Business Development

After months of assiduous research, painstaking unpicking of layers of communication, cancelled appointments and last minute changes of plan, you arrive at a meeting with the chiefs of staff of an overseas defence force. This is your opportunity to engage their interest in new technology, itself the result of time and money invested in R&D, paving the way to a contract that may be worth many millions of pounds to your company. You probably have seven minutes to make your case. What do you say?

Adrenalin is known as the fight or flight hormone. More aptly, it can also be seen as the think or sink hormone. If your mental reflexes allow you to marshall your facts, factor in every variable and spot the best constructive way forward, that's an aptitude we can use in Business Development.

The scenario above is, while accurate, only one snapshot of a complex and varied area. Business Development in Cobham is a fluid, highly changeable but sustained process which begins with understanding our market and evaluating its opportunities, continues into the branding, marketing, market positioning and merchandising of products at the sharp end of technology, develops with the establishment and cultivation of relationships with customers, and ultimately delivers contracts - proposed, bid for, negotiated and sealed.

What adds an extra dimension unique to our company is the nature and spread of the customer base. Unlike most of our competitors, we are not a monolithic organisation: we operate in comparatively small units each aiming to be in the top three worldwide suppliers to defined but often overlapping niche markets. This means that in Business Development we're dealing on a specialist level not only with the major platform manufacturers in aerospace but also, critically, direct with the world's armed and security forces.

It demands one quality in particular from our people, and that is perspective. When you're in an environment where requirements are rarely set out in terms, where important factors change constantly and are often opaque, and where the product is high-end, interacting systems and services that may be years in the making, it takes a steady, resilient focus on overarching goals to find the best solutions for customers and therefore for us.

So the graduates we select will have demonstrated their ability to work comfortably with a lack of definition, to think for themselves and on their feet, and to enjoy a continuous stream of assessment, adjustment and action in constantly changing circumstances.

If your Upper Second or First Class degree is not in straight Physics, Engineering or Maths, you will have to work hard to convince us you can handle the technical knowledge we all need to assimilate constantly and rapidly. Whatever your degree, your CV must also show your willingness to work round uncertainty and unfamiliarity in a wide range of cultural and technical contexts. Business Development is pretty much by definition in nobody's comfort zone - but that's also its unique attraction.