Howdy from Sydney! Cirka 3 weeks ago, I started my second rotation in business development. After a year in development and project management, I was super excited to change the function and learn something new.

5 years ago, Australia

Kick-off at downunder!

14 months ago I started with Hilti as a Technical Project manager where I have worked with insulation fasteners. Coming from a technical background, this was a perfect start to combine technical work with project management. However, I was ready to take on something new and further load the experience basket. I have always had an interest for business development and working with strategic marketing topics. I wanted to learn how to work on business cases; developing them and deciding the way forward from them and in a discussion with my mentor, we agreed to find a project of this kind for this next rotation.

The project is based on conducting market research with 4 markets for a certain product portfolio and coming up with a business development plan for respective market to show the way forward and how to accelerate the growth. The key markets are Australia, Qatar, UAE and Turkey for this project. The first rotation has started in Australia where I have been on multiple customer visits to understand their perspective. Coming from development, it is a great experience now to see the picture from the other side;  how the develoment work translates to the markets and their strategies, targets. To bring the project home, I am trying to understand the full picture; what are we providing today in Australia, what do the customers need, is the growth declining or increasing, what factors cause this , what do we need to change etc.

The project is super exiting  and challenging and the location – well its just a bonus (look at the picture and you know!). The coming 3,5 weeks will be spent gathering more customer inputs, discussing the business with marketing teams in NZ and Australia before heading back to HQ in Liechtenstein for global trainee summit. Stay tuned  to follow my journey through the other markets and global summit.

Cheers from Sydney!

//Rutvika

Back to top

My six weeks in Australia have come to an end and here is my best experience that leaves me feeling wiser...

4 years ago, Queensland

What is it they say – Pink is the new black? A special field ride in Australia…

My six weeks in Australia have come to an end and here is my best experience that leaves me feeling wiser… I arrived to Gold Coast, waiting to conduct my final construction site visits when we realized we didn’t have a hard-hat with. We called another colleague to see if he had something and only thing he found in the stores was a pink hard hat.

The way you are perceived as a woman on a construction site differs from countries, cultures and sites. Every time I would visit a site, regardless of the hat, I would find myself thinking little extra on how to present my questions to make sure I was taken seriously. With a pink hard hat on; this nervousness was on another level – I started basically running scenarios in my head, entered the site and suddenly found myself apologizing to the customer for wearing a pink hat! What?!! I was amazed myself by what I had just done.. The customer reacted nothing and we started the interview, finished and left.

I could not believe that I had myself stereotyped pink to being weak and be taken less seriously by people. Seeing how it made no difference to anyone else except me, made me feel a little embarrassed.. The rest of the day, I carried that hat with pride, did my job and got rid one of my own stereotype 😊

Love these small experiences that I have had the opportunity to be a part of with Hilti which I would have never thought about earlier. Lot to learn and lot to grow 🙂

P.S. I did end up falling in love with the pink hard-hat…

Back to top

Rutvika

Technical Track, Alumni