Can you introduce yourself briefly?
Hola, my name is Rachel and I am 24 years old. Currently I am living in my beautiful palace in Uden. Before I started at Tilburg University, I did my bachelor Communications in Nijmegen. In Tilburg I started with the premaster and then followed up with the master Business Communication and Digital Media. In the meantime, I was also an active member of the Premaster and Master Committee at Flow.

Could you tell me something about the company you work for now?
I started to work at DAF recently. This is an international company and market leader for trucks in Europe. Per day around 260 trucks are manufactured in Eindhoven, which are sold world wide. In addition, DAF also sells other services and products to truck dealers over the world.

How did you get there?
I signed a contract in the IT sector at Brunel, which is a secondment agency. They found work for me at DAF, where I am now currently working. Before, I did a project at Rijkswaterstaat (government organization of the highways and water roads) via Brunel. So from the roads I switched to vehicles.
When I graduated at Tilburg University, I was unsure what I wanted to do next. The only thing I knew, was the marketing/communication field was nothing for me. Via Flow I got in touch with some IT companies, which got my interest. I am definitely not a hardcore IT person and do not know much about computers, but the IT world is very broad. I took the plunge and started to apply for several IT traineeships. Not long after, invitations through LinkedIn for different interviews came my way. Brunel was one of those companies that reach out to me on LinkedIn, and after some meetings I signed my contract there. Some advantages of Brunel are that they have a broad network and really help you in planning your career.

How quickly did you get a job after graduating?
I thought that it would take me several weeks to find a job. That is why I already slowly started to apply for traineeships when I was finishing my thesis. But nothing could be further from the truth, as I signed my contract at Brunel only two weeks after I received the news that I had graduated. It all went so fast!

How did you select the type of job you wanted to apply for when applying?
Because I was unsure of what I wanted, I had no strategy for finding my job. The only thing I did was mentioning on LinkedIn that I was also interested in working in the IT. This was already enough for recruiters to send me invitations for interviews. I went open minded to these interviews and decided afterwards what got my interest. Even when I started at my first project via Brunel I was still not sure what I wanted. Now I am slowly starting to find that out for myself.

What is your job title at the moment?
Currently, I am working as a Functional Application Manager in a team of around 15 till 20 other FAMers. A fun fact is that some of my colleagues are also former CIS students from Tilburg. We all manage one or more application/tool. I am the contact person for the DAVIE. This is a tool that truck dealers or garages use to diagnose DAF trucks. This way they can find out what is not working in a truck or they can program parameters differently.

Can you tell us something about your daily work?
My job exists of two main tasks. On one side I provide support on the DAVIE, which means that I help dealers when they have software issues with the tool and answer their question. On the other side I take care of the orders dealers place of the DAVIE.
The work is very diverse and international oriented. I handle cases of dealers world wide, answer phone calls, emails and Skype requests, install the DAVIES and make sure the tools are delivered at the right address. Because the work is international oriented, I also have to deal with political situations and take in mind economical rules. Luckily, I do not have to do this alone. I have a DAVIE team that helps me with complex software issues. Other colleagues take care of the logistic part of the orders for me. And others help me with the political and economical rules. The most important thing of my job is that dealers can work with the DAVIE without any problems.

To what extent does CIW reappear in your work? Does it connect properly?
I would not say that there is a perfect fit between my studies and my current job, but this is also difficult to say as I switched my career. On the other side, good communication remains so important in any job. You need to be able to place yourself in the client and understand what they need. Communication is something that is still often going wrong in companies. This is why communication professionals are so very important!