MARTIN HRUŠKA Role: HDW Department Manager; former: PSG Line manager, FE Line manager, FE Process Engineer Area: Chemical Engineering Employer: Procter&Gamble What can I help my mentee with? advice on how to combine work and school and not go crazy how to handle the fact that you're working in a different field from the one you graduated from insight into the workings of a large company    LinkedIn profil

Martin studied chemistry at the Secondary Industrial School in Pardubice, from which he went on to the University of Chemical Technology, majoring in Biochemistry. Right at the beginning of his studies at the university, he found a job as a laboratory technician at Coca-Cola, where he worked shifts - morning, night and twelve hours at a stretch. As he says, sometimes it was quite complicated for him to combine work with time-consuming school, compulsory labs and homework. For Martin, however, it was the only way to cover the costs of living in the capital.

Thanks to his Erasmus experience in Norway, he realised that working as a lab technician was not entirely fulfilling and decided to try something new when he returned. He successfully passed the selection process for an internship position at Procter & Gamble. He was given the task of devising and optimising a process for the reuse of reblend (a waste mixture in the production of a product) and wanted to continue his work once the project was completed. As he was not yet able to start full-time work due to his studies, the company invented a new type of position for him, which still exists today - a traineeship. "Working here has always been a long way from getting any clear progression. My assignment was - they're bottling here, the line generates X tons of waste a year, and I need it to be half that. Here's your phone, here's your computer, here's the people on the line and get it done."

After graduating, Martin started working full-time at the company and after years of combining work and school, he was relatively relieved. He stayed with project work for a while, tried more technological positions, and then had the itch to move closer to management. He was put in charge of the margarine production line and was responsible for about 22 workers, and after two years he moved on to manage the team responsible for the production of washing powders. Now Martin is in a senior management position and is responsible for the production of Jar for the whole of Europe and a team of about 55 people.

"I started studying chemistry when I was 15 years old, finished after 9 years of study and found I was doing a job that, although I work in a chemistry company, is not about chemistry and is as far away from it as it can be." Despite this, Martin says he is very happy to have graduated from UCT. The school as a whole prepared him well for finding complex solutions to problems that arise in his work. Moreover, he says that the school has always been helpful and he would like to repay it through mentoring.