Kerstin Grossmann

Kerstin is a regional manager for Cambridge ESOL, responsible for Austria, Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland. Always friendly and helpful, Kerstin is also very good at what she does. I loved this glimpse into a day in her office. Have a read and see what you think!

Monday morning: I am looking forward to a quiet week in the Cambridge ESOL office in Berlin. There will be no business trips, no urgent projects and a couple of public holidays in the region. After a couple of frantic weeks I will finally have some time for planning and for catching up. Today I have planned the following:

• Meeting with Manuela, our Marketing and Sales Manager, to discuss the seminar for teachers in state schools
• Familiarise myself further with the new B1 blended learning course, developed jointly by Cambridge University Press and Cambridge ESOL
• Arrange a conference call with seminar presenters to discuss teacher support seminars which are relevant for trainers in the corporate sector
• Leave at 17:00 for a change

When I arrive in the office Manuela, who is always in early, is about to leave! She received a telephone call from a large language school in Berlin, which had a request from a client, who is interested in a customised training course in financial English, possibly with an online component and an exam at the end. The school urgently needs information materials about the Cambridge Financial English Course (a blended learning course) and Cambridge ESOL’s International Certificate in Financial English (ICFE). Manuela sets off to deliver the brochures by hand.

I log into the learning platform on which the new blended learning courses are hosted when the telephone rings. A seminar presenter, who is scheduled to give a seminar in Basel next week, needs to cancel. I check with Nina, our Events Coordinator, how many registrations we have; it’s fifty corporate trainers – no way that we can disappoint them. Nina will immediately look for a replacement.

One of our consultants calls. She has a very promising appointment with a multinational company in Hamburg, which may introduce our BULATS test for benchmarking and recruitment and the Business English Certificates (BEC) as an exit qualification for their in-house training courses. This came up at short notice and she needs information materials and case studies urgently. Andreas, our Office Assistant, is collating packs of handbooks and flyers while I select case studies and testimonials and mail them to the consultant.

After two hours of telephone calls and urgent requests I finally find the time to check my emails – about 20 emails arrived from our Head Quarters in Cambridge: could we please urgently inform teachers and candidates in our region about the newly developed practice tests, which have just been launched. There is a scholarship to attend the IATEFL conference, could we please (urgently) let teachers in our region know? Have we received any feedback on the new blended learning courses, they would like to know (surprise, surprise) urgently. I pass the emails about informing teachers and candidates on to Manuela, who will publish the information in our newsletters, on Twitter and on Facebook. I check the emails I received about the blended learning courses. The comments about the plethora of materials, the structure of the courses and the flexibility is very favourable. I collate the feedback and send it to Cambridge.

Lunch: a dry sandwich in front of the computer, adding more bread crumbs into the key board – one of these days.

I received an email from a teacher about a blind student. Do we have any experiences? As our office is not involved in the administration of the examinations, we don’t, but I provide her with the address of our Special Circumstances Unit in Cambridge, which produces the materials for disabled candidates, and I email our test centres about their experiences. Two of them reply immediately and I can forward some useful information to the teacher.

A German university, which received our recent mailing, calls. They need information about English language qualifications as they are offering degree courses in English. They require C1 as an entry qualification and ask which of our exams would be suitable.  I will send them further information about the Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) and BEC Higher, which are both at C1 level and arrange for a visit by one of our consultants.   

An urgent email from a school ministry arrives, they had to change the wording of the contract we will sign next week about offering the exams in secondary schools, could I please check whether the contract is ok for us (yes, it is), can we really offer four teacher training seminars free of charge (yes, we can) and could I email them the presentation for school teachers, which I will give next week. Back to the other emails: a school wants to become a test centre, a teacher would like to receive information, a journalist wants to write an article and my line-manager needs a report on our exams in German schools (urgently, what else?).

20:00 – the telephone rings – my heart sinks – it’s probably another complicated query. ‘Hi Darling’, my husband says, ‘No pressure, but do you have an idea when you will come home – and do you want to eat something?’ ‘I will leave in a minute, and yes, I would love to eat!’ I log off, switch the voice mail on and leave. The day turned out to be totally different from what I had planned, but interesting and fulfilling. I am looking forward to a quiet day tomorrow when I will do the following ….