Generating Value From Data: Fernando’s Journey

Generating value from data – the second step on Fernando’s journey

Hello everyone,

this is Fernando again. In my first blog entry, I shared a little of my journey to Evonik with you and gave you an insight into my internship. This time, I would like to give you more details about what I did as an intern.

My internship spanned two years, which is not that uncommon in Brazil and, during that time, I was able to learn a lot from my colleagues who always assigned me a large variety of tasks. My daily life as an intern was full of spreadsheets, market reports and presentations, which I really enjoyed doing because I was able to get to know all the markets in which High Performance Polymers are – and could be – active. As you can see, as a Marketing Intelligence intern, a lot of work revolves around data and information. 

This is not particularly extraordinary, after all we live in a world where information, such as a possible market for a company, is vital and we are lucky that we already have a lot of different information available, but this is also a challenge. In a world full of information, it is key to make sense of it and not to simply gather more and more data. Therefore, a big part of market intelligence is to prepare presentations and reports which summarizes everything. The most important part, however, is to make sense of the data and to create value out of it: What does this mean for a company? What direction should be taken? What could be improved? 

During my internship, I prepared and presented many of such reports for various stakeholders. One time, I was even invited as a speaker. This was one of my biggest challenges during my internship but also an excellent opportunity to show how much I had already learned. I believe the best part of my internship was that I could see how everyone wanted me, an intern, to be fully involved in the day-to-day activities of the business. Of course, you are still in a learning process and you cannot do everything at first, but you already have your own tasks and responsibilities.

As I told you before, two-year-internships are quite common in Brazil, but it is also the maximum of time one can spend at a company and that time limit was quickly drawing closer or, as we would say in Brazil, it was already the 45th minute of the second half of a soccer game. It was then, during the last minute of the game, when I was offered a position as Account Executive at Evonik's Regional Business Development team. This position seamlessly connects to my internship because, in order to develop new companies, you first have to know and understand the market, which I did thanks to my internship. 

This was my journey from a student with an interest in science to an intern to an Account Executive at Evonik. I really believe that every student should try to do an internship or other work experience besides his or her studies. While you may now think that you should focus on your studies first, because you think that you still have time for such things, it is an absolutely enriching experience on a personal and professional level. It was great how Evonik helped me with my first steps into the corporate world and how much trust they showed me by offering me this new position. It is not easy to enter the corporate world for the first time but with trustworthy, friendly and helpful colleagues, like I had, it will definitely be a success. 

See you soon, 

Fernando

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On the students@Evonik blog students who work at Evonik share their experiences about life in the company.