Learning & development for the Graduates at Proximus

Always wanted to how we make sure that our Graduates have the right kick-start to their career? Or how we help them reach their full potential? You can find the answers here.

In September we welcomed 15 new Graduates to start their career at Proximus. While they started their new challenge, we are already looking for Generation 2023: 20 motivated final-year students who will obtain their master's degree in the summer of 2023 and are eager to start in September. We offer a program in which they are challenged at multiple levels.

All this of course with the necessary support and coaching. To further guide in their evolution, the learning journey is an essential part of the program. This way, we help our Graduates use their expertise and talents in the right way and grow together with the company.

But what exactly does the learning journey entail? We asked our HR expert Ellie and presented her with some questions.

What is your role at Proximus and how are you involved in the Proximus Graduate Program ?

Within our company I’m part of the Leadership & Culture team. Within our team we develop and implement the roadmap of our culture journey and design various corporate leadership journeys.

Next to this, I work on different projects related to wellbeing and am part of the Proximus Graduate programme core team where I design and implement the learning journey for our graduates.

Who does that program concern? Can everyone become a Proximus Trainee?

Our program is geared towards recent graduates with a master’s degree in business, commercial, technical or technological oriented fields who are looking to start their career in a challenging environment.

We are not looking for professional experience as such but for students who will feel right at home in our ‘Think possible’ culture. Someone who assumes that something is possible, even if at first it seems impossible.

If you feel right at home in a company where we put the customer first, where you will be challenged, where you can achieve strong results and work on your personal development, then this program is definitely something to look into.

What is exactly the Proximus Graduate Program?

The Proximus Graduate Program is a 24-month track aimed at developing your skills and knowledge and giving you the keys to launch your career at Proximus through an intensive and specific training content.

The program takes you through 3 consecutive assignments of 8 months each in different Business Units. This allows you to gain a unique 360° view of our company and its varied activities.

These assignments will not only give you a vast experience but allows you to build a solid network within our company. Just think that after these two years, anything is possible: the floor is yours!

While the duration and set-up of the program remains the same, we continuously look for ways to make sure that the content is challenging and in line with business needs.

It is for this reason that we didn’t only rebrand our program last year, but we also developed 2 different tracks:

• Business track: this track is aimed at students who graduated with a master’s degree in business management. They will primarily work on operational/strategic projects for our customers in the residential, commercial or public sectors. These projects can be related to customer experience (improvement), market transformation, digital and automated marketing, sustainability...

• Technology track: this track is aimed at students with a master’s degree in civil and industrial engineering. They will primarily work on the more technological projects such as the fiber and 5G roll-out, but also all the projects set up to turn Proximus into a "digital native" company for our employees and our customers.

How did the implementation of our agile way of working impacted the content of the program.

This last year Proximus went through the transformation to become a true customer centric agile company. We transformed our way of working, our mindset and our culture to become even more Think possible.

What we aim to achieve with this agile mindset is to focus even more on what matters to customers, deliver more value faster, and adapt more easily to changing market conditions.

As you can imagine, this is a challenging but also an exciting time to join our company.

To support this transformation, we are looking for colleagues who highly value empowerment, focus, autonomy, collaboration and don’t shy away from a challenge! This also reflects in our recruiting process where we assess these skills.

So the learning track is important, what does it consist of? What are the skills learned?

Obviously, during the 3 assignments you will have the opportunity to learn while putting your experience to work.

Also view our list of starter jobs!

Next to this we developed a learning journey specifically for the graduate program.

This starts already on your first day! During our kick-off days we take you through our history, strategy, brands, way of working to name just a few things.

Of course, we also take some time to focus on the more fun aspects such as networking with previous generations and the opportunity to get to know your fellow graduates.

These last two years, our kick-off days even included an opportunity to network with our CEO. Not a bad way to start your career 😊

Of course, these kick-off days are just the start of your learning journey. To give you a taste, this is what you can expect throughout the next 2 years:

1) Learning track: Together with experienced coaches we have a hands-on & practical approach to empower and challenge you to take your development in your own hands. We build a growth plan and revisit this throughout the program. This allows you to gain a better understanding of your strengths and areas of development.

2) Learning case: While working on a high-level project you will gain project management skills, co-create, learn to pitch your ideas to different stakeholders and broaden your network.

3) Mentor program: we match you with an experienced colleague within our company.

As you can surely tell, we put a strong emphasis on continuous learning and provide you with plenty of opportunities to do so. While we will help you reach your full potential with different learning experiences, we strongly believe in empowerment. Your experience is unique and we encourage you to shape your own path.

What are the goals of this learning path?

The short version: empowering you to create your own career path within our company.

Of course, this doesn’t take place all at once and the assignments are built in a way that they become more challenging each time, so you will have the opportunity to learn along the way and put this experience into practice.

While this may seem like a lot, know that within our company we also have a strong focus on wellbeing and making sure that we take care of each, so that we can all feel empowered to be ourselves. We believe that maintaining a good balance is key to reaching your full potential.

Are the feedbacks positive about this learning track?

Asking and providing feedback is part of our culture so we make sure to regularly check in with our Graduates. But more importantly we don’t only ask for this feedback, we put this into action to make sure our program stays challenging and relevant.

(tbc: But don’t take my word, hereby the feedback of some of our Graduates.)

If you had one word to convince students to join Proximus, what would it be?

Ellie: Inspiring

Rudolf: Re-invent / Inquisitive / Gamechanger /Impact

Guillaume: Diversity

Charles-Antoine: Springboard

Business Track

Technology Track