Joe Robinson

Why did you choose Cranfield?

Joe Robinson works for DPD Group, based in DPD UK and looks after all the sorter equipment within the hubs. All the technology that DPD use within the hubs fall under his remit. We talked to Joe at our careers fair where he was looking for Cranfield graduates to employ within his company.

About DPD and the type of people you’re looking for

DPD is quite a large organisation; we have transport line-haul, we have the hubs (where I'm from myself), so we have a huge remit really.

We're not necessarily looking for one type of person, we know that if someone's come to Cranfield they're going to be a committed, dedicated individual who's very bright.

We are looking for people who've got a transport background and I know two of our graduates have done supply chain management and logistics, and they've come up with a lot of innovations.

The values within DPD, a lot of it's to do with technology and people retention. So employing the people that are great for that role and making sure that we retain them and develop them into more senior roles.

Do you employ any Cranfield graduates now?

Two of our graduates that we took on, one of them is now our Resource Manager, which is quite a senior position in the business, and he's only been with us three years. And another one is our Hub Quality Manager, and again quite a senior position for such a short space of time.

We have three people that we've hired from Cranfield so far. Two of them studied EMMS and one of them did supply chain logistics management and they've been very successful.

Ana Lima joined us three years ago and she is now our Hub Quality Manager, she's in a great job it's quite a senior business role for her time with the business.

Adrian Souto is now our Hub Resource Manager, which is also quite a senior position; he is doing a great job.

And we've just taken on Alexandros Roussis, who started with us two weeks ago; he was involved in a DPD group project. He's involved in a project related toh automated vehicles within hubs and he's doing a great job as well.

What are you looking for in our graduates?

I'd say we're looking for passion more than anything, we want our employees to be passionate about technology and passionate about innovation in the future, and what changes they can make within our business.

We've got a lot of autonomy, especially for graduates coming in to DPD in terms of coming up with project ideas, and really innovating. We have a saying that when we take somebody on at DPD we employ them for them to tell us what to do, not for us to tell them what to do.

How have you found the careers fair so far?

The guys we've met so far, they all seem really interested, they've asked a lot of insightful questions about the business.”