• High school students meet up with the business world

On February 26, 2010, some five hundred high school students became “the shadow” of managers and specialists at local companies during the Job Shadow Day in Timişoara, Romania. For many of them, it was the first time they came in contact with the business world. Twenty students had the opportunity to spend the day with experts from Continental in Timişoara.

The purpose of the Job Shadow Day program is to help high school students gain access to the real working world and make the right career choice. “We believe that such events must be supported by the business community to give you people the opportunity to be well informed when choosing a profession,” said Dr. Christian von Albrichsfeld, general manager of Continental Automotive Romania. He, too, gave one of the students the opportunity to be his “shadow” for a day.

“We have supported education in Timişoara for 10 years, and we are glad that we could be partners to this project this year. The participants are at the age when they start thinking about the field that they would like to work in, and any guidance is helpful. The automotive industry offers great career opportunities, and I hope to welcome many of today’s participants as colleagues in our company in a few years,” says Alina Bratu, PR officer at Continental and the students’ host.

The Job Shadow Day program was developed by the local technical college in collaboration with the local school authorities, the Software Business Incubator (an enterprise supported by the German GTZ* for the promotion of young IT companies), the Mots events agency, and the Romanian Association for the Electronic and Software Industry of Timişoara, and is supported by the local business community.

*German Enterprise for Technical Cooperation, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit