Careers take flight with the Airbus/CEMS partnership

In attracting the brightest minds as new employees, Airbus places a high priority on interacting with promising students and graduates – as one-third of the company’s open positions are for early career profiles.

Appealing to students from a range of institutions is a central pillar of Airbus’ campus engagement strategy, and it partners with key universities and organisations worldwide.  

One such academic organisation is CEMS, a global alliance of leading business schools and corporate institutions that unites their respective resources in the offering of a master’s degree in international management. This month, Airbus continued its relationship with CEMS by renewing its partnership agreement.

As a CEMS partner, Airbus takes an active role in shaping curriculum content for this degree, as well as directly contributing with guest lectures, skill seminars and business projects – ensuring that the alliance’s educational activities remain relevant to industry needs.
 

“Seeking graduates with promising profiles and the right mindset” 

Through the partnership, Airbus reaches graduates with profiles matching the company’s needs for future employees: knowledge of complex, international business with management and leadership competencies, skills in decision-making and problem-solving, with a mindset of ethics and integrity.

An alumnus of the CEMS programme is Christine Bertoldi, the Customisation Manager for passenger cabin seats at Airbus Commercial Aircraft. Based on her experience with CEMS, she gives high marks to the partnership – including the shared projects that offer expert mentoring and career shaping.

Having originally studied as an aircraft manufacturing mechanic, Christine wanted to shift her focus to engineering. She found CEMS particularly attractive because of its combination as a prestigious business school and the emphasis on linguistics – enabling her to work comfortably in an international environment where such languages as English, French and Spanish are spoken – in addition to her native German.

The CEMS programme fully prepared me to work in an international environment and not be afraid of change.

Christine Bertoldi, Customisation Manager Cabin Seating

Airbus Commercial Aircraft – Hamburg, Germany

Just as importantly, the CEMS experience enabled Christine to achieve her goal of moving into engineering, as today she is the interface between the manufacturers of passenger seats and the airlines that acquire them to outfit their Airbus-built aircraft.

“At Airbus, I was able to combine my previous mechanical knowledge with new management skills I learned with CEMS, supported by my competence in multiple languages,” she explained. “The CEMS programme fully prepared me to work in an international environment and not be afraid of change.”

For graduates seeking a rewarding career path, Christine said Airbus is a great place to work. “Airbus has an extremely broad diversity of very cool products and services, with so many opportunities to grow in areas that range from production and engineering to sales and marketing.”