Maksym Khilo, is a consultant at Bilfinger Engineering Eastern Europe in Ukraine. Read more about why trust plays an important role in his day-to-day work, how his diverse experience at Bilfinger helps him in his current position and why it is so important to think outside the box. 

Maksym Khilo has been working for Bilfinger for almost 5 years. He started as a process engineer at Bilfinger Engineering Eastern Europe and was one of the first members of his department. Within a very short time, the department in Ukraine grew to around 25 employees. Because he was a core member of the team, he was involved in the most important processes and decisions right from the start. This qualified him for the position of department head. Despite climbing the career ladder, Maksym still wanted to see and experience more of Bilfinger. 

In search of variety and experience, he took on a personal challenge and switched to consulting – a bold move indeed. “For many engineers, it’s difficult to make such an abrupt career change. For me, however, the most important thing about the switch was that I was able to start working on customer orders earlier”, reports Maksym. His focus is now much more on finding the optimum solution for customers’ individual needs. 

“There is a general conception that our job is to create beautiful presentations”, he jokes. That may be true to a certain extent, but there is much more to his job. The knowledge he has gained over the course of his career at Bilfinger helps him to look at projects from two different angles: One from the perspective of an engineer and the other from the perspective of a consultant. Reading many hundreds of pages of text, analyzing market data and filtering and evaluating the most important information from a project is part of his daily routine. 

For the most part, however, Maksym’s work requires collaboration, sometimes even across national borders. He works closely with colleagues from Eastern European countries, such as Poland. “Cultural and language barriers can certainly lead to challenges, but that’s also part of the attraction”, he says. He emphasizes how important knowledge of English is for his work in order to communicate with international colleagues. His top priority is to build relationships with his colleagues. Even if cultural differences sometimes make this difficult for him, a bond with his colleagues is key for a functioning collaboration. “Trust has to be built up first and that takes time, of course”, he reveals. 

When we ask him what he likes best about his work, he answers without hesitation: “The variety of topics”. He talks about how intertwined the various industries are these days and how important and exciting it is to find synergies. As a result of his varied career path, Maksym has already been able to become familiar with many facets of Bilfinger. “My experience helps me to put myself in the customer’s shoes. I used to work with consultants myself. Today I am one”, he explains with a grin.  

There is one topic that seems to be particularly important to him: Maksym appeals to career starters in particular to be brave and step out of their comfort zone after leaving school: “Have the courage. The unknown can be scary and overwhelming. But it's worth it.” He himself had to travel more than 1,000 kilometers in the first week at Bilfinger and lived in many different cities. Despite the hurdles, Maksym made it and is incredibly happy that he had the courage back then.

Status: August 2024