Dr Alan McLenaghan, MD of Saint Gobain Glass, talks to Exec UK about his multi-award winning recruitment policies.
Written by Sam Wright and produced by Rahim Ali
Dr Alan McLenaghan, MD of Saint Gobain Glass, talks to Exec UK about his multi-award winning recruitment policies.
Saint Gobain is a world leader in the manufacturing sector, with its products insulating half the homes in Europe and its glass used in half the continent’s cars. Dr. McLenaghan joined the company in 1998 to lead the £85 million construction of its float glass manufacturing plant in Eggborough, North Yorkshire.
‘Change’
For this position, he oversaw its startup recruitment programme, a role for which he had won a National Training Award at his previous company, DuPont. He later received the same award (and many others) for his work at Saint Gobain Glass, but before entering manufacturing management he had worked as a scientific researcher. It’s not a career move that too many make, so Dr. McLenaghan explains his reasons behind the switch:
“I was in the United States working for ICI in a research role, and the site director of the plant I was based at saw something in me. To this day I’m not sure what, but he asked me if I’d be interested in moving to manufacturing. The research I was doing was at the interface of making products, so I’d already worked on production units but only on running trials.
“Very early on in my career, my wife worked for a company that made pregnancy tests. She had been a scientist developing this product, and ultimately it revolutionised the way these tests worked. It moved them away from adding two chemicals together into just urinating on the tube, making it very easy to use, and you could get an answer in about a minute. One day we were out together and we went in to Boots and she said ‘I make that.’”
McLenaghan says there was ‘some little thing’ about this that stuck with him...
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