Baker Hughes – Military Leadership Programme (MLP)
Category: Success Stories
Publish date: 03/02/2020
What is the MLP?
The Baker Hughes Military Leadership Programme is for exceptional, transitioning, military leaders who are seeking to launch successful, accelerated post-military careers as leaders and innovators in Baker Hughes.
Click here to check out their Military Leadership Programme
At Baker Hughes our Who is our How; so meet Stephen Heaney. Stephen is the Cost & Cycle Improvement Leader for our Subsea business. He has worked at Baker Hughes for 4 years and is based in Bristol.
Stephen spent 8 years holding technical leadership roles as a Captain in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He worked on a range of equipment platforms including the Apache helicopter, armoured vehicles and weapon systems, and completed two operational tours in Afghanistan. Stephen is a Chartered Engineer and an active member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.
Q: What are the benefits of the programme?
There are 3 key benefits to the programme: Exposure, Training & Leadership. With three rotations spanning eight months you are exposed to multiple functions, roles and business leaders. This can be anything from Marketing to Project Management. Training is focussed on bridging the gap between the military and corporate worlds; for example, two of the courses I completed were in finance. Finally, you are assigned an Executive Leader as a mentor who is completely invested in your development and success within the organisation.
Q: What roles did you rotate through?
- Engineering – process improvement, which was a good transition and segue from my past experiences.
- Commercial – out of my comfort zone, working on new commercial models and competitor analysis.
- Product Management – aligned to the function that I wanted to land a permanent position in off the back of the programme.
Q: Where have you landed?
I ‘graduated’ from the programme and took on the role of Cost & Cycle Improvement Leader for the Business; tasked with delivering multi-million dollar savings across multiple product lines and improving margins on projects executed across the globe. In this role I leverage my technical background and leadership skills honed through the military, plus the corporate knowledge I built during the programme. I am exposed to the Executive Leadership Team daily, delivering outcomes that impact the strategy of the business.
Interested to hear more?
If you are like Stephen and want to transition into a long term development programme with a company that is willing to invest in you please visit our careers page and search ‘Military Leadership Programme’ as we have a number of positions and locations that we are currently recruiting for!