Insider Story - Melanie Kluger
We, as tecRacer, thrive on our individual and unique employees. In our new series “Insider Stories” Melanie will tell you how she found her way to the company as well as how she experiences working for tecRacer.
Who am I and where do I come from?
I am Melanie Kluger, 28 years old, with a masters in geosciences which I completed in October 2018 in the University of Hamburg and Kiel. For my thesis, I programmed an analysis to calculate pressure in an underground gas cavern. I loved (and still love) the feeling of finally solving a problem. I guess this is the reason, why I ended up in IT. But how do you get to a cloud consulting company from being a geoscientist?
How did I get to tecRacer?
In fact, tecRacer got to me. I was standing in front of the job fair booth in Hamburg, just to take off my jacket. That’s when Felix, my current teamlead, approached me. After a nice conversation, and despite my lack of IT and Cloud knowledge or any corresponding work experience, I was invited to the “tecRacer applicant day”.
My experience with tecRacer
The applicant day at tecRacer was something special.
All employees of the site took part. I could talk to everyone and ask everything. However, it was not all just fun. Two co-workers held a lecture about AWS basics and then we - 4 male applicants and me - were given a task.
This task was a real challenge, especially if you’re a lateral entrant.
When we got the task, I almost gave up.
I thought I would never understand anything.
But I didn’t want to let the chance go by.
So I did my best and prepared my solution, staying as structured as possible. I asked the co-workers for further explanations and got a lot of answers.
After we all finished the task, we had lunch together and the rest of the day was spent talking with everyone.
Not only could we get a feel for the tecRacer experience on the day, but every present tecRacer co-worker could also get an impression of their possible new colleagues.
It turned out that I solved the task not too badly and made a good impression on everyone.
I received positive feedback the same evening!
This application process has already crystallized everything that is important to me at work and this why I am still here, since, as soon as you set a foot in the cloud, you get more than enough offers.
What you can count upon at tecRacer:
- Helpfulness and collegiality
- Fast and flexible processes - e.g. for employment, it is not only decided by resume. It is still decided quickly without months of waiting - it either fits or it does not.
- Every employee has the opportunity to help shape his or her environment - in terms of applicants and also in many other areas we have the freedom to get involved and initiate something in the company.
That day also showed me what was expected from me and what qualities are important:
- Be committed, be proactive!
- Stay motivated, even if it may sometimes get really hairy and drive you to despair. You have to be able to endure this and be willing to get help for yourself.
- Open-mindedness, not just for the latest AWS services and trying out the latest IT shit, but also for people - be open to others and patient with questions - both in asking and asking again, and later in answering!
- Being structured is an advantage if you want to cope with the large amount of input.
The first few months were hard work - with no IT background I had to catch up a lot. In fact, I still am catching up, since in IT you are never finished learning. Meanwhile I am working in projects for large companies that are migrating to the cloud and need support with automation. Besides the daily project routine, everyone has their own small project. For me, it’s the topic of diversity, which I work on with my colleague Tony.
Bottom line
Variety, helpfulness and co-determination - that’s what I get at tecRacer and that’s what I would like to give back.
If you are interested in learning more about us, we are always hiring: www.tecracer.de/jobs/
