Annual Vocational Career Event in Heerbrugg, Switzerland

The Leica Geosystems team in Heerbrugg participated in the Chance Industrie Rheintal vocational career event in St Margrethen from Thursday 6 November to Saturday 8 November 2014. The team who organised and manned our booth was comprised of Margaret Wetzlhütter, Andrea Wicki-Bormann, and Martina Nesensohn. They were joined by some of our current apprentices working at Leica Geosystems: Fabienne Halter, Kevin Baumgartner, and Shqiponja Dermaku.

The Chance Industrie Rheintal is a local association which aims to ensure the Rhine Valley is considered an attractive location for highly skilled professionals to work. In addition to Leica Geosystems, the association represents eighteen other well-known industrial companies in the Rhine Valley, with a representation of 6,400 employees and 435 students in the region overall.
Each year, Chance Industrie Rheintal hosts a professional event which teenagers can attend, along with their parents, to learn about the Apprenticeship opportunities which are available to them in industrial workplaces in the region. As one of the first member companies of the Chance Industrie Rheintal association, Leica Geosystems is committed to supporting young people to take up vocational training in the form of technical Apprenticeships.

Both students and employers were able to engage in an interactive way during the Event - there were various hands-on activities available at the Leica Geosystems booth to show potential apprentices the types of activities they might encounter on the job. This enables the Apprenticeship candidates to get an insight into what it is like to work in various different professions, how corporations are structured, and the tasks involved in their day-to-day working life. In addition, students have the opportunity to receive helpful tips at the Candidate Coaching sessions. On the third and final day, parents were able to obtain information from the Centre, which assists them in supporting their children through the process of selecting their chosen career.
We would like to thank all who were involved for their organisation and participating in this event, and in particular for taking time out of their scheduled to support this great initiative. We also hope to meet some of the participants again as employees in the coming years.

Further information about this initiative can be found here
Margret Wetzlhuetter
Human Resources Manager

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