What does it mean to be an international working student at TDSoftware?

Author, Minhee, Brand Marketing Designer at TDSoftware

My name is Minhee, and I work as a Brand Marketing Designer at TDSoftware. I came from South Korea for an international master's program at Bauhaus-University Weimar. Even though my main field of interest is art and its impact on social and public relations, I personally enjoy working on visualizing ideas and thoughts. It perfectly fits my current position and tasks at TDSoftware. It has been more than one year since I joined the team, and I would happily like to share how I feel and what I think about TDSoftware as an international student employee.

Honestly, working in Thuringia with a lack of German knowledge creates some obstacles. Even though I was eagerly trying to find a job, the language was always a huge barrier that I could not easily overcome. Nonetheless, last year, I was visiting a job fair in Weimar to find a company to use my Design, Photography, and Video skills. I spoke to companies suited for my skill set and abilities. At that time, no company could offer an English speaking person a position except TDSoftware. Fortunately, the person working at the TDSofware booth turned out to be my German course classmate. She is also employed as a working student and motivated me with her experience to apply to TDSoftware.

The official language at TDSoftware is English. Most of the time, my co-workers and I communicate with each other in English except for some casual conversation to improve my German. I found that using English at TDSoftware is not just to consider international employees, but also to integrate a global business approach into the daily workflow. While working for TDSoftware, I came to know and value their central vision of global connection with digital tools and products. It encourages me tremendously. I genuinely enjoy working for a company with a clear and admirable business concept and being a part of its progress.

As a brand marketing designer, I have different tasks for product marketing and company branding. My team uses efficient co-working tools to work simultaneously online. It reduces the time for cooperation and creates an efficient workflow. Due to our efficient way of communicating, I can invest more time developing my work capacity, design skills, and knowledge about marketing and branding theories. Through assisting the marketing specialist, I achieved interdisciplinary growth beyond my specific set of design skills.

But besides my continuous growth due to my various assignments, I also learned an important lesson through my mistakes. It was my first time to work solely by myself on a given project and my first opportunity to take on sole responsibility. I pushed myself into producing prompt results. Instead of consulting with my coworkers or supervisor, I built up the pressure of solving the tasks all by myself only to fail my assignment. At first, I felt ashamed and worried about the critic awaiting me. But my team gave me constructive feedback and encouraged me to seek out help and advice if needed. My coworkers taught me about the significance of teamwork and open communication between team members.

Above all, the most favorable thing at TDSoftware is their flexibility with working hours and location. I found it impressive that TDSoftware already had a remote working system before the COVID-19 pandemic to offer their employees the possibility of working from home. As a self-supporting student, I am always concerned about balancing my time for work and studies. But that is where I profit from working at TDSoftware since my working hours and places are flexible and determined by me. After everything has set up for me from onboarding week, I can work whenever I want, wherever I want.

In conclusion, I very much appreciate the creative and friendly work environment at TDSoftware. I feel like an essential part of my team by contributing to projects, taking on responsibilities, sharing my thoughts, and discussing and proposing my ideas.

If you also want to be part of our international team, please visit our careers page.