As we head into the second week of our insight sessions and sector panels, as part of the Careers in China (Mainland and Hong Kong) programme, we caught up with trainees He Yijun, He Manfei and Feng Yading at EDF to find out more about their roles, responsibilities and the advice they would give to students and graduates applying to EDF’s Graduate Trainee Program.
He Yijun is a 2nd year management trainee (technical function).
He Manfei is a 1st year management trainee (supporting function).
Feng Yading is a 1st year management trainee (supporting function).
What is your current role?
He Yijun: I am the Tool & Method Application Manager of Sanmenxia district heating project and Lingbao biomass co-generation power plant. I am responsible for the tools and systems implementation for energy consumption control; I provide performance optimization methods and technical proposals to local district heating network and biomass power plant operation teams.
He Manfei: I am the Senior Project Manager of Sanmenxia district heating project.
Feng Yading: I am currently the management trainee in the EDF Beijing Office.
Can you tell us about how you came to be in this role?
He Yijun: I joined EDF China in 2018 as a project analyst as soon as I finished my studies in France. As an engineer, I wanted to have more experience with the practice of the engineering knowledge so I voluntarilyy progressed to the management trainee program and then rotated to the role of a Manager.
He Manfei: I joined EDF China straight out of graduate school with a degree in energy and environmental management from Duke University. I rotated to this role to complete my management trainee program with EDF China after finishing my first rotation in EDF China, Beijing Office. The overall goal of my second rotation is on one hand, for me to dive deeper into local operation and development, on the other hand, for me to be part of the coordination effort to help better align local operation with group management as well as strategy.
Feng Yading: After my campus life in University of Toronto and half-year experience with a Fund Company, I joined EDF China as a management trainee in 2020 for an exciting opportunity to increase my potential in both financial and management skills.
What does a typical day at work look like for you?
He Yijun: 40% coordinating with external suppliers and partners; 20% negotiating with the senior management to support their decision on the projects technical solutions; 30% technical work (data analysis, simulation, technical modeling, etc.); 10% supervise and guide staff in my department as a manager.
He Manfei: 50% of my time is spent in meetings or on the phone with colleagues, suppliers, project partners and suppliers. The remaining 50% of my time is split 40% document and email writing and 10% undertaking admin procedures.
Feng Yading: Every day is new to me so far, and yet challenging. I am learning by doing and get to be involved in various fields such as business planning, business development, events organisation, process management, auditing and rule making. My typical day involves communication, reporting, working across teams as well as leading.
What skills did you learn at whilst at university that you find yourself using in your role?
He Yijun: The mathematical logic analysis ability, programming skills, and knowledge of the energy sector helped me a lot in my daily technical work; the communicating and critical thinking skills are useful in other coordination work.
He Manfei: Management: managing multitasking schedule, managing a project as well as managing a small team. Communication, and using communication to coordinate different priorities, work styles and ways of thinking in order to achieve your goal. Document writing, including reports, briefings, PowerPoint presentation, letters, and emails
Feng Yading: I find myself using finance, accounting and management courses most frequently. Communication, learning, team work and analytical thinking skills are also quite useful.
What advice would you give to students hoping to pursue a career in your sector?
He Yijun: My suggestions are to practice and review basic courses and learn to use more tools/programming language. These will give you a solid foundation in the technical point of view when communicating with people from different domains. In addition, since communication plays the largest part of this career, you need to have confidence in speaking publicly and keep strengthening expression skills.
He Manfei: Be interdisciplinary: only with the right policy and economics could technology achieve its full potential. Be focused: it takes time and tremendous effort to become an industrial expert and establish a network on the basis of your long-standing good reputation. Always keep learning: the sector of energy and environment is thought to be highly innovative (both for tech & engineering and how to create a more enabling environment) at this moment of our times.
Feng Yading: Always be open minded to be involved in all tasks and be prepared to work hard and learn new things. Be able to think independently and be creative are also assets to pursue a career in my sector. In addition, having a well-rounded knowledge reserves and a solid course back ground are musts if you want to ace the position.
I think the importance of graduate schemes and demonstrating what taking a good grad scheme can deliver is so important. I left my degree not knowing what I wanted to do, and more by luck than judgement, ended up a few years later on an accelerated managment course for a fortune 200 company. It opened to doors to my MBA and a whole host of learning. As He Yijun, He Manfei and Feng Yading have demonstrated, you have to actively seek out these placements but when you do, it allows you to develop into new areas (explicitly the rotation element). It would have been great to not only hear about what a typical day is, but also what support structures big businesses use to augment university skills. This is where the company and individual gets the real value.