How To Find A Host Office For Your Quest Experience

11 september 2018

Quest is an international transfer program developed by Lovinklaan, which allows Arcadians to work in another Arcadis office for one week to share knowledge and experience. The program contributes to Arcadis’ wish to stimulate collaboration across regions as it’s a great opportunity to expand your network. Quite some Arcadians have done a Quest already. In 2017, the three most popular destinations for a Quest were the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands. Most Questees came from the United Kingdom, the United States and India. In total, 103 Arcadians went on a Quest last year! You can read about their experiences in their blogs.

Find a host: tips & tricks

 

This article is for those Arcadians who would like to go on a Quest. It all starts with finding a host office to visit! We’ve received a few questions about how to find a host office, so we’d like to give you some guidance on this first step of your adventure. It is good to know that any Arcadis office can be a host office. This is also the reason why there is no special host-website where you can sign up; you will have to look for a host office yourself, here’s how:

 

First, you need to find an answer to the following two questions:

  • What would you like to learn on your Quest? Figuring out what knowledge you would like to gain from this experience will probably already narrow down the number of host offices, since it’s likely some offices have more experience with certain subjects or projects than others.
  • Where’s the best place to learn what you want to learn?For example, if you’re part of Arcadis Europe, you might want to go to an office in South-America to not only expand your knowledge, but also gain more perspective on the way of working and problem-solving, opinions and culture in a country so different from your own.

Second, there are a couple of ways to find a possible host office and get in contact:

  • Explore! Use Yammer, your personal network, the Arcadis website, the Intranet and/or the outlook contact list to search for projects, persons or divisions you’re interested in to visit.
  • You can post a message on the Quest Yammer page, including information about your preferences. Maybe someone can help you to find a host.
  • If you know a project you’d like to visit, make sure you get in contact with one of the people who worked on the project.
  • Ask your team members or (sector) leaders if they know a good department or team abroad that could be interesting for you and ask if they can introduce you.
  • Find someone with a similar job title through your contact lists in Outlook.
  • Read stories of former Quest participants and contact them in you’re interested in their topic – they might have some valuable contacts for you.

After you’ve orientated and got in touch with a possible host office, it’s important to first submit your motivation and Quest plan to the Quest website, so your motivation can be reviewed for approval. Once your application is approved, your Quest experience can start!

Experienced Questees

Now that you know what to do in order to go on a Quest, you might have become curious about other people’s experiences.

Isabel Sarriera from Puerto Rico went to Amsterdam in The Netherlands to learn all about water management. During her time abroad, she met a lot of nice, talented people, visited some interesting sites that showed the Dutch experience with water management, and learned a lot about Dutch culture. All in all, she says her Quest was eye-opening. Read her entire blog here.

Rafal Wróblewski went from Poland to Shanghai, in China. He loved his Quest so much, in retrospect he is wondering why he applied for a Quest so late. The program gave Rafal new insights into his specialization and gave him the opportunity to expand his network and get to know a different culture. You can read his story here.

Sign up

Are you convinced to go on a Quest? Sign up now! Through this link, you can start your Quest application. For more information, you can always reach out to info@arcadisquest.com.

 

 

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