Nothing Can Separate These Two: a Story of Electronic Twins
Peter and Pavel are identical twins who studied the same high-school, university and now work in the same department in manufacturing plant in Brandýs, Czech Republic. Read their story to find out how they both ended up in Continental.
Peter: It’s funny thinking about how we first started working for Continental. Our father is a washing machine repairman and one time he was fixing a machine for one of Conti employees. Dad started bragging about his two boys studying the same high school, how they are always playing with electronics. So this person recommended Continental for a summer job and that’s how we spent part of our summer during our second and third year of school.
Pavel: Now thinking about it, we should find out if the person is still working there and thank him.
Peter: We really liked our summer experience and after we both graduated high school neither of us was sure about going to university. We considered working for Continental full-time for a while. But in the end, we both decided to continue our studies. And I guess it was not a surprise to anyone that we studied the same specialization at Czech Technical University in Prague. The studies were pretty difficult so we lost touch with Continental for a while but as we were close to graduating, we worried about missing job experience.
Pavel: Because we still had some contacts in Brandýs, it was easy to reconnect with Continental again and we both spent one semester there as interns.
Peter: This is one thing that I like about Continental, the internships. The company has been focusing on this and it’s getting better year by year. There are now many opportunities for students to get some work experience and explore what they like. We spent our high school summer jobs at Conti with analysis technicians and PCB (printed circuit board) repairmen while during the university internship we both worked in the labs. Having this multiple experience helped us realize what we like and what we want to do. Now, we work closely with our local HR and attend job fairs where we can share our personal experience with students.
Pavel: For a few years, we both worked as Test Engineers, in the same office, basically sitting next to each other. I particularly enjoyed building supporting hardware modules for our testing devices. For that, you need electronics and software knowledge and I think the studies at the university really paid off. Sensors, microelectronics, the theory of PCB, all of these are things we studied and now work with daily. Besides that, what made our start much easier was great support from all our colleagues.
Peter: Exactly, if you are not sure about certain things, the team is there for you. You have countless chances to learn something new, practically every day. You can specialize in one technology field, or you can try several until you find the right one. Or, as in my case, you can accept a challenge and become a teamleader. That’s why we are no longer sitting in the same office, but we are only one flight of stairs away – so we see each other pretty much every day.
This article was written by our employee.
Petr Bařina
