Young Talents at the Service Hub Berlin

I am Gina and I studied Business Management (B.A.) at the University for Sustainable Development in Eberswalde. In March 2020, I completed a 6-month internship at the Service Hub Berlin. The first three months were part of the mandatory internship as part of my studies and the additional three months were chosen voluntarily.

At the start of the internship, a rally through the entire building was organized in addition to individual company presentations as part of the newcomer training. One of the highlights for me was the view over Berlin from the 15th floor. However, I had imagined the rest of my internship to be different, as during the middle of my second week, due to the Corona pandemic, we all had to switch to home office. The conversion of all tasks to digital, however, could be implemented after only a few days. In my opinion, the cooperation under these conditions worked very well, because we were in constant exchange as a team and supported each other. The team - but also the cross-team culture at BASF is exceptionally warm, always accommodating and friendly. The annual team event also took place online last year. Together we completed a virtual Escape Room. Back then, I could already imagine staying on at BASF after my internship. At the end of the year, shortly before I finished my bachelor's thesis, my team leader approached me and offered me a job as Junior Recruiter. I am now looking forward to my first own assignments and lots of new challenges and experiences.

From 2017 to 2020, I had already completed a corporate study program in cooperation with the BASF Hub Berlin. I am currently in the master's program for business informatics at the HTW. At the same time, I am still employed at BASF and have been supporting the Innovations and Analytics team as a working student since October 2020. Already, before graduating with my bachelor’s degree I was determined to deepen my knowledge in the field of data analytics. I then became aware of the working student vacancy via the internal BASF job market. The content of the position coincided with my interests.

Therefore, I am currently supporting the team in automating the reporting and in additonal digital projects in the area of process optimization. I think it's great that I'm given a lot of responsibility and trust, and that I can interact independently with our partners. Even under Covid-conditions, we are able to stay in personal contact thanks to joint digital lunch breaks or after-drinks. 

I am happy being able to remain a part of BASF after my corporative studies and looking forward to the upcoming projects on my fevelopment from a Data Analyst to a Data Scientist. 

What I was most excited about as a working student was being able to actively contribute my own ideas right from the start and that these were also implemented in an appreciative manner. In total, I was employed as a working student at the Hub for more than 3 years, parallel to my business informatics studies. Even before my master's program, I was rort to say headhunted during my bachelor's studies by a fellow student who was already working at BASF. During that time I had another working student position at a smaller company, but I wanted to see something new and develop myself further.

My job in the BASF Technoledge Business Reporting team is to automate processes with MS Powerautomate and to set up intranet pages and the associated CMS maintenance. In addition, I was also given the opportunity to actively support other projects.

Most of the time I was able to organize my working hours in a very flexible way. Once to twice a week I used to present my project status and then discuss the following steps with my team. In retrospect, it was often challenging for me to juggle university and working student activities at the same time, but my colleagues were always helpful and understanding when the workload for university was a little heavier. 

As part of my bachelor's degree in business administration at the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, I completed an internship in the Talent Acquisition unit at the beginning of 2020. Thanks to the so-called Newcomer Days, I had the opportunity to get to know BASF and the Hub better right from the start and was able to network with the other new colleagues. During the following weeks, I was able to settle into my new work routine and into the team very quickly. Even the Covid-19-caused digital training from home and mobile working did not lead to any disadvantages and functioned flawlessly. Parallel to the daily business and regular virtual team meetings, I was also able to support the team with project tasks. My responsibilities included writing and placing job advertisements, screening and pre-selecting applications, and coordinating interviews for various Group companies, all the way to hiring the right candidates. Despite the digital internship, the personal exchange through regular meetings or virtual afterworks was not neglected in my opinion. The virtual afterworks in particular were great for getting to know the team better despite the physical distance. Another highlight for me was that after completing my internship, I was offered the chance to remain part of the team as a working student. And now, after completing my studies, I was even able to join directly as a junior recruiter. Looking back, I didn't expect so much to come out of an internship and I'm even happier to have chosen to intern at BASF Hub.