Today we want to introduce to you our Group Manager Kerstin Langohr. When Kerstin arrives at the company in the morning, she starts with “usual” morning routine: putting away the bag, wishing a good morning to everybody, starting her laptop and getting the documents from the printer. She likes to start her working day early in the morning and also to end it lately. In fact, there are no standard days for her. But there are repeating tasks, which she particularly likes to do. Kerstin likes to hold job interviews, because she enjoys getting to know new people. Due to this, she also likes to hold employee interviews, here she doesn´t only find out information about occupational topics, she also gets information about personal preferences, hobbies and family situations. It often happens that she has to work longer because of unscheduled tasks, but thanks to Home office she can do those tasks at home – preferably early in the morning or late in the evening. Kerstin’s mood can get unpleasant if deadlines are not met, something that has been agreed upon was not done or if her trainees are scheduled for other tasks without her consent.
For stress relief, Kerstin likes to do sport, more specifically Nordic walking, swimming, water gymnastics or skiing. As a further compensation she likes to spend time in nature with her children. Due to the many locations of TecAlliance, Kerstin travels about once every two months, sometimes more, sometimes less. But she sees it as an opportunity to meet the more distant colleagues and to clarify topics directly. She prefers to travel by car or by train. Her favorite location is Weikersheim, but her favorite canteen is the one in Ismaning. She could also imagine going to a location abroad, but her family background does not allow this.
At the moment, Kerstin is most interested in current trends in staff and training. In particular, the possibilities offered by digitalization in the field of education and what other companies are already doing in this field.
Kerstin started her career at the AuDaCon AG, which now belongs to the TecAlliance GmbH, as Head of HR. Back in the days her attention for this job has been drawn during her IHK-auditor activities. She began her professional career with an apprenticeship as a merchant for wholesale and foreign trade. Afterwards she continued her education with a further training as HR Specialist (IHK), a study of business management (IHK) and the trainer suitability test. Since 2000, she has been working in human resources, initially in the areas of wage-accounting, recruiting, training and some other things. From 2008 onwards, she worked for AuDaCon AG as the head of HR and since 2013 as a Group Manager at TecAlliance GmbH. On an honorary basis, she is also active in the auditing department of the IHK for the commercial professions. Kerstin has opted for this profession since the contact to other people has always been very important to her. This is also the reason why she trained in the commercial sector with a lot of customer contact. Her further development in the area of personnel offers her a great deal of contact with employees, colleagues, external service providers, pupils, teachers and lecturers – which is still very important to her. Thanks to her business studies, she has kept an overall entrepreneurial overview over other areas such as marketing, sales or finance.
Kerstin organizes the employee planning with a tool which was developed by our trainee Patrick. This way she can arrange vacation, vocational school blocks, dual study terms and rotations to other locations early. Further education of the trainees takes place at IHK-seminars, Cisco Certifications at the vocational school or instructor trainings at the Cooperative State University Baden-Württemberg.
Currently, 35 trainees belong to Kerstin´s department, in September the number will rise to approximately 50. Kerstin appreciates her leadership style as cooperative and participatory. For them, trainees play a very important role at TecAlliance, which is also reflected in the growing number of trainees. For a further support of the trainees, Kerstin would like to send even more students abroad. Furthermore, after the complete integration of the new location in Maastricht, it is possible to see whether and where trainees can be employed there. She is currently building a learning bureau to further enhance the quality of education within the software development department.
Of course, we are also pleased that Kerstin is a dedicated reader of this trainee blog. For her this is of course self-evident, since it is created by her trainees and is also mainly concerned with her occupation.
We hope this article helped you to get to know our Group-Manager a little bit better. We are looking forward to another, enjoyable couple of years together with Kerstin.