Details

August 2020

New apprentice: The tools industry beat China

At Hjerno we would love to have a broad mix of employees from different backgrounds and with different profiles.

We are therefore pleased to have been able to attract a quite unique profile to start adult training with us as an industrial technician.

44-year-old Kristian Kiersgaard has a background in the humanities and communication, and for the past eight years has been working as a trainer and technical instructor in China.

"I have several close family members who work as both marine engineers and industrial technicians, so the idea of a career in the industry is not unfamiliar to me. I actually had this thought 20 years ago, but then it came to an end simply because my life took a different turning," says Kristian Kiersgaard, who started his training with Hjerno at the beginning of August.

Eight years in China

In addition to being educated as a teacher in adult education, Kristian has a vocational bachelor’s degree in communication. For eight years he worked as a trainer and technical instructor at an international school in Guangzhou in southern China.

"The technician role was taking up more and more time, and I assisted by giving instruction in, among other things, 3D printing and that kind of thing. So the pieces started to fall into place, and I warmed to the idea of working in the industry. Also because of the good employment opportunities," explains Kristian Kiersgaard.

A fully-fledged brood

He therefore returned to Denmark and started his industrial technician training. Here he consulted with, amongst others, his brother and his instructor at the Syddansk Erhvervsskole, both of whom spoke positively of an apprenticeship with Hjerno.

Here Kristian Kiersgaard has become part of a fully-fledged brood of new apprentices. Owing to an overwhelming number of apprentice applications in the spring, Hjerno has now increased the number of apprentices from six to eight. You can read more about this here.

Flat hierarchy with many different profiles

For Managing Director Aage Agergaard it is a crucial factor that Hjerno’s organisation captures employees of widely varying backgrounds.

"We need to have as many different profiles as possible, so they can handle different posts and areas of responsibility in the organisation. A flat hierarchy like ours requires individual workers to have the ability to make decisions independently, and it’s a good thing, therefore, to recruit people like Kristian, who come with some experience and a slightly different background," says Aage Agergaard.