Manuel Lopes da Costa is a former civil engineering student (“student number 29265,” as he proudly recalls) who graduated in 1989 and is now leader of the management advisory area at PwC Portugal. He spoke with Valores Próprios about his professional career, which began at Engil when he was still a student, and about what students today lack to succeed in the business world.

How did your professional career develop after Engil?
When I graduated I was invited by Teixeira Duarte and started working in site management. But that wasn’t exactly what I liked, so I was there for two weeks and eventually left to join the technical construction department, as a project designer.

But the connections with civil engineering didn’t last long…
I liked that life, but I realized that in Portugal a civil engineer in the project area would take a very long time to take his career to the next level. I didn’t want to wait that long. Furthermore, I wanted to do other things.

It was at this point that you turned to management?
Back then I saw a very funny Arthur Andersen (which later became Andersen Consulting and eventually Accenture) ad for the consulting department, with a cat and a tiger who asked, “Do you have enough breath for a career?” I found it funny, I started with some interviews and a year later I was recruited as a consultant.

What followed were several international experiences…
Exactly. I worked for what is now Accenture for a great part of my professional life. I started working in Brazil. Back then we had some very important assets that we used to help the entire financial services area, to help Accenture Brazil. Then I was invited to lead the whole financial services area in Africa. That’s when I moved to Johannesburg.

A good experience?
Excellent. It’s a fantastic country – it has its problems, but it was a fantastic experience. I learned many things during that time, things I had already experienced in Brazil, but there it was even more intense: I arrived alone, to lead a large team that was spread over an entire continent, but mostly with a completely different culture. I had to adapt to an entirely new culture.

Was the culture shock too strong?
The cultural issue is important when people move to other countries. In Johannesburg I had to take into R
account such factors as crime (no one goes out in the streets after 5.30 pm) and religion (one third of the staff is Muslim) in order to, for example, schedule meetings. We must be very careful with that, but often we aren’t: by nature we find solutions, we think that things must be more or less the same everywhere, but they are not.

Is it important that students today are aware of that, given that many of them think of having a future abroad?
Yes. It is important that they understand the culture of the countries they will be living in. Civil engineering, for instance, has a very bright future in Middle East countries. It is important that students learn how to behave in these countries, otherwise they will have a very hard time there. Even in Western countries there are very significant differences: in Germany, for instance, they can’t behave the Portuguese way. Many of our students have gone there and already began to realize that.

But, beyond such aspects, is their technical knowledge as good as that of other students?
Yes, they are as good as the others. But our students lack some skills that are taught in all major universities in the world. The absence of soft skills classes is something that should be re-examined, particularly in a highly technological university such as Técnico. It’s something that puts students at a disadvantage compared to other students from less analytical universities where soft skills are more commonly taught and practiced.

Can the alumni help here and point out what is important?
Yes, and they do so, I also see that. But society has changed a lot since I graduated, for example, and the way our assets and skills are perceived has also changed drastically. It’s not enough to be good; we must learn to communicate that we are good.

One strategy that students have found to acquire such skills is to engage in various complementary activities on their own accord. The breakfast with the alumni, which you attended at the end of last year, is an example of that…
And it was brilliant. But I think it’s not only the students who must do that, I think that it should be part of the curriculum offered by Técnico. And we also need a stronger link between the academic world and the companies.

Is that link established directly with the companies or through the alumni?
The Técnico alumni are very powerful and, unfortunately, we’ve been unable to involve them in the best possible way… but maybe the link could be established through that channel.
Today, as a recruiter, you are in touch with hundreds of Técnico students every year. Does the technical training offered by the school still represent an asset to work in several areas?
Yes, but more than that: I believe they have a great spirit of self-sacrifice, the ability to learn new concepts very quickly, that they are people who are able to ponder and realize where to apply their expertise to solve problems in a different way. And they have mathematical, statistical and probabilistic foundations that you cannot find among other students. But they also lack a lot of management skills.

What would be your advice to senior year students?
Try to look for different experiences, involving soft skills, the business world, and understand how things work inside a company. They must master the basics of our economic life. And, most of all, understand what they want to do in the future: if they want to be researchers, teachers, managers or engineers.

Can’t they change course later on?
They can, and change is not bad. But if they get it right on the first shot, then things will go faster.