Company Visit - French course, 10th class at Benteler Automotive company, March 2017

At 8 o'clock we arrived there and were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Karthaus. She led us to a meeting room where drinks were available. Then came Mr. Pieper, a longtime employee, and introduced us to his working field "Steel & Tube". Mr. Pieper told us about his experiences with French business partners. Many of them do not speak German but do not want to speak English either. So he learned French.

Then we talked about STEM projects and clean power supply. Exciting for us was the fact that Sahara, completely equipped with solar panels, could supply the whole world with electricity! Unfortunately, this is not possible due to the political situation.

Some facts about the company: Bentler  has about 3850 employees in Paderborn but there are locations in different countries. Benteler is divided into three departments: Energy, Automotive and Industry. Every year, the company makes 885 million euros in sales. Later, Mr. Depierreux, another employee from France and married to a German, joined us and showed us a documentary about the French school system. He also talked about cultural differences between France and Germany.

Then we should introduce ourselves in French, to exercise a job interview. Some students did very well. After a short break, Mr. Bichon came to us. He works as a  project engineer and talked about his personal career and his great satisfaction with Benteler. He also showed us an example model for a Chinese car brand commissioned by Chinese customers. At noon, our visit to Benteler was over and we took the bus back to the school.
It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot. We recommend this excursion also to the next coming 10th classes. We found it interesting because we were able to talk to French employees and learned a lot about working life in an internationally operating company.
Above all we were surprised that French language skills can be so important in a German company.