Meet the people behind Stafier | Ingrid Joosten

If you’ve been working for the same employer for almost 35 years, it can only mean you’re having fun. And that’s true, when you hear Ingrid Joosten talk about her career and work within Stafier. And whoever thinks she is stuck in her job is wrong, because she recently started her new position as office manager. Enough reasons to get to know her better.

It’s the year 1988 when Ingrid begins her career at Stafier as a temporary employee. Still, this was not her first introduction to the company. “In high school, as an assignment, we had to apply for a job. Stafier was one of the companies where we as students were allowed to practice the process of applying for a job in real life. So when I started working for Stafier, I already knew the company a little bit. But I was so young when I had to do the school assignment that I couldn’t picture the company very well. I knew they did ‘something with metal’, but of course I couldn’t look it up on the Internet either, as it didn’t exist back then.”

No two days are alike

As a receptionist and administrative assistant, Ingrid felt right at home at the company in Zevenaar. But it could just as easily have been that she chose a different path in her career. “Because I found the travel training module at school so interesting and fun, I really wanted to work at a travel agency. But there weren’t many job offers at the time. So, different from what I expected, I began to really like working at a production company like Stafier. Partly because no two days are alike. I was allowed to pick up many different activities, such as organizing my colleagues’ business trips and going along to trade shows.”

Working part time? No problem!

From 2000, Ingrid took a step back and started working part-time as she became a mother. “At that time no one at Stafier worked part-time, so I was secretly afraid that I would have to look for another job. But that turned out to be no problem at all. That is also typical of Stafier: they are open to a lot of things here and you can try new things.”

Applying internally

That’s also why Ingrid was asked to work as a sales support assistant in 2007, only to add reception tasks to her range of duties two years later. She has now been employed as an office manager since the beginning of this year. “With the departure of the management assistant, the position of office manager was created. I never hesitated to respond to this. Due to my many years of experience, I am versatile and many tasks are already familiar to me because I often worked together with the management assistant. Instead of the sales meeting, I now take minutes during the MT meetings. I also have the freedom to further fill in this position with regards to supporting all kinds of administrative processes related to marketing, HR and production.”

The connecting link

“I think it’s important to make sure that the administrative and organizational work runs smoothly and efficiently. In doing so, I hope to be the connecting link within our company. The variety in my work also ensures that a new challenge awaits me every day. Leaving Stafier? Well, I’m not thinking about that!”