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How I Met My Job – Our colleague Felix Krause tells us how he came to his current job as a product manager at Babtec via a student job. He also reveals what advantages he sees in a work-study program, what his greatest learning experience was, and what advice he can give to students!
My name is Felix Krause and I have been working for the software company Babtec as a product manager since 2018. I started there in 2017 as a working student. Before that, I studied economics at the University of Wuppertal and graduated with a bachelor's degree. At the time of my working studies, I was studying for a master's degree at the distance learning university Hagen. In this How I Met My Job story, I'll tell you about my reasons for working as a student trainee, about my start at Babtec, and about the advantages of a working student program.
I had a problem during my studies that I probably share with quite a few people of my generation: I had no real plan. After graduating from secondary school, I went straight to university without any idea of what I wanted to do for a living. I decided to study economics because the social science course I took at school had taught me that this study program enables you to act in the corporate world in a variety of ways. However, this freedom was too much for me since you can do everything and nothing with this degree program – another feeling that I shared with many of my fellow students. There was only one rough idea: I had a tendency towards marketing, because I liked both the psychological and the creative part of the studies very much. I also noticed that I work very well in a team; I'm simply not the lone wolf type but develop the best ideas in collaboration.
I want to be able to stand behind the product my company creates.
Felix Krause
After the bachelor's degree came the reality check: jobs in marketing were not so easy to get and often a master's degree was required here. But honestly, at that time I was at a point where I was just through with studying. Studying every day without knowing what you're doing it for was very difficult for me. I need a sense of purpose in what I'm doing, and I was struggling with that in my studies. I just wanted to know where I was going with myself and my life.
I ended up doing a paid internship in marketing at a technology company. Here I was enthusiastic about the company's products and realized: this is important to me! I want to be able to stand behind the product my company offers. But here, too, the master's degree was an inescapable barrier to entry. That's why I registered at the distance learning university Hagen to remain flexible and to gain experience parallel to my master's degree. I wanted to find myself in the working world.
When I was in the first semester of my master's degree, a friend of mine took part in the excursion weeks of the University of Wuppertal, during which students can visit companies together and get to know them. He told me about how Babtec seemed cool and was also looking for junior staff. At the time, I was already thinking about working as a student trainee, so I took a closer look at the company and applied for a position as a working student in project management. At the interview, the atmosphere was relaxed and although I was very nervous, I was able to convey well that I really wanted to learn in practice and take advantage of the opportunity I was given.
During a second interview, I was asked if I could imagine working in product management. I then met my potential future supervisor, who I liked right away. I also found product management very appealing, especially because it gives you an insight into many areas of the company. You're close to the company's strategy and interact with a lot of people. But since I didn't have any IT background from my studies, it was a bit of a leap for me.
My new team was great right from the start; my colleagues always took care of me and explained a lot. Of course, it does take some time to get to grips with a complex topic such as quality management software. That's why the training period took longer than it might have with other products; however, I was already able to take on smaller tasks under the guidance of my mentor. What I enjoyed most were analyses, such as competition analyses, which I already knew from marketing during my previous internship. The team continued to be very supportive, and the atmosphere was great. That carried me through the initial "training struggle" and made me want to become a real #partoftheteam.
During my working student program, there was a vacancy in product management. My supervisor asked me if I would like to join his team as a young professional, as he could well imagine me in the position. I was very happy about that! I was free to continue my studies on a part-time basis or to focus solely on practice – and I opted for pure practice. That was the right thing for me at the time because I really wanted to gain practical experience, and I also liked the fact that degrees weren't everything at Babtec, but that skills and motivation were also recognized.
By now, I'm really into it and I can fully live out both my communicative and my creative skills – in an area that I hadn't considered as a career field at all before. It wasn't long before I got the chance to design my first product. I was given a lot of responsibility early on, which I'm grateful for, because it allowed me to make another real leap in learning. It was challenging, but I had an experienced colleague by my side as a mentor in the project. This meant I was right in the middle of the product manager's day-to-day work and had full creative freedom with the new product. This also brought me closer to the work area of UX/UI design (which stands for user experience and user interface design), in which you put yourself in the role of the user and focus on designing experiences within a piece of software.
And that's just cool: what attracted me to marketing in the beginning, the psychological and the creative aspects, I now completely find in my job. I can also develop myself further every day. Technology is making huge leaps and we also offer a cloud solution alongside our standard software, for example. I find it exciting to be part of the digital transformation, and at the same time I feel like I'm doing something meaningful.
Do you have any questions about your application or a working student program at Babtec? Our Recruiting Manager Alina Ziehn is looking forward to hearing from you!
Alina Ziehn
People & Culture
Phone: +49 202 4960-177
e-mail: ziehn@babtec.de
