KH Flashcards
Please describe your professional experiences and tell us more about yourself
I’m from Curitiba and I’ve lived in São Paulo for 14 years. I graduated in Food Engineering and became interested in the Procurement area after my first job at Symrise in 2012, so I started working as a Procurement Analyst at Agrega.
There, I learned to use Strategic Sourcing and e-Sourcing tools to leverage the results of negotiations and conducted the Marketing, Facilities and Professional Services categories.
Then, at BAT, I worked for almost 4 years passing through the categories of packaging, tactical cell and facilities, when I had the opportunity to work in transformation projects.
In 2018, at Danuri, I worked in the Operations area and learned more about the client area needs and priorities.
Then, I worked as Procurement Coordinator at GTM, where I had the opportunity to create the area from the beginning, form the team, mentor people, establish policy, procedures and key performance indicators.
At Tok&Stok, I was in charge of the forniture category and now I’m procurement coordinator for packaging materials at Coca-Cola Femsa with a team of 2 analysts. I think that all of these experiences helped me to perfect my leadership and management skills and prepared me for new challenges.
Personally, I like to play sports like yoga and swimming. I also like watching movies, traveling and gardening.
Why do you want this job?
I feel identified and connected to Kraft Heinz as a consumer and I see that my competences make me a good fit for the position as I have strong performance on supplier management, savings, WAPT and stakeholder engagement.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
In the future, I would like to be a Procurement manager at Kraft Heinz, I have now the required skills and I can grow deepening my competences related to the Procurement area and applying them in management and leadership.
Tell me about a situation where you had to make a difficult decision.
Describe a difficult problem you solved.
At GTM, the Operations director said me that there was an urgent Due Diligence service demand for some sites all over Latin America and they already had a preferred supplier trying to bypass the formal process. He asked my support on contract formalization. As it wasn’t the right process, but, in the other hand, the demand was really urgent and important for the company, I scheduled an urgent meeting with everyone involved to negotiate with the client area and find a solution that could meet our rules and also the business goals. I suggested that I could run a Simple Sourcing process meeting their deadline, presented a schedule and they accepted it. But, along the process, I faced a lot of pressure and had to be focused on the results delivery with quality. At the end, I finished the sourcing process earlier than it was agreed and delivered 12% of saving compared to the proposal that they received at the initial phase. It required me negotiation skills, quickly reorganize my tasks and stay very close to the suppliers to finish the process within the deadline.
Tell me about a time you had to complete a task you had never done before.
Tell me about a time you considerably exceeded expectations.
At GTM, I had the initiative to elaborate the Procurement Policy. I did benchmark with other companies, prepared the document and shared it with my boss. We had the opportunity to discuss some important and strategic topics like the definition of the spend cut between what can be negotiated directly by the client area and what they have to request for procurement team to be negotiated.
It was an opportunity to increase communication and relationship skills and strategic vision. I think also that this situation forced me to go out of my comfort zone, working on something completely new to me and bringing continuous improvement to the company.
Tell me about a time you had to give someone difficult feedback.
I asked one analyst of my team to create some procedures regarding requisition and order creations. When I received and analyzed the job, I noticed that significant improvement would be necessary to share it with other areas. I told her that had appreciated her effort and gave some orientations about the review. She wasn’t expecting negative feedback and didn’t receive it well. It required me empathy and communication skills. In the end of this process, the documents were well done and we received many positive feedbacks from other areas. Also, I could use this experience to get closer to her and build a trustful relationship.
Tell me about a time you missed a deadline.
At Souza Cruz, I was responsible for the purchasing of direct materials and had a situation where one of my tobacco packaging suppliers (Siegwerk - Germany) informed a problem on importation process. It was a very important order, to an innovation project and not delivering on time would be a huge problem. Immediately, I had the idea of contact one local supplier (Carton Druck) and shared the situation and the suggestion with my manager. She agreed with it, and I sent an order to this supplier asking for send us samples with urgency. The samples were approved and the local supplier delivered the order with one week of delay.
After this situation, all new product implementation were developed with both suppliers to guarantee the projects’ deadlines and contingency.
Tell me about a time you successfully demonstrated your analytical skills.
When I joined GTM, the Procurement area had to be created considering a strategic view. At that time, there was a team focused on tactical purchases, decentralized and without experience on strategic sourcing and category management. As the new coordinator, I requested formal training for the team on these skills and analyzed some data of the area. I considered the purchases done in the previous year, separated them into categories, analyzed the number of purchase orders, spend and the main suppliers. Then, I proposed a new structure for the area organized by category and, with my manager approval, conducted on-the-job training with each analyst to prepare them to use strategic sourcing and to manage the indirect categories.
What steps do you take to develop strong working relationships with key suppliers?
The more strategic a supplier is, the closer the management must be. Ideally, we should have a contingency plan in any case, but sometimes it’s not possible. With key suppliers, I conduct frequent assessments, meetings and visits to guarantee the partnership and the delivery. During negotiations, usually it’s necessary to have some flexibility to achieve a win-win agreement.
What are your greatest strengths?
I think my greatest strengths are proactivity, leadership and engagement until the end of a project and build trustful relationships.
When I’ve joined GTM, I was analyzing the packaging category and noticed that the steel barrels contracts were too old and it’s the main packaging material there. It would be necessary to run a whole Strategic Sourcing Process and I decided to use this as an opportunity to train one of the analysts of the team. I run all the project’s phases (analysis, meetings, technical visits, strategy, negotiation, implementation) delivering 26% of financial saving.
I think it’s a great example of the mentioned strengths because I had the initiative, mentored the analyst, maintained the focus on delivering results and got closer to the client area building a strong relationship.
Tell me more about your weaknesses.
Yes, I see that I can improve in my communication style and time management.
Years ago, I received a feedback from my boss that I could improve my communication style because I was very shy and had a straight to the point way to communicate with others. I decided to take some courses and set to myself as a daily task to participate more in groups and strengthen my relationships.
I think I’m still in my way to get closer to the perfection in this skill, but I noticed an improvement and have already received a good feedback regarding this topic from my current boss.
I was used to do many things at the same time and spend more time that I wanted to conclude some tasks. I was frequently working overtime and saw that I could improve my time management, so I started a GTD course and learned how to prioritize each type of demand during the day and it is helping me a lot to organize my routine and meet my deadlines in an organized way.
