Istvan's Blog

The end

Time has now come to tell you good bye… this is my very last contribution to this blog, I will try to give you an overview of the whole program, more precisely of my coach’s job is and then of my personal feelings after these few months.

About Costas’ job…
I think you now all know that he is FX Risk Manager, even if you do not you can have a quick look on the “about my coach” post.

As I have already spoken a lot about him and his job in the other posts, I am just going to resume the most important points about it.

What does this job consist in?
- Protecting the company from the fluctuations of the Foreign eXchange rates

Where does Costas work?
- At Alcan’s European Treasury in Zurich, Switzerland  

- He often travels to Paris, Montreal  and other countries to have face to face conversations. 

 

What are the main features of this job?
- Contacts with Alcan’s employees all around the world.
- Challenges through elaboration of new procedures.
- Full of adrenaline

What is the key point of the job?
- COMMUNICATION; it is definitely the key

Let’s finish as it started, with me and my personal feelings!
I do not want you to loose yourself in the following so I will simply deal with it in three parts: what was cool, what was less cool and what it changed.

The cool side

First of all, I would say that it was really a great opportunity to shadow our coach as we have done! I have already had some internships but although it was always far longer than at Alcan I have never seen and learnt as much as during this day and a half.
Another important point is that there was no introduction time; you were involved in everything from the very beginning to the very end of your Alcan day.
Finally, there was no “stupid” question and you were even encouraged to ask about whatever did not make sense for you. 

Less cool

Don’t be stressed, there is only one thing; it was too short!
It is true that it was pretty intensive and I do not know if I would have been able to cope with a second or third day but what would have been a good idea is to let us come back a few weeks or a month later and give us another day or day and a half to ask and see everything we hadn’t time for. I mean there was so much to see and learn that we must all have missed one thing or another. But anyway, it was still great!

What it changed

Before having seen Costas in action, I could simply not imagine what a guy from the finance department of a company could do except accountancy. But there is a lot to do, and actually a lot of more interesting things than accountancy. Then, during the time I spent on writing about the topics, I had the occasion to think about every aspects of the job, to discuss them with Costas, I tried to include my personal thoughts in what I wrote; it was a good way to find out what I really want to do.

This brings us to the most important point of the whole program:

Before having my Alcan Day, I thought that when I would have my master I would simply try to find a good job in a Bank and work in financial analysis or something like that but now (and obviously it is what Alcan hoped ) I am not so sure anymore. I had the occasion to see the side of finance I had not been exposed to before my Alcan day and it seems to be a pleasant one. 

If you asked me now what I want to do later I would say work in a corporate as an FX Risk Manager! 

And there is a simple reason for that, every time you have an internship, most of the time the only thing you see is archives , because they give you the job they do not have the time to deal with, that is the way it works and it is normal.
But with such experiences you do not have the occasion to see how real things work and you do not feel really involved in what is done.
At Alcan’s it was the opposite, as you did not come for working but for shadowing, you had the opportunity to see the most important aspects of ones job and to identify yourself to him.

To finish, I would advice everyone to take such an opportunity if they can, it was a great experience.
I personally think that in a relative near future Alcan could be one of the first companies I will contact after having my master. I cannot say I am sure that I want to work in a corporate --I still need a few months of internship to have a more precise idea-- but I can tell you that working in a corporate like Alcan can be really interesting and give you a lot of opportunities for you career.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed what you’ve read during the past few months and that it was of some kind of help for you, thank you for reading me and special thanks to the Alcan team, Sandrine Guyot and of course Costas for everything they have done for us and particularly for me.

Challenge, performance & contribution

As you maybe know, this week’s topic is going to be the last of our program. I’m also going to post a so-called “last contribution” which resumes the whole experience and what I retained from it, so I invite you to come back soon and have a look at it.

Let’s speak about challenge, performance & contribution! 

As you all know now, Costas, my coach, is an FX Risk Manager so his key contribution to Alcan is to make sure that the company is protected from currency fluctuation but it is only part of the job.

As the market is continuously changing, the company has to adapt its processes continuously and for Costas this translates into participating and leading various projects resulting in improvements in the current treasury processes.

In a company like Alcan, everyone’s contribution plays a role, but still the company has to check if yours is worth the money your earn for and this assessment is done through conducting performance reviews with supervisors.

For the corporate it is also very important that everybody shares the same value & strategic directives, therefore there are continuous improvement projects which you are invited to participate to.

Now, that we are clear with what the key contribution is, it still has to be challenging and actually the challenges in such a position are multiple: provide solutions in a dynamic and constantly changing environment; meet the deadlines; work with people from different departments and locations; trying to be proactive than reactive; be an "active team member"…

As you can see it you cannot find your job too easy or too boring with such challenges, however, without a great amount of motivation you would not be able to go through the task.

This is maybe the most personal feeling and it must be different for everyone, even if they have the same job; for Costas the motivation comes from having a challenging job which is “full of adrenaline”…this adrenaline need is not the best thing to have a long and quiet life but it is obviously one of the best motivation factor for anything you can do.

Well, we came to the end of this last topic, thanks for reading me guys and don’t hesitate to comment on whatever you want.

Innovation

This week’s topic is about InNOvaTion in our coach’s job, I thought it would be a hard topic, but after thinking a bit about it and discussing it with my coach everything became clear or at least clearer…

My coach is not an engineer or a researcher, who are both supposed to innovate the whole day long, he is a manager, a financial manager. At first sight innovation seems to be absent from his job but in fact he has to be innovative everyday.


I said that he was not an engineer; he is! For sure he is not a mechanic electronic engineer but a finance engineer, he has to elaborate new processes, to rebuild or refresh old ones.

I said that he was not a researcher; he also is! He has to use “out of the box” thinking to avoid running the same old processes for years, in addition he has to find ways for having win-win solutions with his partners, clients or suppliers.

Being an engineer is good, being a researcher is good, but if you are not also a good manager your first two capacities are useless. As a financial manager you have to work within a team, and as you work within a team you have to contribute with you ideas, to manage you’re relationships and last but not least to listen, not only to your team members but also to your customers because, after all, without them you would even have a job!

Let's go International

This week’s topic is about the international aspects of my coach’s job.
As you all know, is a widely international company represented in 56 countries around the world. That implies many interactions between people from different locations.

Because Alcan is a widely international company every single job by Alcan has many international aspects to deal with. My coach’s job is not an exception; actually it is maybe one of the best representations of this week’s topic.

As an FX Risk Manager working for the European Treasury it is obvious that he has to deal internationally but what could be surprising is that it does not happen once a month or a week, neither once a day, it happens several times a day!

Costas is a manager, and that implies as I told you before that he has to communicate the whole day long through email, phone or conference calls and that’s one of the most important international aspects of his job because the emails he writes or the phone calls he has are most of the time with people from other countries in Europe and also often with the headquarters in Montreal. In addition he has also to travel to these countries; I’ll speak about this at the end.

Email, conf. calls etc.

I spent one day and half with Costas as you know and during this day and half he had two conference calls, at least fifteen emails to write and spoke with three people just under the CFO (chief financial officer) who’s just the guy under the CEO; all three where in Montreal.

Even if he is just working at his office in Zurich he has to be international because although it  is a German speaking city, the cultural diversity of Alcan’s co-workers and Alcan’s business is such that the official language is English even if we are in Switzerland !

Everything I have told you here was all internal to Alcan but the job also implies relation with people from the outside, mostly banks actually. Costas has often to manage with banks from all European countries and even Asian banks that implies some understanding of how people work in these countries; you cannot have the same behaviour with people from Paris or people from Singapore they do simply not understand things the same way.

Travel

Finally let’s speak about travel. Email is great thing that simplifies the business, phone calls are good to, but sometimes you have to have face-to-face discussions, and therefore you have to travel a lot. It is the same in every company, sometimes you cannot arrange things without direct contact, but Alcan with a presence in 56 countries implies that these face-to-face relationships are often subject to height to ten hours of plane, but don’t worry, it is also often less that two (Paris…). Since Costas is working by Alcan he went to Montreal, to Paris and to several other destinations in Europe and Asia. That’s a great! Even if you don’t have time to do sightseeing you can at least have interactions with people from different cultures and that’s the most important international aspect of this job, the possibility to learn from people having different backgrounds and approaches of business and even life.

I think I went through the most important international aspects of Costas’ job but if you have some other ideas please do not hesitate to post comments! 

Birthday !!!

Hi guys!!!

Today I am 22, my god... twenty-two.. I didn't realize that I was so old ;-)

What can I say about it? only 3 years left and I will be aged of a quarter of a century and also be aproximately at the end of the first third of my life... BUT AT THE BEGINNING OF WORKING LIFE!-maybe by Alcan? ;-)- At least that's something cool, but as my parents use to tell me when work I'll regret my student life...I'm waiting to confirm!

I must stop here, I have presents waiting on me, and you maybe don't want me to write about my birthday for 10 pages...

See you!

Clients & Suppliers

Welcome back!

This week we have to deal with our first topic; for those who do not know what it is I explain:

Every week starting March 31 and finishing around mid-May we are given a topic to discuss with our coach and then post something about it.

This week’s topic as most of you know is
 « clients and suppliers » 
but not Alcan’s, the ones of an Alcan co-workers.

As you work in corporate, especially if it’s a huge one, you do not only have to deal with people from the outside but also from the inside. Actually reporting to what I’ve seen during my day and half and to what we discussed with my coach, you have far more to deal internally than externally.  

My coach is an FX Risk Manager as I told you before, so what I’m going to say here only concerns this kind of job, I mean “office work”. I wanted to deal with this in two times, the client-supplier relationship (you’re the client) and the supplier-client relationship (you’re the supplier), but actually, in my mind, you’re always both at the same time. So finally I’ll try to mix everything but still be comprehensible.

In a company it’s not exactly the same as in the real world, to be a good client you often have to be a good supplier to. That means that if you want to obtain something from someone it’s never easy, or almost never. People do care about other people needs but they always have to accommodate them with their own priorities and sometimes they underestimate yours. 

For example, I had my Alcan day at the European Treasury; which means they make sure that there is ENOUGH MONEY that the BILLS ARE PAID! And if they have a lack of information or if it is not sufficiently clear, there might be sometimes NOT ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY THE BILLS! That’s typically something people working for Alcan in the rest of Europe do not always understand, or underestimate. To come back to the topic, these guys are my coach’s suppliers and he is there client but when he finally gets the information he needs (because they always finally give it, at least a part of it, else Alcan would have gone bankrupt) the roles invert and he becomes the supplier(of the money) and the become the clients. That is the way it works.   

Actually, you don’t have to go to the rest of Europe to have these relationships; you also need them in your own office. The whole day you’re dealing with people around you, you need your secretary to write a letter, you’re assistant needs some explication about a job you gave him/her, your colleagues have a real need of using your scissors…That’s the way it works. 

There is still a difference between people around you and people in other offices or even countries; it is the way you use to communicate. For people you’re not close to you use emails, a lot of emails (my coach has to deal with 300 emails a week!). From time to time you also use phone calls and conference calls. For phone it’s almost as a face to face conversation but for emails it’s a bit tricky, if you’re not clear enough or you didn’t choose your words right you might be misunderstood and you’ll only know it when you get you’re answer back!

 

For people you meet every day, face to face or eventually phone call are the best ways to communicate, still it happens that you deal with them through email to send them a file for example.

To resume, in these client-supplier relationships you have to be clear, gentle but still authoritarian to get what you asked for. That’s not always easy but when you work in a corporate you have to learn to do it else you’ll be in trouble… As my coach says:
COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY!

Grand Raid Cristalp

All of you or almost all of you posted really interesting things about their personal lives and actually I hadn’t or didn’t take the time to do so until now, so I’m going to change this!

As I told you I actively practice mountain biking, and this year I’ve decided to subscribe for the “Grand Raid Cristalp” between Verbier and Grimentz in Switzerland. 

You’ve maybe heard about it, it’s one of the hardest and most well-known mountain bike race in Europe.To give you an idea have a look at the race profile here under:

As you can see the race is 131km long, but because it’s my first participation and also because I don’t want to die at the age of 22, I’m just going to run the so-called “small Raid” which starts in Hérémence and is “only” 76km long. If everything goes well I’ll maybe try the big one next year.

Some of you practice road biking and are going to say that 76km is for kids, but I can tell you the effort is definitely not the same… if you have a look at the end of the race profile you can see a kind of peak, that means that during 30-40 minutes you have to walk with your bike on the shoulder because it’s just to stiff to stay on the bike!

You know I do not go there to finish 1^st but I hope to be in the first half which means running it in approximately 7 hours, the best ones are doing it in 4 hours… but they are almost professionals(only almost because the real pros are taking the big raid).

It’s now time for me to go training, because although the race is only on the 21^st August, it’s going to be hard to be prepared enough.

If some of you have already done this race, or know somebody who has done it and who could give me some advice I would be thankful!

My Alcan Day

Hi everybody!

First of all, for those who do not know what an Alcan day is I advise to have a look at Lucie’s blog, because she explained pretty well what it is all about, and I’m not going to repeat everything she wrote just for the fun of doing it.

Lausanne, 30^th March

9h20-11h37: I’m on the train…it has now left the station…I have now two hours to try to prepare for my one and a half day at Alcan’s. All of my fears are coming back, what am I going to do? What can I say to my coach? Will my English skills be sufficient for this day and a half? How to find the hotel? How to find Alcan? …Oups, I’ve forgotten the map, I’ll have to go to the tourist office! Where is th/---ding ding ding :”Ladies and Gentlemen we’re arriving in Zürich”

Zürich, 30^th March 

11h38-13h00: Where is this tourist office??? Ah… here it is…euhh…let’s speak german…”Guten Tag, wie komme ich am besten zur Feldeggstrasse ?” --> “es ist einfach, ….“

Well, if I find Alcan’s with this swiss german explication I can apply for beeing in the Guiness Book!

Finally it was not as difficult as it seemed to be, I first found my hotel, then knowing that it was near Alcan, I found Alcan also! But it was only 12h30, well I had a walk which let me discover Zürich ducks, I’ll post something about them because in Lausanne we do not have this kind of ducks.

13h0..: I’m waiting at Costas’ office…oh my got he’s coming, how do I look like? Is everything ok?...

START!!!!!!!!

Costas welcomes me, calms me down, introduces me to 3-4 people in 30 seconds, then back to the office, a young girl comes, it’s Isariya, Costas new assistant, they working together on a project, she’s been there for only two months but seems at ease!

Now a bit of Alcan’s organisation, here is how it is organised:

Costas works in finance, if you want to know more about his job, please have a look on the “about my coach” post. Well, as you can see it, in Montreal every department of Finance is well separated from the other ones, but as we are in Europe, everything is a bit mixed so in fact, my coach works officially for the treasury department, but in fact his job is par of three departments, RMC(risk measurement and control) and RM(risk management).

As it would be very difficult for me to tell you everything I’ve seen and learnt, I won’t go into details for every single thing, but I’ll still tell you how things happened.

Once the presentation finished, Isariya and Costas had a short but still consistent briefing about the project their working on. Isariya is new to the company but she’s already involved in the company’s important projects, well, in one of the company’s important projects. That’s cool; it seems that when you work for Alcan you don’t have to be there for ten years until you’re given something interesting to do!

A few hours of work latter, I should normally have assisted to my first conference call, but it’s delayed…I’m a bit disappointed but Costas told me that we should have an other one an hour later, and so was it! It’s interesting to see, actually to hear how things work, (Davide posted a full page to explain how things work). Isarya and Costas were speaking with Thomas-Olivier who’s the RMC director just as if they were good friends! That’s something that also impressed me, in one day you can speak with not less than three directors at Alcan but it’s not a real boss-employee relationship, you’re part of a team, and everyone works for the team, not for themselves. I don’t know how it works by other companies, but in the Banks and Insurances I used to work it was exactly the opposite.

After that, around 18h, it was time for me to go back to the hotel to relax a bit before going to a Thai restaurant where Costas gently invited me. There I had a real great time, speaking of everything with Costas, about his past my future, and yeah, everything.

Then back to the hotel, I just read a bit through some prospectuses I have been given by Costas. They I went out for a half an hour to walk a bit to have a great view of the lake and of Zürich by night. Then I directly went to bed, dead tired although I had just to watch and listen during the whole day.

Zurich, 31^st March

I woke up and went for breakfast, and what a breakfast, an incredible choice of cheese, fruits, jams, egg, bacon….everything you can imagine! But it was already time for me to go to the office!

Costas spent the morning emailing and on the phone with a lot of people from all around the world, because he had to be in Paris the day after and he was preparing his venue.

A bit later, still in the morning, Thomas, Peter and Costas had a meeting about the buy of some entity somewhere(I can’t tell you more about this), Peter and Thomas are Costas’ colleagues they have not exactly the same job but they are working together. Well they had this meeting which was quite interesting but there would be too many **** if had to explain you what it was all about because of the professional secret.

Then Costas still spent a few minutes communicating, and it was time for lunch! He told me the day before that communication is the key, and after one and a half day spent with him, I can confirm, IT IS!

We had lunch with Costas and Isariya, it was an occasion to learn a bit of foreign languages, and have a few words with Isariya, great time.

Back to the office, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Thomas Zorth who works in corporate finance, he told me about Alcan’s history. I explained what happened in the recent years with Alcan in
Europe, actually you can find this information on Alcan.com, but I had it illustrated and was really interesting to learn how things happened. The problems they had, how they managed to go through…After that he explained me what his job consisted of and how finance worked in this huge corporation. It was so interesting that instead of having 30 minutes with him as scheduled we almost spend an hour together!

After that, Thomas brought me to Jelle Kuypers, who is the planning and forecasting manager. Again it was very interesting; I have been told how treasury works within the company. He showed me a software they often use in treasury, explained me the structure, front-office, back-office, mid-office… We also had the occasion to speak a bit about him and about me and that was also great time!
Finally I went back to Costas’, and it was already time for me to leave, I said goodbye to every body, I went to train.

Everything was pretty intensive but these few hours within the company where full of knowledge and everything single minute I learnt something new! If you had not the chance to take part in the “We all can” I you’re once proposed something similar I advise you to not miss the train because sometimes it’s the last one. To be honest, at the beginning I thought that one day in a company would be something useless, but finally, during this one day and a half I’ve learnt more that during all the internships I had before.

About my coach

The time has come for me to tell you a few things about my coach. So, let’s begin!

As you have already probably seen it, he’s called Constantinos Tsolakas, as some of you would have found out
he’s Greek.

He is working for Alcan Holdings Switzerland Ltd. In Zürich, and his job is FX Risk Manager, for the most of you that does not tell anything what makes sense so I’m first going to explain how he came to Alcan, and then I’ll tell you more about what he is supposed to do. 

The carrier path

Costas begin his studies in Greece, there he passed his Bachelor, in addition to his studies, he learnt French and English as well as possible, that means he’s fluent in both languages, not surprising when you know that there was a part of his life when every single week he had 12 hours of French in addition to his Bachelor courses!

His Bachelor in the pocket he went to Scotland to pass a Master, as you would have thought this time abroad gave him perfect English skills and also a well recognised Master’s degree. 

Well, having finished his studies he went back to Greece where he was offered a job as a controller for a local company, he worked there for a bit more than a year. After that he found a job, still in Greece , at Dow Chemicals, which is the biggest chemical firm in the world. There he worked as a treasurer for two years. 

Then he was given the opportunity to go working in Switzerland, still for Dow, but for the European Treasury, so he left his native country for Horgen near Zürich. He worked there for two more years and applied for a job at Alcan; he was interviewed by something like height people in one day and finally hired.
 

FX Risk Manager, European Treasury

So, what is this job all about… Well, let’s begin by the beginning. 

Alcan is a metal company, as Costas used to say Alcan is not making hamburgers they are making metal!

As you all know, it’s a widely international company; it is present all over the world that means that you have to deal with foreign countries and obviously with foreign moneys, every day!

As an aluminium company, you not only have to buy and sell aluminium, you have to deal with a lot of commodities as gas, oil, electricity, Caustic soda (for the chemical process) and a lot of other ones. So you have to manage the whole day long with exchange rates between every country where Alcan has a presence.

 So what does Costas in this system, he minimises the company’s risk exposure to exchange rates fluctuations and that for Europe and recently Asia. 

That means, he tries to make that the fluctuations of exchange rates does not have any influence on the company’s results. If we were in bank he would have to try to make some money with these fluctuations, here it’s simply to not lose money. Well, simply is not exactly the right term, but basically it is what it consists of.

That’s it for the job, now just a few words about Costas.

 First when I met him I was so stressed, you know you’re in a big company with no one you know and … yeah you know. But Costas immediately tried to unstressed me, he was incredibly kind, and that really impressed me. I will speak a little more about him in “my Alcan day”, but what I can already say is that he really likes his job, but he works, gosh!... he works a lot! Coming mornings at something like 8h15 and leaving at 19h…with a one hour pause for lunch, I mean it’s really impressive. In addition he’s always travelling to the headquarters in Montreal, to Paris and to a lot of other destinations, that seems to be a cool life, but there is a lot to do, really. 

Well, I haven’t said it all, but I said a lot, for the following I’ll try to explain things better in “my Alcan day”.

My Alcan Day

Please click on that link to read about my Alcan Day