Discover our career highlights

About 8 years ago following some former colleagues and friends, I started as Fleet Manager when Kia did not yet have the products that we have today. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the brand (Kia did not have such a good name then) and the clear plan and goal they had to increase their market share in Europe. To reach 500K registrations in Europe by 2018. That was raised to 850,000 by 2021. Later the plan S regarding electrification. That vision and long term plan made a strong impression on me.

In 2015, I was offered the opportunity to become District Manager South (Namur, Liège, Lux). After all, I already had experience in sales at a previous company. So I got to know all the dealers in Wallonia, but as I live in Opwijk I naturally spent many hours in the traffic. In 2017, I therefore switched to the region of East and West Flanders. My nearest dealer was suddenly 10 km away instead of 100km. As a result, within 4 years I knew almost all Kia dealers in Belgium. Our Sales team was a real inspiration to me: we challenged each other, but also went through fire for each other.

With all that baggage, I got the opportunity to become Network Development Manager in 2019. That gave me the opportunity to develop 2 other competencies. Firstly, developing a vision and strategy to a certain topic. Secondly, I was also given team responsibility over 2 fantastic employees. It gives an incredible amount of energy to be able to work with them.

The speed of change is of course increasing. There is a lot coming our way in the automotive world, but I am a cyclist. I love a climb: you have to choose the right rhythm to keep going to the top.

Kris De Smet
Network Development Manager

I came to Kia by chance on an interim basis. Before that, I had been a postwoman for years and had worked in a butcher's shop. I had just completed an "administrative employee" course with the VDAB and after a short 10-minute interview Kia offered me the chance to start in the accounting (invoicing) department. After 3 years when a colleague left, my manager challenged me to learn something new and I started working in “payments”.

In the beginning, it took some time getting used to the Korean culture: straightforward, punctual, direct but therefore also clear. But very open and tolerant. Diversity is not a point of conflict here, because it is not an issue.

Over the years, our productivity has increased enormously: with the same number of people, we have been able to process more transactions thanks to more efficient SAP systems. Specific to Kia is that they expect everyone to take responsibility for getting their job done: you get a lot of freedom, as long as you get your job done. And things are changing faster and faster, of course.

Anyway I always got the chance to follow training courses. Sometimes even compulsory (VAT updates), others on my own choice. For instance over the years, my Excel and English have improved greatly.

Our product has also become much better, of course, and we can see that in the figures. I hope I can still experience this growth until my retirement.

Ilse Decock
AP & Compliance Specialist

Considering the rapid developments in the automotive sector, one of the many ways that I am being challenged at Kia Europe is in keeping up with the steady stream of new information that is required to excel at my job. There hasn't yet been a day I haven't learned something new, and as a person who loves an academic environment (and spent 23 consecutive years enrolled in school), it was important for me to find a company where I could work on a wide variety of innovative projects. At Kia, I work on a broad portfolio of short- and long-term projects. Therefore, there are often new and challenging questions that need to be answered. I appreciate this dynamism, because it prevents me from becoming complacent and pushes me to improve every day.

When I joined Kia Europe, it was my first time working for a large, multinational automotive company. One of the biggest challenges was simply understanding how to navigate through such a complex organization, with projects that require coordination across brands and continents. The teams here are absolutely great. Everyone has been more than happy to go out of their way to open the right doors for me and point me in the right direction. This open, kind, and collaborative culture has not only helped me with my day-to-day work, but it has also helped me feel as part of a community – something that I truly appreciate after having moved to a new country.

My most exciting projects at Kia Europe have been the unplanned. In my first couple of weeks, for example, I followed conversations happening at my neighbour's desks, joined in, and ended up with the opportunity to work on unexpected projects including benchmarking competitors' EVs, and scoping the business case for partnering with a novel start-up company. This meant getting to test drive performance EVs and thinking creatively and strategically about how Kia can create a superior product.

At Kia Europe, you are part of a company that is serious about becoming a Game Changer and a true industry leader in the field of electrification and mobility. This means that everyone is encouraged to try new – and even crazy – ideas. Through rigorous and robust analysis, one can achieve buy-in and support even at the highest levels. Personally, I couldn’t imagine a more fun and fulfilling environment to work in.

Madhur (Manager EV Charging Solutions, Product & Pricing)

My understanding of leadership can best be described through a quote by one of my favourite leadership speakers, Simon Sinek. He said, "Leadership is a choice, not a rank". Meaning that anyone in an organization can be a leader, but it's not your title that makes you one. Keeping this in mind, my role is to motivate, engage and inspire my team as well as give opportunities. To help them to achieve more than they imagined for themselves. My job is to create a supportive environment where they will be able to maximize effort to achieve goals: asking for opinions, discussing things, sharing the vision on how a certain project contributes to the greater company goal.

Trust and empowerment are the keys in leadership. The pandemic has shown that these elements are the basis for success in the new normal. This was a change we needed to embrace very quickly – and it wouldn’t have been possible without keeping each other's backs and without a culture where everyone is working towards one common goal. But also in "standard" work life, trust and empowerment are truly important – the safer the team feels, the more creative and inspired we all are.

Kia helps and supports me to pursue and foster my personal understanding of leadership. On the one hand, Kia is a very dynamic company. Just think of the strides the brand has made in Europe since 2003! On the other hand, we are living in a world that is constantly disrupted by innovation and vicious competition, a world that is far from being stable. Working for Kia, as a leader I am given an opportunity while keeping an eye on the bigger picture, the horizon, to constantly adjust to changing circumstances and situations.

Veronika (Senior Manager Launch & Marketing Planning, Marketing)