ASSESMENT CENTER

These days, many prospect candidates are already approaching current trainees and HR staff in different Career Fairs all over the world and online. And Assessment-center related questions are quite common. How to survive to the Assessment ?

First of all, you are going to be assessed by a big group Senior Managers from different Market Organizations and backgrounds (CEO’s, Sales VPs, HR). You will get to know them the night before the Assessment, so take the chance to speak to them. Share your expectations and interests with them, and do not hesitate to ask questions about career perspectives in Hilti or any other concern. This first face to face interaction helps to build trust before the interviews the next day.

Secondly, do not get obsessed with the content of the different interviews / tasks during the Assessment. Obviously we cannot discuss here the detail, which also varies from year to year. Nevertheless, my advice is that you manage your energy level properly through the long day and adjust to the timing for each task. Failing in one test well below you average in the rest could be dangerous !

Moreover, take the chance to interact with your peers, that is other candidates. Hilti wants to encourage a collaborative environment over a competitive one, and actually many other candidates will have very interesting backgrounds from which you can get some learnings. I am still in touch with some of the people I shared this experience with!

Finally, be ready for immediate and direct Feedback, and how to manage it. If you are not offered a position in the Program, you may be offered another position in your Market, but this does not happen always. Be ready to handle all possible scenarios, and Good Luck !

A YEAR IN RED

Coming from a position as a Business Development consultant in a large IT firm, I considered myself quite used to daily contact with the customer, and so I felt quite ready to become a successful salesman.

Now that I am about to leave the Account Manager position, I realize how unready I was for the challenges associated with the nature of Hilti’s portfolio of customers, and how much I have learnt during this year!

When you are in the midmarket sector, your portfolio is very diverse. Typical customers would have between 10 and 25 people, and very often the person you deal with also takes care of the Company Management and Commercial action. You as a supplier have to become a solution instead of an additional problem to them !

Not only the specific Trade you sell in, but also Geography will determine your daily life as a salesman. In my case, I was assigned to a mixed area with two trades: construction and tool rental companies. These two businesses could seem similar for an outsider to the industry as I was, but they have actually very different needs that we have to address in order to succeed. This diversity has been challenging but also rewarding!

On the side of geography, I was so lucky! Valencia, a Mediterranean coastal region in Spain, has an incredible climate and the best paella around! But the fact is that the area is still recovering from the massive economic crisis that affected so badly the Real Estate and Construction Industry after the 2008 crash. Fortunately, Spain has been leading economic growth in Western Europe consistently since 2015, with the Construction business as a lever of that growth. This is a great opportunity for Hilti, so we are going to need more people around here in the coming years!

Now I am looking forward to my next rotation as a Project Manager in the Façade Business, at the head office in Madrid!

Building Networks for Work & Life

Building a strong Network within Hilti is one of the main takeaways from the Program. Apart from the 3 structured Summits through the Program, there are plenty of chances to build strong professional and personal ties with your peers. For example when several of us share destinations for Project Rotations around the world. And the same happens with Alumni, so the community grows every year. It is not only enriching but also fun !

I will be in Paris working on a Fleet Management project from December to May 2018, so if anybody is in town, just let me know! The picture is from the last Global Summit in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in September 2017.

BUILDING ENVELOPE STRATEGIC PROJECT

Hilti’s portfolio of innovative and differentiated products and services is huge. As a Trainee in the Commercial Track, my first year in Sales helped me a lot in order to know most of our product lines. However, there are so many Applications and Trades that you will always find something new to learn about. My second project at the Head Office of Hilti Spain in Madrid has been about establishing our 2020 Building Envelope Strategy. And I had never been in touch with this business before, so I did not know what to expect from this project, to be honest !

Spending time with the Façade Engineering Team at the Office and with the Façade Business Developers in different Field Rides gave me a wide understanding of the business, including our value proposition for Light Ventilated Façade (LVF) Systems and our relationship with other relevant stakeholders in this market, including Architects and Panel Producers. Calls with Hilti specialists in this market in other MOs such as France and constant exchanges with our Façade Business Unit based in Austria helped a lot as well.

The picture is from Hilti’s biggest LVF project in Europe so far, built with our innovative system called Slab-to-Slab. More than 20 buildings like this one are being renovated in this neighborhood in Burgos (Spain), in order to improve energy efficiency and comfort for their inhabitants.

Finally, after almost 4 months of work, different proposals have been made in the Final Presentation in front of the Board of Directors of Hilti Spain, and as soon as in 2018 some of them will start to be implemented.

It has been great to have the opportunity to learn about a totally different business and work at strategic initiatives with very high exposure to the Management Team. A big contrast with the previous rotation as an Account Manager, which was much more operational. Next adventure will be abroad, in France, on a Marketing project related to Fleet Management. I am very much looking forward to it !

Merci, et à bientôt la France ! Some thoughts on the Regional Assignment in Marketing at the Western Europe Hub

In my case, my home country (Spain) belongs to the Western Europe region, whose hub is located in Paris, together with the head office of Hilti France. I have been working here in Fleet Management related topics, on the Marketing side. For those of you still unfamiliar with the Hilti vocabulary, Fleet is our Tool Park Management Solution, a set of products and services that allows our customers to manage their core business by outsourcing the management of their tool park to Hilti.

Fleet was launched already 15 years ago, but we keep adding different innovations every year. From new services to enhance the value proposition, to process improvements to increase productivity (both internally within Hilti and for our customers). I worked notably on developing the new sales approach (the concept of tool park optimization) and on a care program for our Fleet customers in France. Other missions included the development of marketing material to train our sales force on the Fleet value proposition.

The best part of this mission was that, due to the nature of this service, my colleague and me had to interact with almost everybody in the company: from the Board of Directors to Customer Service, from the product managers to the Legal or Finance teams, and of course at all levels with our sales force (Head of Sales, Regional Sales Manager and Account Manager). Steering all the initiatives with the involvement of all these different stakeholders was challenging but it was definitely worthy. I can’t think of a better way to learn how the different departments are structured!

And what to say about living in France, and Paris in particular? I had a really great time here, I improved my French a lot, I got my first marketing exposure ever (I have an engineering background) and now I feel much more prepared to take the next steps. I will miss the good atmosphere of the office at Magny and my colleagues though!

(in the picture you can see the different booths that we prepared to train our sales people on the new products that were coming to the market in January’s 2018 wave, in an old convent in the French countryside)

Merci beaucoup Hilti France!

International Project in Hong Kong

I chose to come to Hong Kong, where the new North Asia hub is being built this year. I really wanted to get to know better the reality of Hilti in the emerging markets. In Hilti Asia I am working on HR-Reporting related topics, which is also an interesting and new topic for me. And this is the awesome view over Victoria Harbour that we enjoy from our brand new office!

Where would you like to go for your international project? Either in one of our 10 hubs across the world, our HQ’s in Schaan or one of the countries where the company is present, the options are endless!

Integration at new Assignments

The Outperformer program means that for two years you are will be rotating through different countries and missions. As exciting as it is, some of you may also wonder how the trainee gets integrated in the different hosting organizations. In my experience, it is an easy process! No matter how far you go and how different your destination is, thanks to the strong and common Hilti culture, the onboarding process will be smooth. The structure of the receiving country will be similar to every Hilti organization. Field rides to visit customers and get a feeling of the market, visits to our facilities and other social activities… they will be all organized to let you know everybody during your first days/weeks at the new place. After that, it will be up to you to interact with as many colleagues as possible and, get interested in their projects and ask for the local city tips. People will be always very open and glad to share!

In the picture, I am with some other new joiners to Hilti Asia and the staff from the newly opened Hilti Store in Hong Kong. We spent there half a day sharing experiences about the latest innovations, both in products and services. Always a positive experience!

Building a better future everyday

This time, the HR team from the North Asia Region went to a so-called “Dinner in the Dark”, where we had a lot of fun trying to guess what we were eating. And more importantly, we experienced some of the challenges that people with reduced vision face in their daily lives. A very great experience, totally recommend it!

Landing in Hilti North America

It has all been too recent to give yet any insights on this new organization that I have chosen to join. But I am fully confident that the missions and assignments that I have been through the 2 years in the program will help me to succeed here. So, looking ahead, I see a very interesting and challenging 2019 coming!

More details about the transition from the program to the permanent assignment soon!