Headway – AMA Partnership

On Wednesday Headway signed a partnership with AMA EDUCATION SYSTEMS HOLDINGS, INC., which is a corporation duly established and operating in the Philippines, they are capturing different universities mainly IT. The main objectives of this partnership are to have an access to pool of talents that can work in Headway. We wish to give chance for AMA students to have their On-the-Job-Training here as well as be an employee. We would like to be involved in job fairs and career talks. Headway management would like to put an effort to shape young Filipinos, learn critical thinking and other core competencies. We believe that such activities can bring positive impact on filipino education system and we will be looking for signing such partnership with other universities.

Introducing the SIX of us :)

Ok! So this post is dedicated to the amazing and fun individuals who are doing their traineeship at HEADWAY today. These are:

From left to right:
Dorota (Poland), Cees (The Netherlands), Bryan (Canada), Eva (Slovakia), Karla (Perú)
- Sonia (Romania) missing in the pic.

TRAINEES IN THE OFFICE

Dorota (HR-SSG) - Cees (Quality - SSG) - Bryan (HBS) - Karla (HPL) - Eva (HBS)
Sonia missing in the picture (HBS)

TRAINEES PROUD WINNERS OF THIS COOL COMPETITION

Upper Line: Cees, Dorota
Bottom Line: Eva, Karla, Sonia
Bryan missing in the pic (he was in Vietnam)

TRAINEES ENJOYING DONSOL (LEGAZPI) in The Philippines

SONIA - 24 years old, committed to a cool chinese, from Romania, she holds a degree in Economics. She arrived in August 2008 and will be here till January 2010. She works as project manager in Headway Business Services, establishing a company in The Philippines.

BRYAN - 29 years old, single, from Canada. He is a Chemical Engineer, he had worked at National level in AIESEC in Hungary and The Netherlands. Now he is doing a business consulting traineeship for one year, till August 2009.

DOROTA - 25 years old, committed to a nice filipino, from Poland. She got her master's degree in Economics in 2007, then worked for AIESEC at National level and afterwards decided to go for an internship. Her role is HR Officer for Headway Business Services - Shared Services Group, meaning that she manages HR in three different companies. She will be here till August 2009, maybe longer :)

EVA - 25 years old, committed to a smart czech, from Slovakia. She holds a Masters degree in Public Economics. She has being into 25 countries because of AIESEC and personal travels. She is Business Consultant for 2 current projects in Headway Business Services. So far, she is enjoying her 7 months in The Philippines.

KARLA - 25 years old, single lady, she comes from Perú, she is an Industrial Engineer, who had lived and worked in Perú, U.S. and Brazil ; and traveled across Latin America because of AIESEC and non-AIESEC related projects. Today she works as business consultant and project manager in Headway Process Logics. So far she has been here for 3 months and she loves it.

CEES - 24 years old, single, from The Netherlands, (almost graduated as) Industrial Engineer. He has lived in The Netherlands, France and now he is enjoying his "pinoy" experience. He works as Quality Control Officer for Headway Business Services - Shared services Group; meaning that he is working in implementing and monitoring quality standards in three companies. He arrived in February and will be here till August.

These are us!
Check out this "formal" video we put together =)

Cool thing to realize while writing this, how extraordinary is to find similar people, with similar interests, from Europe and America; AIESECers, with international experience, Economics and Engineering backgrounds, very ambitious minds, really caring, sometimes random and ultra fun:

Check out our attempt to become Chinese in a Friday night, after finishing a typical Headway week.

Headway promesses a challenging and life changing experience to their trainees. So far, it has been full with different, unique, special, surprising, unexpected, kind, random, possitive, fun, incredible... situations.

For sure we will continue sharing stories of our wonderful experience coming from working on a Consultancy firm; learning how to balance work with beautiful nature and trips... in this unique country - The Philippines.

Stay tuned for more :)

Keynote speech in the LYCEUM of the Philippines

On FRIDAY I had chance for the first time of my life to be a keynote speaker. IT was amazing experience. I was invited by LYCEUM of the Philippines University Batangas for their conference with theme: Networking and Linkages between Business and Academics Institutions. This university is around 2,5-3 h from Manila in very nice place. I was giving speech about: Standards and Qualifications of multinational companies in hiring people.

I went to the university one day before, Thursday afternoon and when I get there I was welcomed as a star :) with a big bucket of flowers pictures etc. I felt like Miss Poland they even called me like that because of course for them I'm so beautiful :) I was given very nice room so at the evening I prepared myself to the next day and went sleep. Next day I woke up around 6.30 AM to practice speech and prepare myself. It was very nice sleep because finally no street noise just pure nature :)

The whole conference was from 9:00 till 12:00 I was at the very beginning. My speech long around 30 min and in my opinion it was the only one speech which was useful for students the other were not so much on the topic. But after such long experience in AIESEC and thousand conferences I have big expectations　：）after my part I was given a certificate some small presents. It was a very nice experience to talk to around 300 students, their family members and other important people. I know that the organizers and university itself was surprised that I'm so young but I think that it is not about how old are you but what kind of experience you have. I hope to have mire chances to participate in such events for me personally it was a great chance to check myself as a keynote speaker, to got to know more education system in the Philippines and of course to have a great fun :)

Key learning points from last 6 months

It is already 6 months that I’m here in this beautiful country. It is amazing how time is passing quickly. So far I manage to visit many interesting places like: mountains, caves, rain forest, beaches, volcano, towns, underwater world, etc. J of course I’m looking forward for more! If you like adventures, sun and nice people this country definitely is for you!

Talking about experience at work I have to admit that I’m learning a lot! Job that I’m having is very responsible and I wouldn’t name it internship because you have to make very crucial decisions and scope of work is big as well, thanks to that I can feel like developing and discovering myself every day. I was already in many different situations, dealing with different people. I can say that being HR in AIESEC and in company is very different; when money is there everything is more complicated. I’m learning a lot how money influence HR and all the activities connected with this.  I’m also learning how to work in completely different culture. Sometime it is very hard. Filipinos are very friendly and hardly ever will say no sometime they need to be push and guide. The labor market is also different than Polish one. In our company currently there are 6 trainees and I can see how big value they are bringing. I wish more Filipino companies will use foreigners to combine different cultures and benefits from it.

In front of me more 6 months, sometime I’m wondering how things will go and what next day will bring. I started to think what to do next. I have different thoughts in my mind. Staying in Headway, look for some other company in the Philippines, look for another internship or back to Poland. I hope that everything will clarify soon so that I don’t have to worry.

To summarize I’m recommending such experience for everyone. You can get to know a lot about yourself, world other people. You are not loosing anything just gaining!

 

 

 

First weeks in the Philippines

After two and a half weeks in the Philippines I felt the need to share my experience so far. This blog is a great way to do that so in the furure you will read many more posts from me here! What have I done so far and how are my first impressions??? Read more and find out!!

On February 12 I arrived in Manila airport close to midnight. As agreed by e-mail beforehand I had a few beers as soon as I touched down with the CEO at the office. Very nice :)

There was no room available in the Headway apartments in Kingswood towers when I arrived so I've been staying in a dorm in Manila untill now. Today I'm moving to Kingswood in Makati though, very exciting!

The following day was my orientation day at the office and I got to meet everybody working at Headway including my fellow trainees. I had a bad jetlag so I had a hard time staying focused during briefing but I managed to pick up some of it. I offered a box of "stroopwafels" to everybody and a bottle of "kruidenbitter" from the town where I studied (Groningen) which was finished the same evening of course!

The major event of the following week was my Balut ritual. It's a tradition at Headway that every new trainee eats Balut. This is an egg with an unhatched chick inside that you're supposed to eat... The bar in HBS (I'm quality control officer in HBS - Shared Services Group) was to eat at least two eggs. Flo showed me how to eat them and everybody was watching and hoping that I wouldn't be able to handle it. When I discovered that it's actually quite tasty I decided to raise the bar to three eggs. So for the future trainees, because of me you'll have to eat at least three :) Enjoy!

During my second weekend I discovered a very loved hobby of the Filipinos: malling (to mall). This was a new verb for me so I decided to try it. There are tons of big malls in Metro Manila and after a few hours of malling I was the proud owner of some new shoes! Ready for the next week to continue on my project in style! On saturday night we went to an AIESEC event at club Ascend where we entered a drinking contest against the Filipinos. Do I even need to mention who won? Ok, we won! We got ourselfs some cool San Mig Strong Ice t-shirts that we wore to the office to show our winners mentality to the rest of the company!

The third weekend started of very well. The guys from Kingswood 17E organized an ALCOHOL party! This particular theme was chosen because the week before we got 11 (eleven!!) bottles of gin from AIESEC and they were taking up too much space in the fridge. During this party I figured it would be a good idea to introduce some proper Dutch drinking games! The game I chose was Kings, with Dutch rules. After a few hours of playing and the creation of a drink that tasted like Dutch liquorice, half of the gin was still in place and most attendees of the party were not able anymore to finish the rest. That calls for another ALCOHOL party in the future in 17E so that we can trash the place again ;)

The next day I woke up really early because of the office ritm I'm in. I agreed with Karla that if we would wake up early we would meet up and go to Puerto Galera. White beach to be precise. So that's what we did. This was the opportunity I've been waiting for to flee the busy city with it's polution for the weekend. At noon we arrived at White beach. I loved it right away. We booked a hotel and had some lunch. Then we stayed on the beach the whole day. Tanning, swimming, tanning, some more swimming, jumping of cliffs, and getting a massage on the beach while the sun was setting and the ocean was sounding in the background. That's the live!

That evening there was partying going on everywhere. Earlier that day we met some Filipinos who we saw again sitting on the beach and listening to the music. We joined them and drank lots of Mindoro Sling (Mindoro is the name of the island and sling is a fruity punchlike drink). While doing that we met more nice (international) people who live in Manila. Everybody was friendly, even the gay guys dressed up as girls, who I thought were a scary in the beginning.

The next day was another tanning, swimming, etc day. Although this day I saw the dark side of the Filipino sun at noon. In half an hour I got quite badly sunburned as I haven't seen the beach for a long time. While writing this I'm kindly reminded by my skin that I shouldn't go in the sun around noon no matter how much sun block I use...

I was kind of saved by the weather because around 12:30 it started raining a bit and the sun failed to kill me in action :)

We had a great lunch with fresh fruit shakes and fresh fish and after some more swimming and cliff jumping we got on the boat back to the mainland. This was a very nice trip and only the first of many to come!

Keep following the blog and you will be able to follow our adventures here. I'll keep you updated!! Now I'm going to move my stuff to Kingswood and chill out in my new home!

Cheers,

Cees