The fourth Fendt Women’s Career Day was held at the Fendt Forum in Marktoberdorf, Germany. Female students of agricultural sciences, mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology (STEM) learned about Fendt as an employer.
Thursday, June 29, 9:30 a.m. Numerous young women enter the Fendt Forum. They are studying agriculture, agricultural sciences or subjects in the so-called STEM professions, and today they are learning about Fendt as an employer and career paths in agricultural technology in a colorful and varied program. The format is similar to a project day that every student is probably familiar with.
Course 1: Fendt Intensive
A speed dating session to get to know each other is followed by a quiz with the Fendt management, with questions such as: “In which countries are Fendt products produced, ” or “When was the first Fendt Vario transmission introduced?”. The quiz provides an initial insight into the Fendt brand and company. Since Fendt does not only produce in Marktoberdorf, a live link to the four other German locations shows the production there and thus also into the corresponding areas of work.
Rytchele Beliard George (2nd from left, Senior Director Total Rewards AGCO Corporation) and
Jae Kullar (3rd from left, Director Global Benefits & Well being AGCO Corporation) talk about
their work at AGCO in the USA
Course 2: Broad job offer as an employer
A tour of the product forum illustrates the range of the product program from forage harvesters to combine harvesters and thus symbolizes the variety of tasks in a globally operating agricultural engineering company. Complementing these areas is the work in a group such as AGCO Corporation. Two AGCO female employees from the U.S. give short presentations about their path to becoming part of an agricultural technology group and their tasks in the area of human resources, as well as their expectations for future developments.
In a round table discussion, women such as Ingrid Bußjäger-Martin, Managing Director Finance and IT Fendt, or Katalin Csehi, Platform Lead Engineer forage harvester Fendt, give insights into their individual career paths and also into the challenges in the areas of research and development or also human resources. Ingrid Bußjäger-Martin gives a tip to the students:
“Humor has helped me the most in my 25 years at Fendt and AGCO to deal with surprising situations and still does.”
Course 3: Creative thinking
A practical unit is part of every good course program at the university. In a “Design Thinking Workshop,” the students are allowed to get creative themselves. The goal is to develop new solutions for existing challenges in a total of six groups. One group tackles the issue of sustainability and works on the question “How could alternative drives be increasingly used in agricultural technology?”
The group discusses different challenges such as the size and weight of batteries or even the area of application of the machines, which is very different from that of a car. The result: there is no one solution. There must be a bouquet of different alternative drive solutions from which to choose to suit the machine type and area of application.
Ingrid Bußjäger-Martin (Managing Director Finance and IT Fendt)
“For Fendt, the Women’s Career Day is an important opportunity to present itself as an employer and to talk directly with young women. In this way, we learn what moves today’s female students and I particularly enjoyed the exchange today,” Ingrid Bußjäger-Martin sums up. “Today’s female applicants are looking for tasks with which they can identify, in which they can develop and which they feel are important. Topics such as sustainability and future technologies which are also close to our hearts at Fendt.”
