My apprenticeship as an IT systems electronics engineer started on August 17, 2020 at Cybertrading GmbH. On my first day I was allowed to meet my new colleagues from the technical team and was warmly welcomed. After I set up my workplace, I familiarized myself with the most important programs in the company. Within my team I was always able to ask questions and was also allowed to practice myself answering the first knowledge questions. In the second week we started to set up the so-called cable project and I was able to gain more insights about this. In this project all network cables are shown in a graphical representation.
In the last 2 weeks I had the unique opportunity to gain further insights at the company. I got a very good overall impression of the company, the individual departments and the internal processes.
The first three days I was allowed to get an insight into the sales department. On the first day I had the pleasure to accompany the Cisco team. Sven took care of me and showed me about hi schallenges during the day. We had direct customer contact via e-mail and answered questions about Cisco equipment. We also adjusted the prices of individual Cisco devices. Furthermore I accompanied Janine at the Online Sales Team. At her office we checked customer orders and sent out shipping confirmations to the customer. We have also had to have each order checked by the respective sales person.
Tuesday started with the weekly meeting of the sales people, buyers and brokers. Afterwards, I went to team HP (Hewlett Packard). There the guys showed me a few programs they work with every day. We also had contact with the customers and answered questions, especially about HP equipment. On the same day I was allowed to get to know the trio of brokers, where they mainly work with an online marketplace for companies, where trading is only done from company to company. The main task of the brokers is to sell the goods that are in stock.
On the last day I was allowed to get to know the Non-Cisco team. As with the other teams, we worked on customer orders and looked at the prices, especially from Juniper and APC.
On Thursday I went to the RMA and support department. First of all I accompanied Christin, who takes care of the RMAs in her work. They explained to me what exactly RMAs are. RMA means Return Merchandise Authorization and is basically a complaint. Afterwards I was allowed to look over Martin's shoulder. He is responsible for the support. Among other things, we checked the tracking numbers of orders that come to us. For the checks we were on the pages of the shipping companies. We also checked invoices that were paid via PayPal. From the afternoon until the end of the week I accompanied the purchasing department in its daily tasks. At this department we mainly (as the name already says) buy equipment that we still need, e.g. for a customer order, for which we do not have enough equipment in stock and have to buy the rest. Furthermore, the purchasing department handles orders for internal resources (e.g. office supplies).
The second week, Monday started in the IT & Development department. The task of the development department is to write or improve programs for the company. In the IT department I learned a lot about servers. For example, we created a domain and tried to access it from another PC (all virtually through VMware Client). The next day I got to know the e-commerce department. There we created (which is also the main task of e-commerce) devices in online trading platforms like Amazon, Ebay and our own store IT-Market.
On Wednesday and Thursday I was at the accounting department. There I helped to scan and sort customs documents. Josi, our "good fairy", also sits in the office of the accountants. I also helped her to prepare the meeting rooms and clean up the kitchen area.
On the last day of the 2 weeks I got to know the marketing team. Here I got an insight how advertising is placed online. We looked at campaigns and also booked so-called keywords. We also took care of the social media pages, like Instagram, Facebook or the Google My Business page. The rest of the day I was allowed to write this post for our blog on the website.
Two exciting weeks lie behind me and I have gained a good insight into the entire structure of Cybertrading GmbH. The colleagues are all very friendly and took the time to explain everything to me. I'm looking forward to my further training period and I'm excited to see what I'll learn.
Maurice Mattern
Apprentice for IT systems electronics engineer 