Surprising Career opportunities at CoFa: Become a model!

Its well known that there are a million different possibilities to get involved in Code Factory and the DKB universe. Mostly, those are still in or next to your regular working area, be it in a guild or initiative or being a speaker or workshop facilitator. Second, they are leisure activities for team building and meet & mingle. What a lot of people don’t know: you can also start your model career within DKB 😉

written by Anja-Kristin Lorke, Employee Relations & Communication Manager

I never thought about who those people on the DKB adverts are. Neither did I think about ever being one of them! But here we are, me being a model for “Sparen und Anlegen” (Savings & Investments) for DKB.
But let me start in the beginning: I’m the Employee Relations & Communication Manager at CoFa and one of my working areas is to establish DEI in Code Factory and the DKB group. One of my favorite ways to involve our colleagues in it is to have remote sessions in which I talk about a relevant topic that’s easy to follow up on for everyone. During our Diversity week in May I talked about Allyship, and how important it is to support one and another. I could fill pages about this topic only!
After the session, I was contacted by a DKB colleague – of course I thought it must be something about the allyship.

But no – I was asked to be a model for an upcoming photoshoot for investments!

That was unexpected.

I never did a professional model job before, nor a non-professional one. So, I took a bit of time to think about, not only the modeling itself, but if I really want to be the face for a DKB product? What the internet once knows will never be forgotten. After some days I decided to follow the adventurous voice and, well, YOLO!

And let me tell you, it was fun!

The organization upfront was very professional. My wishes & needs for the timing could be followed – the shooting was on the same day as our onboarding day to welcome new employees, so it was quite a bit to navigate. I got all information from location to outfit (I brought my own favorites with me), and already a preview of the pictures we were going to shoot. When I arrived at the location, I first was quite impressed. It was a flat in Berlin-Mitte, which was a one-day rental. Never ever have I thought to see a flat like that in Berlin, and now I know what my next lifegoal is 😊 This was a hidden gem for sure.

The timing was easy. I got (also first time in my life) professional make up and nearly didn’t recognize myself afterwards. The stylist did a job there! During the complete shooting, she was there to fresh me up, fix my hair or get wrinkles out of my clothes. I could get used to having someone around me, only taking care of me looking perfect all day long.

There was a full team for the shooting, taking care of lights and shadow, a photographer for taking the pictures, of course, and a million people to discuss the outcome, telling me to look up, sit more relaxed, hold my hands different, rearrange the items on the table, and so on.  Lucky me, the sun came out exactly in the timing we needed to shoot my pictures, a perfect sky in the background, too good to be true!

The biggest challenge for me was to look in the camera but not look in the camera, smile but not to smile, be concentrated, be fresh, and pretend to do some fancy big money investments on a phone that was switched off. Also, obviously, the way I hold a phone is not a common way because I had to correct my hand positions quite a bit. I took it easy and with fun, that I need to be cool and a rebel, and in the same way professional, and lots more.

We were done faster than expected and everyone was very happy with the results. I didn’t see them so far, so I can only share some behind the scenes here, adding up the pictures later that are the ones used.

I can highly recommend everyone, who is a bit adventurous and outgoing, to make that experience. It was a great exception of my regular work – usually being rather the person organizing shootings than being in front of a camera. I now additional know, how beautiful berlin flats can be and that you can earn some extra money if you rent them to companies for their projects.