Interview with Liz Schwarzer

That was a homecoming: I started at BlackBerry in Bochum in 2009. When the company was transferred to Volkswagen Infotainment, I was one of the few, who actually had to stay at Blackberry. Because a lot had changed, I moved to Stuttgart a short time later and kept checking if Volkswagen Infotainment was advertising a suitable position. That's how it turned out and I finally ended up back in Bochum.

It's the people. It's the culture in the company. It's the cohesion. It's the incredibly exciting topics. I like to quote our CEO: ‘We have the huge luxury of combining a start-up mentality with the security of a large corporation’. And that's true: we can operate quite independently here, yet we are a corporate subsidiary.

I experienced our corporate culture right away on the super strenuous recruiting day shortly after I started:
In the evening, we were still sitting together and our Managing Director Bernhard, who runs Volkswagen Infotainment together with Tobias, naturally sat down with us and told us a joke. I sat on the beer bench and realised: "It's so nice here, I've finally arrived.”

Yes, that is completely normal. At the beginning of the year, we also abolished the 'Sie' [the formal way of addressing someone] in job advertisements and job interviews because it is simply not authentic. We felt rather uncomfortable in the Sie' interviews, which is why we now ask before the interview if 'Du' [the informal way of addressing someone] is okay. And so far, no one has said no.

The everyday language is already German, even in e-mails. But especially in our technical areas, English is becoming more and more prevalent - also because we have more and more colleagues, whose mother tongue is not German and who do not yet speak German. That's why we always publish all important information in German and English.

I'll tell you about me. I come from the northernmost part of Bavaria, I'm a village child, Frankfurt was the highest of feelings and you only know Bochum from Grönemeyer. I grew up with the images from the song and I always had them in my head.

Then I drove to Bochum for my job interview and thought: 'Wow, it's green here'. Then I drive to this huge university campus and just can't find my way around. So I ask someone, who gives you directions in a totally friendly way. And maybe they'll even get in the car with you and drive there with you. I came to Ruhr in 2009 and nowhere have I met so many nice people and friends so quickly.

The term "tough but friendly" fits Bochum: everyone here is very direct, but you know where you stand. For me, that's a unique characteristic of the people in the Ruhr region. Here, you sometimes get into a fight and tell each other directly what you think of the other person. But then you go and have a beer together and that's it.

Exactly. That's a part of the corporate culture that I like enormously: if you don't go through the company with blinders on, you have no choice but to feel welcome. Everyone helps you and you can ask anyone. If the person you ask can't help you, they know someone else who can. ‘There's Jens, he'll help you'. That's incredibly great.

The question about Ruhr is part of every job interview. All those, who have been here, found it beautiful. I tell the others how I arrived here and then you look at your counterpart and see a smile.

I also like to tell them about our corporate culture and what makes us tick. We do it like in the Ruhr area: we tell it like it is. That way there's no Neuschwanstein culture shock. And we are very good at absorbing the culture shock through our way of helping each other.

I remember a desperate colleague from Canada. He suddenly stood at my office door and said: "Liz, I need to learn German, I need to get my hair cut.” So we took care of it first, not that he is now unhappy with his mat.

Then the HR team sat down and thought about whether we should offer in-house
language courses or give our colleagues financial support, so that they can take the course that suits them best. And then, of course, we have our onboarding days, so that people integrate super-fast. This two-day pressure-fuelling of information works really well online too.

And we support people to make contacts. I have no idea how many sports groups we have: from the dragon boat team, to football, bouldering, climbing, running and whatnot. We even have a rehearsal room in the basement. How cool is it that 30 people make music together there? It speaks for the company that people don't close their laptops after eight hours and think 'Thank God I don't have to see the place again until tomorrow morning'. It's all insanely cool and you really have to fight tooth and nail not to be integrated.

For this purpose, we have the Employee Assistance Programme, which is open to all colleagues - completely anonymously via an external service provider. The team helps by phone and free of charge with the submission of tax returns, assists with an appointment at the immigration office or quickly arranges appointments with a specialist. We help, so that colleagues can fully concentrate on their work.

On the ground floor, we have our vehicle hall, in front of which the high-security trucks from Wolfsburg like to stop to deliver the latest prototype. Unfortunately, we from the administration rarely have access to it and always scratch at the door because it gets really cool behind the security door: that's where the vehicles are that are not yet on the roads in Bochum.
It's really fun in there, it smells of new cars and tyres, there are half passenger compartments and sawn-up vehicles. When there are no prototypes around, we are allowed to take applicants there and their eyes get bigger and bigger. This shows once and for all that we not only have an incomparable corporate culture, but also work on really good projects - incidentally, we are the only automotive company in the Ruhr region.