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Maria Irchenhauser (Tues)

February 26, 2014 By Maria Irchenhauser

Tuesdays at DWPub tend to be busy with meetings. On a weekly basis, I meet up with Daryl Willcox, the founder of the company, to talk about our new online portal in Germany. We discuss the blog which we decided to launch to provide a platform for discussion of relevant topics in journalism, and to further reach out and interact with our users in Germany. I go over the final steps of the blog which is supposed to go live today, and we discuss some ideas to promote the launch that will involve coordination with our PR agency in Munich.

It’s 12:30. My French colleagues have organised a lunch for their team and the German team. We have pizza together in the company’s meeting room and are briefly joined by our boss. Some IT colleagues come in to snatch up the last few cold pieces.

I go back to my desk and exchange more emails with our PR agency, German team members and an IT developer to discuss final tweaks and touches to the blog. At 3 pm, light, camera, action: the blog goes live.

Hello blog. The internet world has been waiting for you…

At 4 pm, I meet up with my colleague Mandy and our intern Christina. Mandy started at DWPub as an intern, but was recently hired on a full-time basis. Christina is a business school student and joined the team two weeks ago for a six-month internship in media research and marketing. I explain some business and marketing aspects of the German operations to them and tell them about our clients.  I ask Christina to request a free trial of our services via our website and show her what her request looks like when we receive it, and what steps we would take if it was a real enquiry. Like all our interns, Christina will take on her own projects, so I try to give her an overview of as many aspects of the business as possible.

I’ve been coordinating the company’s German internship program for the past 2 years and supervised six interns during this time. My responsibilities include the recruiting and supervision of interns, as well as all administration involved in the handling of internship funding programs. I enjoy this aspect of my job because it keeps me connected to university life. Working with interns is also a great way of “recycling” my teaching experience (although I hope I’m not lecturing them too much). Since I moved into the role of Business Manager, I will gradually hand over the coordination of the internship scheme to Mandy. Some of our former interns are now working for us as freelancers from Germany, so I still communicate with them on a weekly basis.

I go through my emails one last time and shut down my computer. In the next few days, I will be focusing on communicating with journalists about the new blog. But first home to write for Michelle’s blog.

Maria Irchenhauser (Mon)
Maria Irchenhauser (Wed)

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Maria Irchenhauser, PhD

Business Manager, DACH Region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
DWPub

PhD, German Language and Literature

Concepts of “Home“ in the Context of Globalisation: The New “Heimat” Wave in Contemporary German Film and Literature

(Heimat im Spannungsfeld Globalisierung: Studien zu zeitgenössischen Heimatfilmen und Heimattexten.)

Queen's University, 2009

Connect with Maria

Best career advice I ever received:

Perhaps not a piece of advice, but the fact that most jobs (up to 80% and more in some sectors) are never advertised. It made me realise how important it is to maintain good networks and to look out for those hidden opportunities.

Maria's "Week in the Life"

  • Maria Irchenhauser | One Year Later
  • Maria Irchenhauser (Fri)
  • Maria Irchenhauser (Thurs)
  • Maria Irchenhauser (Wed)
  • Maria Irchenhauser (Tues)
  • Maria Irchenhauser (Mon)
  • Maria Irchenhauser | DWPub

Which is more important: luck, smarts, or know-how?

From my experience, I’d say know-how – knowing how to identify opportunities, and how to use your knowledge and skills, beats smarts and luck.

If I had to do it all over again, I would…

... not change a thing. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in academia and consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to research and teach topics I am passionate about. I was able to transfer much of what I used to do as an academic to the private sector and now enjoy the opportunities of the business world.

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