Information Technology

Name: Samantha Airey
Title: Electronic Data Interchange Analyst
Company: Robert Bosch Australia

As Samantha Airey neared the end of year 12 she had no clear direction of what role she was looking for. "It's really hard to say exactly what you want to do because your views keep changing. You really don't know what's out there."

Samantha chose university subjects she'd enjoyed at high school, completing a double degree at Monash University - a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Japanese language, with Japanese studies as a minor) and a Bachelor of Science (double major of computer science and chemistry).

"Fortunately my studies led me in a computer science direction. I did vacation work with Robert Bosch's IT department throughout forth and fifth year at university, then in final year I worked as a contractor. I think it's a great way to see whether you like working in the industry. When I finished university two years ago I accepted a permanent position at Robert Bosch, in the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) area."

"In the past, faxes, invoices, purchase orders, etc. were used but it's now done electronically with EDI. My role is developing, implementing and coordinating EDI solutions for our customers and suppliers so that business documents flow smoothly into and out of our system electronically." 

"For instance we used to send a paper printout with goods, now it's cleared electronically. It flows from our system through my program, which translates it into a format that's compatible with our customer's system, and they can process it at their end." 

"It's a real cross-functional role because I'm not only doing programming I also co-ordinate small projects as well as designing and implementing solutions. And, by making changes I affect our system, so I need to train people to use the updated system."

"Some of the biggest challenges are organising people and meeting deadlines, but these are also the exciting aspects of the role - having your own projects, learning new things and stretching to meet deadlines."

Another reason Samantha chose Robert Bosch was the global opportunities. "It definitely attracted me to the automotive industry - at work we have staff from around the world and I know that I might get the chance to work in one of our overseas facilities in the future."

"With a computer background it's easy to get stuck in a dead-end role but not here - there's such a huge variety of roles available. The automotive industry is great like that, once you join you can move on to whatever you want. While I'm in IT now and really enjoying it, I see it as the start of something and where it ends up going - who knows."


Click here for more information on Bachelor of Arts at Monash (including a double degree like Samantha did), and for Computer Science and here to go to Bosch's website.