• Can you tell us about your background?
Fatine Dallet:
When I left Polytech Marseille, I wanted to manage a factory production team, which is not the most usual choice for a young 22-year-old graduate.
My ambition was to join the industrial sector, and after several interviews, I obtained a production manager position with a French car manufacturer, where I quickly found my bearings.
My passion for my job, my presence in the workshops and the desire to help my teams progress have enabled me to gain the trust of my collaborators.
I also had a management style, probably different from my male colleagues, which was appreciated.
I then moved on to a manufacturing manager position before
being approached by the recruitment firm Michael Page in 2007 to support industrial companies.
Today, I am in charge of a team of consultants specializing in engineering, purchasing and supply and I am a member of the PageGroup France board.
Left: Fatine Dallet, Executive Director at Michael Page - Right: Marion Smeyers, Operations Manager of the new Airbus A320 Family Final Assembly Plant in Toulouse Michael Page
Marion Smeyers:
My journey has always been guided by my interests and what drives me.
Entering the École centrale Paris out of a taste for science, I wanted to join Airbus, whose European roots are important to me, to work in an industrial context on large-scale projects.
I held various positions in industrial operations in France and England before becoming operations manager for the new Airbus A320 family final assembly plant in Toulouse.
Operations are professions that are resolutely built around people.
I always say that the raw material of operations are men (and women!).
I enjoy working with diverse teams, supporting,
developing everyone's skills and potential while transforming myself in the process.
Today, there are more than 20% women in Airbus teams, a figure that the group wants to see increase.
Mentor of about fifteen collaborators, I accompany them in their career progression.
• What advice would you give to young women who are reluctant to pursue careers in industry?
MS:
They must be daring and go for what pleases them without self-censorship.
And that they allow themselves to have ambition and talk about it!
This is what I pass on to my 9 and 11 year old daughters: there should be no barriers for women in their professional lives.
It is essential for companies to promote diversity, and making women's careers visible helps young women to project themselves into careers in the industry, probably more easily than when they are systematically represented by men.
FD:
I share this opinion, especially since employers have understood that diversity and parity are a source of wealth.
For them, it is a strong issue.
So there are a lot of career opportunities for young female engineers.
• What are the recruitment prospects within your company in 2023?
FD:
The industrial sector is resisting the various crises well, we are at recruitment levels that are breaking all records, whether in traditional industry (chemicals, metallurgy, energy, cosmetics, transport, aeronautics and space, etc.) or in more recent industries (renewable energies, technologies, digitization with industry 4.0, green mobility, etc.).
Opening up to diversity and to all pools of candidates will be a key to success for companies.
Ladies, ladies, many opportunities are available to you to contribute to the feminization of the industry, so do not hesitate to apply.
MS:
This year, Airbus plans to recruit 13,000 people worldwide, including 3,500 in France, at all levels of qualification.
The group also offers 800 apprenticeship contracts and nearly 1,000 internships.
Career prospects are stimulating, we are lucky to have many opportunities at Airbus to learn, to be accompanied and called upon to discover multiple horizons.
In seventeen years of experience at Airbus, I have held varied and complementary jobs, including internationally.
