What's your job about?
At present I work under a team of Account Managers, Project Managers who report to a General Manager. I find myself doing an array of different activates for those managers who are all within the same life sciences and health care team. At present I have been responsible for the creation/updating of standard Operating Procedures for a new customer. This has meant 2 weeks offsite at a customer’s head office/warehouse. On top of this I have weekly/monthly tasks that I take care of. I do the weekly billing for transport for one of our healthcare customers. This usually comes through at the beginning of the week, and involves running a report to be able to extract the relevant data and send back the correct billing information to our finance team.
On a monthly basis I look after sourcing the KPI information for one of our vision care customers. This will mean contacting the necessary dispatch and receiving co-ordinators to source the necessary data, inputting it into the relevant template and forwarding on the resulting graphs for visual representation and interpretation to our customers.
What's your background?
I’ve essentially spent the entirety of my life living on the east coast of Australia. I grew up in northern QLD in a small beach town called Mission Beach. At the age of 8 my family and I moved to the Sunshine Coast where my sister and I lived and completed our senior schooling. I had my first job working in dispatch just after I finished school, which not only sparked my initial interest in logistics and transport, but allowed me to save money for my European adventure that I was about to embark on as part of my gap year in 2012. I began University in 2013 – graduating in 2016 studying a Bachelor of Business Management majoring in Human Resources and International Business. In that time I spent two years living on campus in college and 2 years living in share houses. At the end of my degree I engaged in the typical conversations with family friends about what I wanted to do moving forward. I think most graduates have a moment of uncertainty and free-fall where they’re looking for direction and I found mine with one of those mentioned conversations. A general logistics interest was established and I was pointed in the direction of DHL. From there I applied for the graduate program, interviewed and was offered a position, moved from Brisbane to Sydney within a week and have now been with the business for coming on 6 months.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes! Essentially the program is to help you learn about the business and use the skills and knowledge acquired in your studies in a practical environment. The thing that I’ve come to realise and value about this program in particular though is the range of fields within the business you’re exposed to. What you studied or majored in in university might not be the focus of your everyday working environment. With that in mind I think that it’s most important to be eager and willing to learn regardless of the sector/activities as the program and your mentors are there to support and facilitate your learning.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The thing I love most about my job so far is the different projects you get to be a part of. In my short time with the program I’ve witnessed customer relocation, the acquisition of a new customer, change overs between account managers and the implementation of new business processes/structures. This has meant travel to customer headquarters and workshops to learn and understand new business policies and customers. Because I’ve been part of setting things up in terms of policy documents and such for one of our new customers my time has been spent working on repetitive formatting and data input. However the feeling at the end of the day that the work you’ve done has helped your peers and the knowledge that steps further along the line couldn’t be completed without your input validates your work and efforts regardless of how minute they might feel.
What are the limitations of your job?
Travel is an obvious limitation in this industry. If you don’t have the means, and even if you do, the distance and time of travel has the potential to be huge. It something that you are made aware of however before starting the program. While not a limitation I think you have to be or learn to be proactive. Companywide has online learning facilities, some compulsory but most not so it’s on the individual to further their understanding in the gaps within their knowledge.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...