Operations Manager at Bureau Veritas
Yann Guillygomarc'h is originally from Douarnenez, a town by the Atlantic coast, at the western tip of Bretagne (Brittany, France), and he is educated as a Risk & Safety engineer.
My work led me to visit many countries, meet with many people and discover different cultures. However, those encounters were always of a maximum of a couple of weeks and after working for 7 years for Bureau Veritas, based in Paris, I decided that it was time for me to take it one step further. I made up my mind to build a project within a year and I was open for any opportunity abroad. Basically anywhere.
It was lucky that the perfect opportunity presented itself within Bureau Veritas, and I got offered to move for a 2 years contract intended to develop and strengthen our international network and broaden the horizon of the range of services offered by the company. The transition was quite welcome by the company as our group encourages “diversity within its teams, which is considered a key component for innovation that is necessary for the deployment of the Group’s strategy”.
More than 3 years after, I am now Operations Manager for our activities covering primarily the offshore Industry. Our role is to ensure of the safety, reliability and integrity of industrial assets throughout their life cycle. The scope to be covered is extremely wide and this is what I always liked about my work: every situation is a new one, you have to adjust constantly, you get to know about many things and you learn a bit more every day.
A same object will be perceived and handled differently by different people, by different companies, by different cultures. This is a reality and a critical factor in our work, but also comes into play in our everyday life. In that sense, moving abroad is quite a jump into the deep end. Therefore, you have to identify, understand and adapt to cultural differences; take a step back and think about how you express an opinion, an emotion or an idea and the different new ways it could be perceived.
When I discovered the Danish mindset, I got positively surprised: the humor, full of self-irony and biting sarcasm, the politeness, the civic-minded attitude was quite a change from Paris. It didn’t take much to convince me to stay longer. The nice team that I have at work, the nice friends that I have met here, plus this view on the sea, makes me somehow feel home. Just don't mention the cheese and wine!
