Girls‘ Day 2015 at AvePoint Deutschland
The Germany-wide event Girls’ Day initiative is a unique opportunity for young female students to gain insight into businesses and enterprises where women are a minority. AvePoint, as the leader in enterprise software solutions, was the place to be in Munich to learn about how women can be successful and make a difference in the IT industry.
AvePoint Deutschland participated in the Girls’ Day for the 4th time this year inviting 11 girls (ages 12 to 16) to our Munich office. In one full day, the girls gained insight into many different departments and job profiles we have at AvePoint in Munich plus had plenty of opportunities to ask questions and get a glimpse into their potential professional future!
After a warm welcome and a tour of our spacious new office, our General Manager Daniel Hussein told the “AvePoint story” from Tahoe to today and answered many general questions from “why don’t you program your software in Germany?” to “do I need to finish university to become a manager?” The girls were quite surprised that there are many jobs in IT that have nothing to do with programming code, such as Technical Solutions Professional, Human Resources, Marketing, Partner Account Manager, Sales, and Project Management.
In the second session of the day, Senior Technical Solutions Professional (TSP) Robert Mulsow outlined the typical day of a TSP and emphasized that not every job in IT is about coding and programming software as he does a lot of consulting and traveling to customers to give advice, which requires skills such as being a good listener and a communicative, collaborative person. The girls were very interested in how to become a TSP, asking questions such as if a university degree is a must-have and why very few women work in IT.
Robert’s session closed with a hands-on programming course in HTML where the girls learned how to program their own website in HTML and publish it online. The site looked like this:
After a delicious pizza lunch that allowed the girls to chat with our Office Manager Sonja Wiechmann and to play a round of table football, Senior Technical Analyst Cher Yang shared her experience of working in Munich together with the German team, but also about her background in technical support in our Shanghai office. She showed pictures of our different offices in China and explained how our R&D teams collaborate with QA, Development, and Support. Cher seemed to enjoy participating in this initiative just as much as the girls!
Next was Project Manager Uwe Jaecks, who outlined the responsibilities of a Project Manager and the significance of having an eye on time, quality, and costs throughout the process. Uwe spoke about how much he loves his job, as he has the chance to meet people from very different cultural and professional backgrounds to reach one common goal: customer satisfaction.
Sales Executive Silvie Janku then offered insight into her job in sales, such as how important it is to be able to listen well, gather information, and communicate internally and externally to provide the customer with a positive experience. The main focus of the questions from the girls was once more which educational level is required and what the usual working hours are.
Marketing Manager Marta Blazquez spoke about what a typical day in marketing looks like and explained which tools we use in B2B Marketing to increase brand awareness and generate sales leads. The girls were very interested in data privacy applied to marketing and websites and asked questions throughout the presentation. It is interesting to see how younger generations are more confident with social media as they grew up with it and see it as an important tool for marketers at every company.
Finally, Partner Account Managers (PAMs) Dominik Graef and Steven Kugler shared insight into the channel business at AvePoint, including what do they do and how they select partners and train them to sell our solutions. The girls were very pleased to hear that besides Dominik and Steven, the EMEA PAM team is ladies only! As we were running out of time after a long day of getting to know AvePoint, several of the girls stayed beyond the planned event hours as they were so interested in what our PAMs had to say.
Thank you at all AvePoint Deutschland participants for making this such a great day full of listening and learning for the girls! To learn more about Girls’ Day and find how you can get involved next year, please visit the event website.
