Opportunities for career advancement
Yasemin Berardi once began her career at HELM with vocational training in the commercial field. Today she is Head of Department. During the course of her professional career, she managed to continually extend her theoretical and practical knowledge.
“Promote and challenge” is a motto at HELM concerning personnel development. Yasemin Berardi is a good example of how this applies in everyday work. "I was very eager to learn from the very beginning and also received many opportunities to broaden my horizons in the Company even as a young woman,” explains Yasemin, a Head of Department today.
She was given significant responsibilities at HELM as early as the beginning of her vocational training as a foreign trade merchant. It all began with the processing of documents: “I was able to pick up initial practical experience long before the material was actually taught at the vocational training college,” Yasemin recalls.
Soon she decided to embark on university studies: „In those days the cooperation with the Nordakademie was not yet in place, and I assumed that I would only be able to keep in contact with the Company as a student assistant worker.“ However, fortunately the opportunity arose right in time to combine practical and academic training by engaging in a dual course of study. This encouraged Yasemin to stay at HELM and to study business management in parallel – with alternating practical and theoretical semesters.
During this period, she became more acquainted with the project business in the field of Pharma. “For instance, I contributed to a public tender by the Bangladeshi Ministry of Health, which we ended up winning,” Yasemin proudly reports. In addition, she was given deeper insights into the trading departments of HELM and got to know her current field of activities there. “I immediately liked it there.”
From her point of view, her assignments outside the corporate headquarters in Hamburg were most beneficial to her professional career. In fact, the well-known “thinking out of the box” had been particularly helpful in her opinion. For several months, Yasemin supported the German sales office in Leipzig and spent half a year at HELM in Istanbul in order to conduct a detailed market analysis of the PET plastics industry in Turkey. The latter was also included in the dissertation for her diploma. “I’ve always been assigned interesting but also responsible tasks,” says the talented junior executive.
New professional prospects kept on arising for her at HELM. Finally, at the age of 28 she was offered a position as Head of Department in the business unit Crop Protection. “Flexibility and dedicated commitment certainly are rewarded at HELM,” says Yasemin in summing up. “In addition, I always felt that my potential was identified and supported.”
“Flexibility and dedicated commitment certainly are rewarded at HELM.”