Employee Spotlight – Matt Pollet
2018-07-17
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Meet Matt Pollet, Quality Engineer at our Oshawa Assembly Plant. Matt has held four different roles in his last five years at GM and he is excited to see where the future will take him!
1) What drew you to GM? How has the company changed since you started?
My grandfather worked at the Oshawa Assembly Plant, so I grew up in a GM family. My choice to study mechanical engineering was largely with the end goal of employment with GM, or at least what I THOUGHT was GM. When I was hired into the Canadian Technical Centre, CREC at the time, my view of GM quickly changed from a “car company” to a “tech company”. Our incredible vehicle lineup, the new and exciting work coming to Canada, and the massive influx of young and enthusiastic engineers has made my time here an absolute blast!
2) What 3 words would you use to describe GM?
Exciting, Innovative, Diverse
3) What 3 words would you use to describe yourself?
Motivated, Enthusiastic, Dad
4) How has GM assisted you with your career development?
GM has been an incredible place for me to grow both personally and professionally, largely due to the awesome managers I’ve come across in my time here. What you may expect to be an awkward conversation, the “I would really like to try this other opportunity at General Motors” chat, has always been answered with “That sounds interesting! Let me see what I can do to help you get there”.
5) What is your proudest moment at GM?
After my time spent in engineering recruitment, I would start to see many familiar faces on orientation day at our Technical Centre locations. I would have to say my proudest moment (and I’ve been lucky enough to have this happen on multiple occasions) is when a new GM engineer pulls me aside to say the reason they became enthusiastic about a potential GM career and applied, was all due to the conversation we had at their university. If I was talking to them on orientation day, it meant I conveyed the right message about our awesome company!
6) What have you gained from working at GM?
I have gained an entirely new perspective on what it should mean to work for a large corporation. I have made fantastic friends, am able to have a great work-life balance, have learned an incredible amount from my brilliant colleagues, participate in a lot of extra-curricular activities, and feel like I have been able to develop many different skills in my cross-functional roles.
7) Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
Professionally, I would like to grow into a role that remains connected to our technical growth, but as an external-facing asset to our business. GM is doing a lot of great things, so to be able to spread that word, connect us to the right people/organizations, and help us continue along the exciting path we are on, would be my ideal career path. Personally, I want to enjoy every minute of my young family, because it won’t be long before my wife and I are putting our boys on the school bus for the first time.
8) Are you a night owl or early bird?
My two boys are 15-months old and 5 weeks old. Any parent out there will sympathize with my answer of BOTH!
9) If you could have one super power what would it be?
The ability to freeze time. There are a lot of things I want to do and sometimes 24 hours isn’t enough!