International Business Machines Corporation, better known as IBM, is one of THE global corporations. With agencies in 170 countries and over 388,000 employees worldwide, IBM is the largest IT employer in the world. It was founded 1896 in New York, which means they were allready there during the crisis of the nineteen-thirties and survived, becoming in the recent years the most profitable computer company in the world.

E&M: IBM, a company we all tend to associate with computers and IT, is actually involved in a number of different projects.  What kinds of employees, other than IT-specialists, are you looking for at IBM?

Petr Draxler: We are looking for people with multi-disciplinary skills. Sure it's great if you are a mathematician, but knowing how to apply maths within the financial industry is even better. We call this field Service Sciences. Service Science is a growing multi-disciplinary research and academic branch, which integrates aspects of established fields such as computer science, operations research, engineering, management sciences, business strategy, social and cognitive sciences, and legal sciences. As more parts of the world develop services-led economies, these skills will be in high demand.

E&M: As a student from Europe, how can I get involved?

Petr Draxler: In 2008 IBM hosted 1500 intern students across all of our employment areas, ranging from accountancy and finance to marketing and research. One of our more competitive internship programs is called Extreme Blue^TM . This program creates a challenging, diverse and high-performance environment for students to work in that mimics a small business team at IBM. Extreme Blue allows interns to work on leading technology, thus helping them to improve their skills and making them more attractive candidates in the field of technology. Interns get to work with "hot" technology, such as Linux, Grid computing, autonomic computing and Web Services.

For more details on internship opportunities, visit www.ibm.com/employment/ and click on the "University student corner".

E&M: You operate in every country in Europe, and in 170 countries worldwide. What does it mean for an employee to be able to work in an transnational company?

Petr Draxler: IBM's strategy is to find pockets of talent and connect them so that they can work together from anywhere. We call this strategy global integration and we are building this network not only within Europe but all across the globe. So for example, our customer services centre in Bratislava, Slovakia, not only handles customer services within Slovakia, but for all of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and some parts of the United States. This is very different from the multinational IBM of twenty years ago, which took a more limited approach where if you were in Slovakia, you only supported Slovakia.  This is simply no longer sustainable.

Our delivery centre in Krakow, Poland is another good example. We have more than a thousand finance and accountancy experts working there; they deal with finances and accountancy for IBM and our clients across Europe and in the Americas. So we are drawing on the diverse range of unique qualities on offer within Europe and using each one where it makes most sense.

Photo:David, www.youthphotos.eu

If you want to get there, better learn to be fast!

E&M: Is there anything that distinguishes the European market from others?

Petr Draxler: Well, there are certainly the obvious factors, such as the diversity of languages, currencies and cultures.  The efforts of the European Union are certainly unique and as the EU helps to establish strong economies in countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, companies like IBM can find ways to contribute either as an employer or as a business partner.

E&M: How easy is it for an employee to move from a department in one country to another?

Petr Draxler: We encourage it and it's easy as a direct result of our global integration strategy.  To become globally integrated we have established standard processes and tools globally, enabling employees to move from one department to the next, even if it's in another country. 
To identify the relevant career opportunities we have an internal web-based tool called the Global Opportunity Marketplace, where employees can search for available positions by job description or by country. As long as their managers agree, employees can apply for the various job opportunities- it's that simple.

E&M: What points in a CV are more important now than they were twenty years ago?  What do you attach importance to when looking at an application?

Petr Draxler: Well, let's look at this from a fifteen-year perspective, starting from when I was at university. I've definitely seen better language skills on CVs today than ten years ago. The education system in Europe was smart in building this into curriculums at an early age for many students.  Compare that to the US public school system, where many students don't learn a second language until just a few years before graduation.  Besides language skills, IT skills have changed as well.  Engineering degrees fifteen years ago were still very hardware-centric and while this is still an important skill today, I am seeing more students graduate with software skills and services based skills, which are in demand across the EU. I also want to see dedication - I don't want to see a lot of job-hopping. If you don't stay in a company for at least a year, you should have a really good reason for leaving, other than "I didn't get the raise I wanted."

Petr Draxler was interviewed by Hanna Pilawa.
Cover photo: Roman Henn, www.youthphotos.eu