1 year’s experience: from Recruiting Barcelona to Talent Management Leverkusen
My name is Maite Farré. I’m 30 years old and I come from Barcelona, but nowadays I live in Cologne. I earned a master’s degree in business administration in Barcelona and have more than seven years’ experience working in the HR field. I joined the Recruiting Department of Bayer in Barcelona, Spain, two and a half years ago, and since February 2016 I’ve been working in the Talent Management team in Leverkusen on a short term assignment of one year.
My short term assignment (STA) was organized as a professional development project, as I had discussed with my boss that Talent Management was one of my main areas of interest. Subsequently the opportunity arose to go to Leverkusen. I’m really grateful to be able to work with the Talent Management team in Bayer Direct Services (BDS) because I’ve been warmly welcomed by my colleagues since the very beginning and this helped me to experience a smooth and easy onboarding process. I was able to learn in detail about our Talent Management processes such as 360 degree feedback, the Performance Management Process, Talent Acquisition and much more.
Since I moved to Leverkusen, I have had the chance to collaborate with different departments such as Talent Management in BDS, Global Talent Management, Local Talent Management and University Talent Relations. I was amazed to see that Human Resources (HR) consists of several different interconnected departments and to observe how communication among them must be very close and fluent in order for them to align with one another and the Bayer strategy. It is providing me with wider overview of HR at Bayer.
The main differences that I have perceived between working in Spain and in Germany are the following: first of all, it is much easier to understand processes, goals and the culture of the company when you spend time at its headquarters. I have also realized that working in Germany, you are more focused on HR processes, whereas when you are in Spain you are dealing with business on a daily basis. Another big difference for me is working in an international and multicultural environment. That is something completely new and very interesting for me.
Since I moved in, I am very pleased that I accepted this opportunity and will do my best to learn as much as possible and to contribute my knowledge to the projects.
After living in Cologne for nine months, I would say that it is a great city to live in. There are a lot of leisure activities and it is a cosmopolitan city where you can find all types of restaurants. And people are open-minded, kind and helpful.
With regard to my hobbies, I love listening to music, exercising (jogging, spinning and pilates), meeting up with my friends, traveling and getting to know different cultures. Good food is also important to me J.
Finally, I’d like people to know that I’m very pleased to have this opportunity to gain experience living and working abroad. It has been a very positive experience for me, both as a person and for my professional development. I would encourage anyone to do the same.
This post is also available in: German
