From working student to team lead: the success story of a value engineer at 4cost

How do you go from working student to manager? Erik Jandt shows it impressively: with technical expertise, curiosity and team spirit, he has taken on responsibility at 4cost step by step – right up to managing the value engineering team. In this interview, he talks about his career, the challenges he faced on his way to becoming a team lead and what he particularly enjoys about his work at 4cost.

Erik Jandt (Team Lead Value Engineering, 4cost GmbH)

I studied mechanical engineering at the TU Berlin for my Bachelor's and Master's degrees and later completed an MBA at the University of Potsdam.

I became aware of 4cost through a friend from my football team who was working as a value engineer at the company at the time. He told me about an open working student position in the VE team and about a Berlin-based company that could calculate pretty much anything from a screw to a submarine with its own software. As it turned out, he was right.

My first impression of the team was consistently positive - the atmosphere was friendly and professional. I was impressed by the opportunity to apply my knowledge from my studies in practice, particularly in relation to production technology. I also found the prospect of varied projects with customers from different industries very exciting.

During my time as a working student, I worked on the conceptualisation of extensions for our costing tools 4cost-structure and 4cost-cadcal and supported customer projects. This allowed me to work closely with our software development team and gain valuable initial experience in service projects.

Heavy. As a working student, I mainly supported internal development projects. Then, as a junior value engineer, my focus was on training courses, workshops and customer projects - but without direct project responsibility. Over time, as a value engineer, I then took on the project management of service projects and customer support.

Today, I lead the value engineering team and I am responsible for the management of all services. This includes managing our VE team, recruiting for this area and liaising with other departments and management. I am also looking forward to continuing to organise training courses, workshops and value engineering projects with our customers and working on the further development of the 4cost costing software.

The first customer projects and training courses that I was responsible for on my own were a big step for me. I was also often faced with the challenge of familiarising myself as quickly as possible with new industries, technologies, departments and special features of our customers. It was also challenging for me to switch to English-language projects, especially in all-day workshops with different accents - no problem. The growing responsibility for large service projects and key customer support were also a challenge.

During my mechanical engineering studies, I was supported by flexible working hours as well as internships and final theses, which I was able to complete in cooperation with 4cost. I was able to work on customer projects at an early stage and learnt a lot. As part of a train-the-trainer course organised by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, I was able to prepare myself specifically for training courses and was quickly given more responsibility after my Master's degree. The close dialogue with my colleagues in the VE team also helped me a lot, especially when I started working on customer projects. Last but not least, the company also financed my MBA. Overall, I always had the feeling that a lot was demanded of me, but at the same time I was always offered the opportunity for personal development at 4cost.

What is particularly motivating about my work in value engineering is the variety. I gain exciting insights into different technologies, industries and departments of our customers and can help to solve specific challenges. It motivates me to support our customers individually, to develop innovative solutions together and to continuously expand our expertise. I also really appreciate the direct, open and trusting dialogue in our VE team.

I think that conscientiousness, team spirit and a good dose of composure have helped me to deal with new challenges and increasing responsibility. These qualities have made it easier for me to familiarise myself with new topics, to work successfully in a team and with different customers and to keep a cool head under pressure.

I would (probably not very surprisingly) advise them to learn as much as possible from experienced colleagues and to actively take on new challenges - even if they seem unfamiliar or too big at first.

What particularly characterises 4cost as an employer is the supportive and respectful interaction within the team. Decisions are made quickly and there is a great willingness to adapt flexibly to new circumstances.

Whilst I was still a working student, I was able to learn a lot about different cost estimation methods from my VE colleagues. They later helped me to familiarise myself with service projects, and I continue to learn more through the constant exchange and mutual feedback. The management placed a lot of trust in me right from the start, gave me responsibility and supported me with targeted further training - that helped me a lot.

Team leadership is an exciting challenge and a great responsibility for me. I see it as my task to further develop our VE team and to be successful together. It is important to me to create an open and trusting working atmosphere. I want to tackle new challenges together and discuss them as equals so that we can grow as a team.

I have made it my mission to make our costing solutions even better in order to create even greater added value for our customers. I am looking forward to the tasks ahead and to breaking new ground in value engineering together with my team and our customers.