From herCAREER to Your Career at Krones

It’s Friday morning, 9:30am, the start of the second day of herCAREER in Munich’s MOC. The buildings filled up from the very first minute – and a brief glance at the people coming in quickly made it plain who the target group is here. That’s because herCAREER is a platform for women who want to shape or change their own professional career path. And the fair gave them the chance to do just that: investigating (new) careers opportunities, expanding their network of contacts, or drawing inspiration from the many different talks and opportunities for dialogue. 

Krones was there, too, presenting itself at herCAREER as an employer – and for the first time with its new stand, designed around the target picture “Solutions beyond tomorrow” and the employer branding based on it. “We’ve noticed over the last few years that the needs and expectations of potential employees are constantly evolving. We want to use our core messages, such as ‘With Krones I belong to a powerful team’ and ‘With Krones I outperform myself’, to give an authentic demonstration of who we are and what Krones stands for as an employer,” explained Victoria Behme, who looks after employer branding in Krones’s HR department. “With that in mind, we have also developed a new and fresh design for our communication – and hence also our trade fair appearances – in order to attract the attention of suitable talent and inspire them to work for us,” Victoria added.

Going by the number of visitors to the Krones stand at herCAREER, it can definitely be said that the re-branding has been a resounding success! That's because almost every woman who passed by the Krones stand was struck by the radiant blue design, attentively reading the slogan “With Krones I add value to the future” along with the brief profile of Krones. Many of them also paused to study the flyers about the various career opportunities available to them – the perfect chance for our on-site team to engage the women in conversation. 

“What does Krones actually do?”

Unlike other careers events around Regensburg, though, where Krones is already a household name, in Munich, the team often first had to do some educational work, so to speak. “You have to say that the question most frequently asked was probably ‘Tell me, what does Krones actually do?’ But answering that question is precisely why we are here,” explained Stefanie Nitsche of the recruitment team with a laugh. After a brief presentation of Krones (and by the way, this usually elicits gasps of amazement when they hear that one in four beverage bottles in the world has been through a Krones machine!), the ensuing conversations quickly firmed things up, as Stefanie explained: “Here at herCAREER, many women have a clear objective: They're not just having a look round, they want to find out exactly what career opportunities and positions Krones offers that will match their profile.” She also observed another interesting phenomenon: “Many of the women have previous experience and are already working. I spoke to some, for instance, who were on parental leave and now wanted to get back in. And they know that at herCAREER, they will find companies just like us who support their female employees accordingly,” Stefanie continued.

It wasn’t only the visitors of the Krones stand who were curious, though: “Conversely, we were of course also interested in what brought the women to the fair and what their professional background was – because that enables us to assess whether we at Krones might have a suitable position for them,” said Teresa Ehl, who looks after students and apprentices at Krones. And the profiles of the visitors were indeed wide and varied, as she explained: “From the student looking for subjects or options for their thesis to 60-year-olds wanting one more new career challenge before heading into retirement, they were all there.” The same was true for the specialisations: “Engineering sciences, an IT background or jobs in the administrative sector – we got enquiries from visitors for every area of work that we offer at Krones. And many of them also have a very clear idea of exactly what sort of job they are actually looking for,” Teresa added. 

Nicole Hutterer of the Krones.digital team made the same observation. She is actually a scrum master and responsible for collaboration processes in agile teams. She was attending a recruitment fair like herCAREER for the first time in order to give potential new recruits an insight into the jobs that Krones offers in the field of digitalization. And she hardly stopped talking: “I had naturally anticipated that digitalization and jobs in the IT sector would be very popular. But I was surprised by just how many young women with a STEM profile, i.e. a background in IT or engineering, came to our stand – and many of them had really exciting profiles that are a good match for our activities or vacant positions.” So she spent a day at the fair in Munich focusing mainly on presenting Krones’s activities in digitalization – and the job opportunities on offer in the Krones.digital community.