Student Day Event

DAF Trucks develops not only the trucks of tomorrow but also develops the employees of tomorrow. Every year, 150 students work as an intern or graduate student at DAF Trucks and are involved with the future developments of DAF. To involve the students even more with DAF and learn them more about our organization, the Student Day Event is organized every six months.

In November the Student Day Event took place. Early in the morning the students were welcomed with coffee and tea. 

The opening presentation was given by board member and Director of Purchasing, Jos Smetsers. He told the students more about DAF and the parent organization PACCAR. The next presentation was given by Chief Engineer Vehicle Development, Patrick Dean. After a short coffee break the rest of the program followed. Director Operations, Jos Habets informed the students about the E truck Assembly. And the last speaker before the lunch break was, Bertil ter Maat, Managing director of Mainfreight Transport Netherlands B.V. He showed the students the vision of the customer. 

The morning ended with a spectacular movie in the DAF Experience. The DAF Experience is a great location where the students got a nourishing lunch, in order to be completely energized for the afternoon program.  

After lunch, the students were divided into groups to do an assignment. 
Taking the assignment of the afternoon into account, Ilse van Aalst (Talent Manager) Jos Smetsers (Director Purchasing) and Tina Albert (Director Finance).
It was time for the assignment. The students needed to come up with an answer to the question: ‘’Based on what criteria would you select your future employer and what do you expect from your manager?” The teams consisted of students with a mixed educational background. They had two hours to work, to negotiate, to design and to prepare themselves to present their best ideas to the jury.
The jury unanimously chosen as the winner. Of course they were rewarded by the jury with a special prize.

During the cocktail hour at the end of the day, it turned out that the students were already ‘professional’ networkers and that they’ve learned a lot about each other and about DAF. We would like to thank the input of all the students and wish them good luck with their studies. Hopefully, we can welcome them as new colleagues in the near future!