Spotlight

I am Brazilian, 31years old and work in Human Resources at Schneider Electric. I graduated in business administration and concluded a specialization in Human Resources before doing a MBA in Brazil. All my career was developed in HR. For me, working with different countries and living abroad is an opportunity to enrich my experience in a professional and personal perspective. Not surprisingly, my main interest in my free time is to travel, meeting people and, at the moment, walk around Paris, "a wonderful city!".

To tell you the truth, I had never heard of Schneider Electric before. I happened to see the Schneider Electric job offer on the intranet, at the Business School where I was completing my MBA. The job was part of the Marco Polo program, and implied working in France. I did some research on the company, specially with some friends that are engineers, who recommended Schneider Electric as a great company to work for. Clearly, it was the logical conclusion of my long-time will to pursue an international career. One of the reasons that I joined the previous company I worked for was that I would be involved in HR projects with other South American countries and also would have the opportunity to participate in international working groups, at the headquarters, in the US. Now Schneider Electric offers me a wider international exposure, as well as much bigger challenges. My scope ranges far beyond South America.

I believe I was selected because of my experience in HR aligned with international exposure, my academic background, and also because of my interest and a hard work to develop a career in human resources. I now work as HR Manager for the International and Iberian Operating Division (IIOD). My mission is to define and implement the most appropriate actions to attract and recruit talents for Schneider Electric in IIOD, considering business needs in each country. It means managing all Recruitment and Assessment projects, one of them is the Marco Polo program, and coordinating actions directly with countries in South America, Africa, Middle East, Spain and Portugal. That’s really challenging because no two countries have the same culture, organization, structure or maturity: some of them are very developed while others only have basic processes.

The size and complexity make it very exciting and different from many other companies! Compared to the previous companies I worked for, the business of Schneider Electric is much more complex: we are in electrical distribution and automation and control, working with many different projects and products, for different customers in different sectors. And it is really international: we are present in 130 countries. In IIOD HR department, for example, we are 11 people from 6 different nationalities: 4 are French, 2 Spanish, 1 Portuguese, 1 Algerian, 1 Colombian, 1 Argentinian and myself who is Brazilian. And we all work very well together!

Schneider Electric is investing in programs for young graduates, like internships, the Marco Polo program and also offers interesting junior positions. The company has a wide range of job opportunities, in many areas of expertise and in different countries, facilitating learning experience and career development. It is an excellent company to develop a career with! Specially if you want to give it an international dimension.