Trainee blog 2

Trainee blog – post 2: Departments

In this post, I am going to tell you a little bit more about the different departments that you pass during your training in wholesale and foreign trade at Arclite. I will talk about them in the order in which I went through them.

I started my traineeship in the switchboard. There, all threads come together. Most calls and emails arrive here and then are forwarded to the responsible employee in the house.

Another important part of a trading company is the warehouse. Of course, someone who works in the office should also know about what is going on in this department. Therefore, you also spend a short time here, in which you pack goods for shipping, accept and unpack goods and help to pack the goods for forwarding orders.

In order to get a certain understanding of „the system behind“, you also spend a short time in the IT-department. Here you can independently create customers and articles in a test system and learn about what is important.

My next stop was the purchasing department. There, as a trainee, you have the task to check the incoming order confirmations of our suppliers, clarify price differences and inform the colleagues about expired or replaced articles. In addition, the reorder level should be checked daily and kept up to date.

The customer support is in direct contact with the sales department and receives orders from both, the customer and the sales managers. Those then are recorded in the system and sent to the customer. Here you also have the opportunity to process export cases and to get familiar with the associated customs procedure.

After a year in administration, I went into accounting for a few months. After a short time it is part of the tasks of the trainees to make bookings in the financial system independently and to support the colleagues in day-to-day business.

I am currently in the marketing department, where I will probably stay until the end of my trainee ship. Here we deal with the external presentation of the company. In addition, all the little things that are „suddenly there“ happen here. This means that we keep the website up to date, post in social media networks, design brochures and plan trade fairs. In this department, „an eye for detail“ is an advantage because you also have to work creatively a lot.

In my next post, I will report on the vocational school and the structure of the curriculum there.

Best wishes

Nicola