Welcome to the HARIBO careers world

Günther Hofer, born in 1982, is one of the promising talents at HARIBO. The Austrian completed a course, restricted to just 55 participants, in "International Economy and Management" which is, according to employers surveys, the best business course in Austria. During his studies, Günther Hofer proved his worth in internships at Nestlé (Germany and Austria), BMW (Germany) and Saab Automobile (Sweden).

With this practical background and his successfully concluded degree, he joined HARIBO in 2006 as an international trainee in the Controlling sector. Here, he took on tasks and projects in his main sector Controlling but also worked in relevant related departments, including, purchasing, production and field sales. Projects in our European companies, in France, Spain and Austria completed his trainee programme.

Thanks to his excellent performance, the trainee programme was completed after just a year and Günther Hofer took on a position as Junior Controller for Production and Sales at HARIBO in Spain. In this position, the talented employee achieved great success and after a year was promoted to Senior Controller for Spain and Portugal. His numerous projects included, for example, the further development of a client-oriented contribution margin accounting and the initialisation of productivity increases.

In all his tasks and projects, Günther Hofer has proved himself an excellent member of the team. For this reason, it was, at the start of year, our great pleasure to congratulate him on another promotion. Günther Hofer is currently the Financial coordinator and head of Internal revision for Southern Europe. Here, he is, among other things, responsible for establishing of inter-country uniform reporting structures and establishing inter-country internal revision for the countries, France, Spain and Portugal.

For his many tasks abroad, Günther Hofer brought along a further talent, the ability to learn foreign languages quickly. His English and Spanish are fluent, his French is currently being refreshed, but he also has knowledge of Italian, Swedish and Mandarin in his repertoire.

Alongside his high performance ability at work, Günther Hofer continues to also take part in external and internal further education, of his own accord. Within the framework of the "International Potential Development Programme" from HARIBO he has taken the opportunity to expand his potential even further and has familiarised himself with the multi-faceted aspects of leadership in specific practical cases.

We are very proud to have been able to accompany Günther Hofer on his career path and look forward to continuing working with him in future.

Miguel Bravo, born 1980, started his career at HARIBO in August 1999 after successfully completing his technical college education as a industrial manager. Not an atypical start to a successful future with HARIBO. During this 2 ½ year training period, it was established that his ideal job was in the sales sector, and in January 2002 after completing his training, he was accepted into the Sales logistics department. Until May 2005, Miguel Bravo worked in sales in the Sales logistics and customer services department and during this time he also took on thetask of establishing the factory sales in Bad Godesberg our most popular HARIBO shop as well as the organisation of all HARIBO factory sales in Germany. In addition to this, he introduced a scanner cash desk system, took care of order management, production planning and customer administration in conjunction with key account management - the initial contact with his current post.

Despite his enjoyment of internal sales services at HARIBO, Miguel Bravo was drawn to customer services. A wish that HARIBO was happy to fulfil: In June 2005, he switched to a role as regional representative for field sales which is a typical starting position for this sector of HARIBO. He showed very good performance in retail customer care for the Nordrhein-Westfalen region. In this time Miguel Bravo took on the additional role of EDP specialist in the sales region, held EDP training sessions within this framework at regional conferences and was the contact person for his colleagues when it comes to EDP issues. In December 2006, just 1 ½ years later, he was promoted to regional head and in this function, developed an electronic sales folder in 2007. Among other things, thanks to this success, he was promoted to acting sales head for the West region in April 2008. Within the framework of this activity he designed and lead further sales projects. He lays particular value, then and today, on practically in the development of his concepts.

In April 2009, Miguel Bravo took a further career step as a result of excellent services and was promoted to regional key account manager. In the Nordrhein-Westfalen conurbation he is responsible for the regional trade central. The range of tasks include, for example, the development and implementation of individual customer sales plans, the development of annual agreements, the leading of annual meetings, the permanent observation of the market and the analysis of market research data. This range of tasks that he faces is multi-faceted and in his current position, he is able to dedicate himself to the sales hobby horse he discovered during his training.

In 2008, after completing her business studies at Cologne university and a successful degree in management, Nina Schmidt started work at HARIBO as an international trainee in the sales/marketing sector.

Right from day one, Nina Schmidt made good use of the opportunities available to familiarise herself with the various sectors and processes in sales and marketing and to build up a wide internal knowledge base. Within the framework of her individual trainee procedural plan, she spent varying periods of time in the sectors product management, POS marketing, advertising, key account management, field sales, logistics, controlling etc. ensuring that she not only had the chance to discover her main departments, but also obtained a comprehensive overview of the related departments and processes.

During her trainee programme, Nina Schmidt, was offered many opportunities by HARIBO as a result of her excellent performances. In the shortest of times, she integrated into the various departments and took on own projects right from the very start. During a stint abroad in Denmark, she also had the opportunity to familiarise herself with the regional HARIBO centres in Sweden, Norway and Finland and to work on the development of a product.

In January 2009, Nina Schmidt completed her trainee programme and has since been supporting our product management department. After completing her trainee programme, she joined the company as Junior Product Manager. With her creativity, her innovative joy and performance capability she was so successful that she was promoted to Product Manager in February 2011. In this position she takes care of the complete handling of product new developments - from the initial through to the finished product in sales. In particular, Nina Schmidt takes care of seasonal articles and special packaging. She also takes care of individual, existing products.

We are very glad that we were able to win Nina Schmidt for HARIBO, a young person with a wealth of ideas and enthusiasm, and look forward to supporting her in her continued career path.