On Wednesday 26th April, a Company Meeting with PepsiCo was held in the Events Hall of EAE's Barcelona Campus. Over the course of nearly two hours, the Mobile and Digital Marketing IT specialist Helena García Jiménez, accompanied by the Finance BRM Antoaneta Radoslavova, gave an overview of how the company and its IT department work. The session was divided into three blocks: a presentation of PepsiCo, how the IT department operates and the position of women in the company's department.
In the first block, the marketing digital and advertising specialist presented the students a global overview of the food and beverages multinational PepsiCo. As the world's second leading company in the sector, it manages a huge number of brands. Apart from the soft drink Pepsi, which accounts for 8% of the company's sales, it also manufactures and commercializes Matutano, Doritos, Lays, Alvalle, Blue Tonic, 7up, Tropicana, etc. The company operates all over the world and divides the management of its products into different geographical regions. In the case of PepsiCo Iberia, it forms part of the Europe Sub-Saharan Africa region. On the Iberian Peninsula, the company has eight plants, seven in Spain and one in Portugal, generating almost 6,000 jobs: 3,000 in the company and around 2,800 indirectly within the agricultural sector.
With respect to the IT department and information and communication technology, García explained that, in the case of PepsiCo, there are 763 people working in the field just in the Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa region. After giving a general overview of how things work within the department, she went on to highlight the need to "rethink people's concept of what it means to work in an IT department". This is firstly because the department has so many more functions than people imagine, especially in such large teams. Secondly, a rethink is required because IT is a department that is fully immersed in a process of growth in large companies. "Nowadays, IT departments lead transformation and innovation, and not investing in IT is not an option". As such, it is a sector in the full throes of expansion, offering a multitude of opportunities. Lastly, in a message aimed directly at students who want to join the IT department at IT en PepsiCo, she highlighted the importance of "forgetting fear and throwing ourselves into applying for a job that really excites us. You probably already have the skills, so display confidence and show that you also have the right attitude".
In the last block of the session, García spoke about the role of women in IT departments. In this respect, she praised PepsiCo's commitment to gender equality. "Being a woman involves coming up against barriers and bias, which in many cases we are not even aware of, but they are there nonetheless. PepsiCo strives to eliminate these barriers to ensure that everybody can apply their talent to their work with the same opportunities.". The percentage of women working in the IT department at PepsiCo has climbed to 24%, "and continues to rise".
After the session's themed blocks, García and Radoslavova gave us an insight into the several interdepartmental programs and activities within PepsiCo, covering everything from training right through to sporting activities and excursions with the colleagues at the company. They went on to give the students a form to apply for the internships that are regularly run at the company, before lastly having a question and answer session for the participants to clear up and doubts and make any enquiries that they had.
