthcare workers, I had the opportunity to understand the perspectives of engineers as well as those of salespeople and managers. Once I finished my studies, my concern was finding a job that would allow me to combine technical knowledge with human contact.
That’s when Alten UK offered me a position as a project engineer with one of their clients.
What did I know about the job at the time? Supporting and supervising a team responsible for implementing product improvements based on customer feedback.
How did I get the job? You might think it was because of my independence, my proactivity, or my ability to solve all kinds of problems on the fly. The reality? My ability to pester my classmates for answers or their participation in group or extracurricular projects (such as Formula SAE) tipped the scales in my favor. My client decided to go with the naive young graduate that I was rather than someone more experienced.
No sooner had I arrived on my first day than I was thrown in at the deep end: off to a meeting room. Two hours and two meetings later, I was finally introduced to the team. As a welcome, I received a courteous “good luck, the last person lasted three days here” before being left to my own devices.
So why tell you all of this?
Because if you want a career in this field, it’s very likely that this will happen to you. There are three types of people who do this job.
There are those who have graduated from business school with a degree in management and have learned the theory. There are technical people who have discovered a talent for project management and have found themselves thrust into this role despite themselves. These people usually end up returning to the technical field, their first and true love. And then there are people like me, torn between two worlds, not knowing how to reconcile them, who often find this job and this vocation by chance.
Of all these categories, the only ones who have really proven themselves to be born leaders are those who love the technical field. Although they also often are the ones who passionately hate this job. For the rest of us who learn on the job, it’s a whole different story.
That's what this job boils down to: tacit knowledge. Everything is learned through the different scenarios we experience, through our failures. There are no obvious Key Performance Indicators for us; our success is measured by the success and happiness of our teams, our achievements reflected in theirs. And that success depends on so many different factors.
So how do we cope in this profession where we are very often left to our own devices?
6 years have passed since my first mission.
4 different countries in which I have had the privilege of living.
3 different industries in which I have practiced my profession.
the number of different cultures and nationalities I have worked with and managed throughout my career.
These are the key figures that describe my career path.
If you are intrigued, let me share my experience, my theoretical and tacit knowledge with you. Let me guide you.
