Having a coffee with …Vanessa Jakob
Vanessa Jakob was born in Heidelberg and has been working at Rutronik since October 2016. She works in Product Marketing as a Product Sales Manager and is responsible for the technology of the film capacitors and electric double layer capacitors.
You started your professional career at Rutronik. What did you do after school?
After completing my “Abitur”, I did a year of voluntary social work at the 1899 Hoffenheim football club. Afterwards, I started a dual study program in industrial business studies, not at Rutronik though but at a medical technology company. After the dual study program, I then started my current position here straight away.
What do you do at Rutronik?
As Product Sales Managers, we support our sales colleagues on the one hand and the field application engineers on site at customer’s on the other hand. We are the technical product specialists with regard to our technology. We are also on site at the customer’s together with our colleagues to provide them with the best advice in terms of the components and suitable technologies, independently of manufacturers
This means you focus on specific product lines?
Exactly. One technology is allocated to every Product Sales Manager. In my case it’s currently two. We are responsible for this technology worldwide from the headquarters. At Rutronik there is local product marketing in individual countries like Italy, France, the UK, Switzerland, USA and in Asia soon too. We are out and about with our Rutronik colleagues at customers’ and at manufacturers’ and sometimes all over the world. We are the interface to sales and FAEs (field application engineers) inside the company and to customers and manufacturers outside the company. I foster the relationship with manufacturers as we buy components from them. We negotiate prices and plan campaigns, events and promotions with manufacturers – hence carrying out classic product marketing.
You just said that you are responsible for customers and manufacturers worldwide. Does that mean you travel a lot?
Compared to sales we don’t travel as much but it is definitely welcomed and we also want to travel. I am regularly out and about. More abroad in Europe but once a year, for example, in Asia, depending on where our customers are. As a result of a significant share of Rutronik’s total turnover being made in Germany, we mainly travel in Germany.
What is it about your job that motivates you?
The variety of the job combined with things that are important to me both privately and professionally are what motivate me. These include communication and talking to different people. What also appeals to me is switching languages between German and English, which is roughly half and half. You travel, are out and about but not every day, the main base is always still here. I also have the opportunity to massively further develop because as I’m just starting out I’m in totally new pastures and can really go wild. I can take a proactive approach and contribute my own ideas. As Product Sales Managers, we can pull strings to a certain extent and everything comes back to us. All of this makes my job really exciting.
What are the greatest challenges in your job?
Communication is a blessing and curse at the same time. It is often related to the size of the company. Unfortunately, things sometimes get lost internally. Now and again it makes it difficult to inform everyone involved. Major customers work together with assembly companies. These companies in turn purchase worldwide, this means our colleagues from Italy, Asia and the USA are all working for the same project on site. With these structures it is difficult to always have the same level of information.
When you get into a situation that is unfavorable for you because you notice you were not brought up-to-date on a project, how do you deal with this?
This works better with some colleagues than with others. Usually I am pretty open about something like that. For example, if I’m not CCed in an email for the second time, then I call the colleague and try to really get through to him and say: “Hey, you forgot me again. When I come to Italy to see you then we’ll play a game of football and if you haven’t informed me by then, I’ll tackle you!” [laughs] He laughs at this and I’m included in the next emails because he remembers this conversation. That’s how I win people around. An effective flow of information between colleagues in sales and abroad is very important with our large company.
What is Rutronik for you?
Rutronik is a company that offers a large number of possibilities and opportunities for me. You have an incredible amount of options when you start your career here. Which means, for me Rutronik is an employer that offers great opportunities for young people and graduates to develop further and take responsibility themselves.