AYESHA GODIGAMUWE

Going into a business role, it’s definitely about the skills you have, obviously if you are looking to be an engineer they certainly want you to have some more technical skills.  But the general people skills that they’re looking for are: an understanding of markets and customers, a certain determination, and self awareness.  They want you to be a high performer so they’re looking for that drive and determination.

I think what’s amazing about BAE Systems and one of the challenges I certainly had, was understanding how you fit into the organisation.  We have six home markets, customers in over 100 countries, over 100,000 employees and you’re one of them and you’re thinking, where am I in this mix?  You’re working in one team and certainly it’s a challenge to understand where it all fits together and how the jigsaw comes together, but it’s what you make of it.  If you’re keen to learn about more than just one area – for instance, I’m in Military Air Solutions –  then you can do that, but it’s up to you to then drive that forward.

Once you do finish your project and you sit back and reflect over the last few months, you think, I made things better and you can really see how you did add value and how you have saved people time; and certainly from a human resource point of view, how you’ve made people’s working life a little bit easier and, for me, that’s where the achievement comes.  There’s a lot changing right now in the company.  There is a lot more focus on corporate responsibility so you can get involved in that way if that’s something which is really important to you, and we are developing into more markets so it's going to be an exciting future.

So the best thing about working for BAE Systems I would say is the variety and the fact that the future’s bright.