Metso Careers: Knowing oneself essential for leaders

Education Industrial Engineer Electricity
Position Product Support Manager
Location Mining business line, Belux (Belgium-Luxembourg).

Attracted by highly professional services

I have always been interested in and attracted to companies that clearly show how professional they are.

When I worked for Ghent Coal Terminal a few years ago, I was in fact a customer of Metso Minerals Belux. Metso was the service supplier for the installed conveyor belts and slurry pumps of this terminal.

Ghent Coal preferred Metso over other suppliers because of their high professional level of service (24/7). This was needed for the operations of Ghent Coal Terminal, which also operated 24/7.

So I took my chance

I said to myself: ”The day that I look for another challenge, I definitely will check at Metso.” One day, I read an announcement that Metso Belux was looking for a new Sales Engineer Screening Media.

Before now, my career path has mainly been technical, but I have had great interest in a technical-commercial function. What did I have to lose? Twenty nine years old and a good background to offer for the job at Metso so I took my chance.

After several weeks of external assessments and internal interviews, I got the possibility to start at Metso in late 2004.

Valuable and challenging work

For me, it is important to have the feeling every day that you have accomplished valuable, challenging work. My daily work offers me a lot of variety. I do not like routine. I have not had two identical days in the four years that I have worked for Metso.

It is a pleasure working in an international workplace where you have lots of contact with people around the world and have the required experience and skills to work toward a professional result.

Metso is a company that offers opportunities and challenges for people who want to go for it. It is great when people believe in you as an individual and show it to you by offering greater and more important responsibilities.

My career has completely followed that path. As young potential, it is nice to get opportunities to grow.

Knowing oneself essential for leaders

In a world that evolves constantly, it is very important to remain updated. Metso offers regular trainings to update your technical skills. Some product lines organize an annual meeting where colleagues of a certain area meet to share experiences. These are very interesting initiatives that give great value.

Furthermore, some of us get an opportunity to attend more management and leadership focused trainings. I am participating in Compass training, which has already given me a more detailed view of myself. Knowing yourself before you start leading others is essential.

Each Compass team is going to identify some specific issues and/or challenges at Metso. I hope, together with the other team members, to be able to identify an important challenge and present the appropriate solution.

Most rewarding: customer satisfaction

Believe me, in sales you know very fast if you have done a good job or not. Achieving complete customer satisfaction is the most rewarding thing there is! Customer satisfaction is almost directly reflected in the sales figures. These are sufficient signals for knowing if you have done a good job or not.

The everyday challenge is to try to deliver the highest customer satisfaction, achieve sales forecasts, and solve the daily people issues when leading a group of people – they all make me enjoy this job.

What does the following word bring into your mind?

Technology - lives constantly and so do I
Environment - more and more important for our world
Learning - forward by learning!
Hard work - without hard work, no result
Career - isn’t a continuously growing career path beautiful?
Plan - a clear and realistic vision gives people energy to go for it
Idea - more and more ideas and creativity are important in order to differentiate from competitors
Boss - needs to be a boss, standing strong in his/her shoes and being supportive when needed. Being able to bring over the vision of top management in a clear and understandable way.
Challenge - to work as a team to fight these actual difficult economic times. As a team you are stronger!
Customer - is paying all of the Metso people at the end of each month
Flexibility - is the key for following this constant change
Ethics - respect each other upwards, downwards and sidewards
Values - selling value to the customer instead of products is the future