About a dozen women are sitting on white cube seats, and coach Sabine Maier is busy handing out small cardboard cards at the front of the stage.
The listeners should write on it who or what lifts them up in moments of crisis.
Later they will discuss what can make them more resilient leaders in the crisis-ridden world of work.
Nadine Bos
Editor in business, responsible for "Career and Opportunity".
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Behind the wall in front of which Sabine Maier is standing, a "speed coaching" session is being held by the Austrian management trainer Gabriele Strodl-Sollak.
Here, for example, it's about how to get "time sovereignty", in short: prioritize work and deadlines.
A little further away, around 40 listeners and a few listeners listen to a lecture by Hate Aid managing director Anna-Lena von Hodenberg.
It's about violence against women on the internet.
And a little further away, an engineer for autonomous driving talks about paths for women in STEM professions.
The scenes come from the women's career fair "Her Career" in Munich, which ends this Friday.
For two days, around 4,500 visitors found out more about career, career start and further training opportunities at stands and in small group meetings, but also about solutions for childcare and the compatibility of work and parenthood.
More than 60 lectures dealt with topics such as successfully founding a company, management methods, intelligent personnel selection, women and finance and diversity in companies.
New strategies for everyday life
At the “Her Career Night” networking event associated with the trade fair, around 400 women – and some men as well – met on Thursday evening to exchange views on professional topics or establish and deepen contacts.
With a kind of "blind date" concept, the event always assigns six interested trade fair visitors to a representative of a specific professional group.
The groups of seven come together at tables and can spend an evening discussing their professional topics in depth.
There were also prominent women from business and science, such as Mirjam Mohr, who is responsible for private customer business on the board of the Interhyp Group, Anna-Sophie Herken, who heads Allianz Asset Management, or Charlotte von Bernstorff, professor of personnel psychology at the university BSP in Berlin.
At the tables, however, general professional topics were also discussed, such as the benefits of anonymous applications or the hurdles of returning to everyday work after parental leave.
A number of visitors expressed their gratitude for the face-to-face exchange after the long Corona period.
For example, the marketing manager Bruktayt Mogessie, who has been visiting the fair for years, said she was glad to "be able to meet contacts" that she had "only been able to see remotely" recently.
There were "exciting encounters".
Several young managers said they had taken new strategies and inspiration for their everyday life with them from the intensive exchange.
Digital trade fair matching
Natascha Hoffner, founder of Her Career, which has been taking place every autumn since 2015, also expressed her satisfaction.
Also with a view to the fact that the Corona period was anything but easy for your trade fair company “Messe Rocks”.
"The suspension of the Her Career Expo in 2020 made a lot of personal and entrepreneurial demands on me as a founder, at the same time it was also an opportunity to further develop Her Career as a digital platform and make it accessible all year round." Hygiene requirements can take place, but have to be canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
During this time, Hoffner expanded her idea of digital trade fair matching.
This is an algorithm with which visitors can get to know each other digitally and network in advance of the event - or