Rares Man, Head of Internal Communications and Employer Branding @ ABBYY

Welcome back to another episode of The Garage Guide. Today I'm joined by my co-host Ingmar. Uh, it's our first time doing it together, and we've got a very special guest today, Radesh. Hello, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much.

If you could just start off by giving us a quick run-through of your career journey so far.

Quick? How quick? Two sentences. Uh, no, so I did not have what I would consider a very linear or straightforward career journey. Um, My academic background is in fashion marketing. I never really worked in fashion unless like a few months of retail next to my uni counts, but I did work in marketing, comms, PR in the not-for-profit sector for a while, quite a bit, where I started working actually even before uni. So I got quite a bit of experience in the marketing for not-for-profit from before even studying marketing. Then I worked in a very tiny 2-people company, then a very big 7,000+ unicorn company, started my own agency meanwhile with 2 of my friends, and now I work in a global company, still not as big, and I mainly do HR now. And so I've been doing everything that has to do with marketing, comms, PR, but specifically focused on talent. So it's always been, most of the time, it's always been around either job opportunities, employer branding, talent attraction. Now I do internal communication, external communications, branding. So everything that has to do with talking about people or, you know, speaking on behalf of brands to their talent markets.

Yeah. When did that first, like, realization of the power of marketing happen? When did you realize that you wanted to be involved in that space?

It was random and not planned, and it just so happened I was back in high school actually, and I got involved into a uni students organization. So it was this organization called ISAC that is for university students, 18 to 30 years old. I was 15. But my brother, who's 10 years older than me, had been part of that organization for years. So I knew of it. And so when I was at high school, I went to the students that were part of it in the local office back in Romania where I'm from. And I said, hey, can I join? You don't need to give me any like super cool role. I don't need to be very senior within your ranks, but I would like to get involved.

Was that a paid position or was it a volunteer?

No, it was a volunteering position. But I was about like 2 or 3 years younger than the minimum. Nevertheless, they did need people to send to promote the organization on campuses. So they were like, okay, join. And so I joined and that was what I started doing, promoting the organization on the local uni campuses, talking about internship opportunities for students, volunteering opportunities for students, or being a member of the SAT organization, which is a bit wild because I was, not even at the age where I could do, go on those internships or go on those volunteering experiences that I was promoting. But I started kind of getting involved into that, promoting the organization's programs to students before even being part of, before even studying marketing or anything of that sort. And because I was doing that, when it came to choose my degree, I was like, oh, I've been doing this for, I'm like, a solid 2 years now, and I really enjoy like doing this promotional part. So I was doing like little events, I was doing a bit of graphic design, a bit of PR, I spoke at radio stations, and I really enjoyed that kind of like promotional element of it. So I was like, okay, let me do— let me go into the space and study marketing. And so that's how I chose my degree.

And you decided for fashion marketing. How came that about?

I did, yeah. I've always been a quite creative person. I've always been sort of good at arts, like drawing, involved in like drama classes, all that. And so when I applied for uni, I don't know if it's the same right now, but back in the day you had to choose 5 unis, but sort of the same degree when you apply, at least when you were applying as an EU citizen back then to the UK. And so I needed to put in 5 options for marketing degrees. Ah, okay. And all of them sounded quite dull. They were like marketing and advertising or marketing and finance or marketing, just simple marketing. And then there was this one, at Manchester Uni, that was fashion marketing. And the interesting thing about it, which I think kind of tipped me towards choosing it, was that it was in the Faculty of Engineering because it was previously, it was a textile engineering course that was not marketable anymore. People were not that interested in it. So they changed the way they added the business side of it, but they kept the science bits. So it's a bachelor in science. You do all the labs. We did all like chemistry, physics, all that.

Okay. Yeah.

But then you do all the business side of things as well. And then the design and the creative part of it. So I was like, this sounds like a very balanced degree in many ways. So yeah, that was how I chose fashion marketing.

Interesting that you also were part of the blogging society and the textile society.

Oh yeah.

I almost forgot about that, but I found that in your LinkedIn profile.

I did not know that's in my LinkedIn. Okay.

It just seems like societies or student organizations had a impact on your career journey, your whole trajectory, basically? Trajectory. What did you— did that have any big influence when you were engaged in those societies?

Oh, absolutely. More— not those specifically, I wouldn't say, but generally I would say my career has been shaped by my extracurriculars more than my academic, like full-on academic preparation. I did study marketing, And you were good at it as well. I would like to think so. But I wouldn't say that the opportunity that I landed afterwards or my kind of career direction and all the good things that happened were thanks to that degree.

Yeah.

I can draw a parallel with my best friend and my flatmate. We studied the same degree. We had a completely different trajectory just because I've been involved in like all of these extracurricular and she hasn't been. I mean, she's working in fashion, so she did that. But totally different. So, you know, and most of the people that I studied with went that kind of classic route and had a very different type of career afterwards, whereas I benefited a lot and capitalized on all of those extracurriculars, that involvement, more than anything else to land the jobs and then to kind of like shape my career in what, what it is today.

Yeah.

In your career, you mentioned earlier you've worked in companies with loads of people and companies with a small amount of people, you know, startups or big corporates essentially. What do you think are the pros and cons of both? And like, when you're at university, what do you wish you'd been told, like, to make yourself more aware of, like, whether which one suits you?

Right, um, I think there's things— or one thing about me is that I'm quite a flexible and adaptable person, which is both good and bad. Um, it is good in the sense of You know, you throw me into a situation, a company, and an environment, and I would not freak out whatever the task at hand is. I've got this, you know, how hard can it be? Like, that's what I tell myself. Like, you put me anywhere, I'm like, how hard can it be? And I kind of adapt. The flip side of that, the negative, is that you are very adaptable. So then if you don't choose very consciously what you're gonna be doing, you end up being good enough or quite good at most things. So then, whatever the wind kind of like takes you, you're going to do that. And I feel like that's been a bit about a bit the story of my career as well. So I wouldn't say that there's necessarily one I prefer, a big or small company. I think there's something to learn in both. So in smaller organizations, smaller companies, you develop a lot vertically— so horizontally, sorry. And in bigger ones, maybe vertically. I like to think myself as a generalist, and I do value that kind of width of experience. But I do think that, you know, there's benefit in developing that breadth as well, which you might not be able to do when you wear all the hats in the office.

Yeah, yeah, I've noticed sort of in recent times that there's less reward for loyalty to just one company as there may have been before. Like, a lot of people would just progress through one company, and that would be sort of their career. And you've sort of hopped around in different roles and different companies, and I was wondering, how do you know when it's time for your next challenge when you're in a company? Like, how do you know you've maybe reached a ceiling yourself, or that another company is going to serve you better in terms of your own interests?

Right, well, there's this saying, um, I didn't come up with it, it's quite popular. People say that in any job you need to either learn or earn. So, you know, if you don't learn or if you don't earn, then it's time to go. For me, it's a bit of both, right? So, you know, it's a means of that kind of obviously compensation, everything that comes with that, but also when you feel like you're not learning anything new anymore. And I do argue that you can learn something new almost everywhere if you just look for that opportunity, 'cause it might not present to you, you might have to go and take it. I'm quite nosy in my company and in all companies that I've been in. So I get involved, I just ask, you know, what is this project about? Can I input? Can I give you my input? Like, or I have an idea here. It's never like it presenting to me as, oh, we're looking for this person and you fit the criteria, but rather, oh, I saw that you guys in this other department are doing that. I think that I can contribute here. So once you do that a bit, people would see you as somebody that is flexible and somebody that can add value to various projects. And then so a lot of things come to you.

Yeah, amazing. That's also advice I would give to any kind of young people entering companies now. That behavior, I think, takes you a long way. But before we kind of talk more about your journey, I want to go back a bit because you were studying at Manchester University, and today we have a cost of living crisis for university students in the UK, probably even bigger than when you were there. But you also said that you didn't have a lot of money. You still, you know, you performed really well during university, you were still engaged with those societies and extracurriculars. What did you do to kind of support yourself? And is there any kind of pieces of advice you could give to people who are in the same situation, maybe right now in a similar situation?

Right. I think coming back to that, how hard can it be attitude where you're looking for a solution to every problem. I think I developed that quite early on in my life. So then when, say, when I went to uni and I knew my family would not have like the necessary means to kind of support me.

Yeah, because you're from— your family's from Romania.

I'm from Romania, very small town. We had a small family business which kind of went bankrupt my second year of uni, so there was like no income. I was obviously on the— back then, EU citizens could get the loan from the government, so I was not paying for my studies. So that was great, but I still needed to like live, right? And so I lived on very, very little money for my first part of my uni.

Do you still remember how much a month?

Oh, you don't want to know.

Tell us, please.

So my rent, thinking of this now, I'm just moving houses right now in London, like years later, and comparing the price I'm paying now with that, it's wild. But I used to pay £200 bills included a month. Wow. And on top of that, I would have like max £100 extra for like everything else. I remember like I used to count my money and means of meals, but it was around like £1 a meal.

That is crazy.

So that's how I would think of my money. But I think I can make a good parallel with what I was talking about before and what you asked me with the extracurriculars. Actually, for me, it was a lifesaver that I was involved in this organization called ISAC. And why am I saying that? So I was involved from back when I was in high school, so I already had a couple of years volunteering for them before even starting uni. So then when I went to Manchester and I joined the local society, local office, everybody was new to the organization, right, as a new student. But I came with 3 years of experience in the organization, so I directly went to run kind of the local chapter. So I did that, and I would say I did quite recently in my role. Um, so when I finished my second year of uni, I finished my role as— it was called president of the local chapter. Um, I applied for the national office of the organization for a full-time job as head of marketing for the UK, which I did as my placement at uni. So everybody went on a placement for an internship in these big corporations doing very small jobs, I would say.

Boring jobs?

I mean, there's obviously a lot to learn, but I went into a head of marketing for the UK role, youngest in the office, youngest everywhere I went. I was 20 years old. And so that one, of course, that was a huge stepping stone for me for my career later on. But that also saved me in means of, oh, I had a full-time job for a year, I saved money. I went back to uni in my final year with money to live and with some experience that I could apply to now not have a retail job, let's say, on the side, but actually have an office job on the side of my uni. 3 office jobs besides of my uni my last year. So that's kind of like how I balanced it. It was not, not necessarily balanced it, but how one helped the other.

Yeah. When you said you have that mindset about how hard can it be kind of thing, For me, I resonate that a lot where it's like, I call it delusional optimism, um, and I don't ever want to lose that because I think it's the thing that makes me ambitious, it's the thing that makes me productive, like it's the cornerstone of everything I do in my career. Um, but I do think that the damage of taking on maybe more than you can chew sometimes is that you're not really, you're not doing yourself justice in a role. Like you said, you might be doing everything at 70% and I think, how do you like sort of identify that and maybe take a step back within your career and go, okay, like, you know, I'm burning out maybe right now, or I'm trying to do too many things and I really want to like, you know, specialize on something. And, and if there are any setbacks, how do you keep that optimism when those setbacks happen?

Right, I think that really depends on the environment you're in and what type of work you're doing. When I was back at, in my first few roles, that in ISAC and in the not-for-profit organization, for me, I was so connected to the vision of the organization that I was willing to sacrifice a bit of my, you know, my time or energy in doing more than what I was expected to do. And so that really helped me because it was a lot of purpose-driven action from my end. Now, if you're in like a big corporation where you don't really care about like the product that you're putting out in the world, that might be a bit hard, but then that might be a bit easier for you to draw the line and have those boundaries. I work with quite a lot of similarly minded people, I would say. So I would say that that kind of environment just perpetuates the same kind of— yes, intense environment, but also that drive, that willingness to do more, to go the extra mile, to put in the effort, the extra hours, because you get that satisfaction at the end of it and you see your development as well. I think me seeing my development and the kind of things I was doing as compared to my peers at uni or my friends was very motivating because I was like, okay, I'm putting in the effort, but look, I'm traveling the world, I'm meeting these people, I'm speaking at the UN. Like, you know, it gives you that kind of sense of, oh, I'm achieving things, so it's worth it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think having your why locked down and your, your purpose in your career is like, you can't, you can't, you can't even quantify how important that is for, you know, your value add to a company and how productive you can be for them. Because like, even with this podcast, like, when I started at university, really, like, nobody cared. Like, like, listeners were whatever, like, but I have my why locked down for doing it. I did history, I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I would go there every single week just because I get to have these conversations with these amazing people and learn this new skill. And then, you know, you keep doing that with consistency, and, you know, a year and a half later, a lot of things can happen. Um, so I think, you know, what is really your, your why with your career right now? Obviously, I think coming from Romania, coming to the UK, you clearly had ambitions like you know, to achieve a lot and, and change your position in life. And it's clear that you've done that. But for you, like, what do you think has been your why and kept you going up to 27 now?

Well, it hasn't been that long, has it? Uh, but still, um, I think it does develop and change, right? Um, because right now I'm not in the same sector. I'm not in not-for-profit, I'm in tech. Very different kind of setting, very different type of company. Um, I do still kind of look for that outcome of what the company does and to relate to, you know, is it needs to align with my values in a way or another. There's definitely a blacklist of companies or sectors that I would not go into because I am— and fashion is one of them actually. Fashion is on the blacklist.

Fast fashion.

I mean, you know, it depends what part of fashion you are in. You can be in the very—

Patagonia is fine.

You know, or you can be in the part where you're changing things and But I think that you still have to have some sort of connection to what the company or what the organization you're at brings into the world. That's one, but also what you want to get out of it personally as well. Is it to develop to a specific level of seniority where you can take that experience into another place then? Or is it a specific skill set or is it specific like a network? So it's that kind of, okay, what's my next step more than I will be here forever because I love the sector. For me at the moment is what am I getting out of it personally? At the same time, not compromising my values in what I'm doing. So it's not fully selfish, but it's not fully selfless, if that makes sense.

For people who are interested in marketing and kind of the various career paths you can head into, you are now leading internal communications and employer branding. And employer branding. And Abby, could you just walk us through a typical day in your life? What do you do exactly in your role? Students always want to know what is it exactly that you do.

Well, it's a bit of everything really, and I think that's quite a common answer for people that have multiple words in the title. Just the fact that it's internal communications and employer branding, you kind of get that it's two different things already. Internal communications is internal, as the title suggests, and it has to do with all the information being disseminated within the company. So that means, for example, HR communications to employees, leadership communications to employees, all that is coordinated by someone, all that is filtered by someone, messaging is created where, you know, somebody's looking at every, all the information that flows within the company and decides, oh, we're going the right direction, creating the right environment, the right culture, the right expectations, or not. And that's internal communication. So I do that. Now, on top of that, being part of the HR team, um, I do quite a lot of other HR work, um, so leading engagement activities as well. So employee engagement activities also kind of come under, um, internal communications for my role. So that has to do with, um, assessing employee satisfaction, running activities or programs to increase that, um, a lot of internal kind of employees-focused activities for engagement and comms. And then on employer branding side of things, that's external. So that's everything that has to do with communicating as the company towards your talent market. So I work with recruiters there. I work with our teams to present our jobs, our culture, our company as an attractive employer. So there's that external and internal side of communication. So I speak to a lot of people and a lot of people speak to me, I would say. So that's why every day is a bit different. There's days in which I do mainly internal stuff, days in which I do mainly external stuff. Like within a week I could be organizing an event for AI engineers in Belgrade, Serbia, and the next day to be sitting with the leadership team working on communicating company strategy to the company.

Okay.

Within the same day I could be I don't know, working on the career website or organizing an employee event in, I don't know, London. So it's very different every day, which I enjoy. I think that although it's quite a bigger company, what I enjoy specifically about my role and where I am in the company, at the company, is that it gives you— if you prove yourself, obviously, it gives you a lot of trust. And so I was saying, I'm not sure if this was on camera already, but I was telling you at the beginning that I'm a very nosy person. So I just like to kind of ask people what they're doing, what they're up to. And I have to do that because I have to know a bit of everything in internal comms. I have to understand what's moving in the company. But I'm also someone that when I see something that could be done a bit better or that I have an idea for, I would propose it. And so I get involved into a lot of different— like today I was working with the marketing team on their marketing newsletter. Newsletter on artificial intelligence. Has nothing to do with my job, but you know, since I've got background in marketing and they appreciate like sometimes an extra, you know, helping hand, there's that. Um, so I like to kind of bring in as much as possible from my past experience in all of my roles, although they're like quite mixed because I've got a bit of comms, a bit of PR, a bit of branding, marketing, activation, all that. I bring a bit of all that in the HR work that I do, um, as communicating internally and externally. But also within the company where I can see that, oh, actually I can contribute here.

I've heard this idea from Bridgewater, the hedge fund, of keeping all communications completely transparent, meaning that whatever the senior vice president yesterday discussed with an intern, you can actually get the tape for it because it's being recorded and the messages— every employee can see other people's messages. What do you think about that idea, taking it completely to the extreme, as someone who—

I'm not sure how they do it. There's legal implications to this kind of information access. So I would need to look into the specifics of what they mean by that. There's for sure some kind of fine print.

Take out the legalities and maybe just—

I mean, obviously, do you think it would actually contribute to a better environment, or you think it would lead to a lot of A lot of my work is making sure that we are as transparent as possible to our employees because that transparency creates trust. So if employees see how decisions are being made, what was the input, what was the output, how their contribution was taken into account, like we do loads of like surveys and focus groups and whatnot with employees and they wanna see how that input was taken into account, all the feedback that we're receiving. So the more you show that process, the more transparent you are about decision-making, the more trust you'd have in the employees. It's always this kind of misconception, or maybe for obvious reasons or for good reasons in some companies where people fear HR, right? Because HR knows everything.

Are you being feared?

I do think that HR gets a bad rap from perspective of HR is never your friend because ultimately, yes, you serve the people of the company, but you need to keep some things for yourself. And I think that the more transparent you are, and we are trying to be as transparent as possible, the more trust you get from your employees. The more trust you get from employees, the more committed they will be to their work, the better the company would work. So yes, transparency is a huge thing. It's one of our core values actually for our company. And in many companies it's quite a recurring one. I've not heard of this one specifically. I do think that there's different, different levels of understanding of the same information. So you might hear the same information, but you're not prepared to understand the information. So that can create very negative repercussions. The same meeting can be listened to by, in, by two different people, and they would derive very different conclusions. And so I do think there's a risk there. Of misunderstanding actually from too much information. Plus, it's very hard to absorb that information. So I don't know how many of the employees would actually, you know, benefit from all that transparency fully.

One thing I liked about what you're saying there is sort of demystifying perceptions towards HR and like, you know, what it actually is as a career. And like, from what you were saying there, like, you can really see the enthusiasm for, for that role and, and wanting people to be as productive and happy in their, in their company culture. And I think, yeah, it's obviously incredibly important, but the actual role itself— so say you're at university studying whatever, like going into HR, there's no apparent or one degree that I can think would lead you into that. And, and it makes me think when you said about all the extracurricular activities you did and how formative that was for yourself I mean, it is really interesting when you're at university to know, like, oh, I should be studying to get my degree, or should I be experiencing life a little bit? So you can learn those people skills and those soft skills. It's like, obviously one of those practical steps that you gave us advice earlier was like almost doing more than you were asked in your role and like asking if you can join things. Was there anything else that you think you were doing at at a young age that made you excel in HR and it helps you now?

Well, I don't think it's specifically HR, any role really, but I think that what is becoming increasingly important is for people to be more flexible in the things they can do and be easy to work with and easy to train and good learners because We're not anymore in times where you would train for a job for life. The whole concept of a job for life will disappear. You know, technology advances so fast and at a faster pace as well that you would train for something at uni, but then maybe that job won't even exist in 5 years. And so that ability to learn new things and that attitude towards learning and towards trying new things out, I think it's very, very important. You know, World Economic Forum, right? They do this Future of Work report every few years. The most recent one is from last year, 2023. And they have— they always have the section on top skills that you need. And in the last year's one, in the top 5, you had things like flexibility, creativity, adaptability. So they're all really soft skills. The first one was analytical skills, I believe. So obviously data is becoming more and more important, so that's definitely something there. But the other ones were what you would consider soft skills, which you usually develop outside of the classroom. So for me, it was that. It was me exposing myself to different experiences, whether that is, I don't know, organizing a conference in India or organizing a volunteering program in Morocco that put you in situations that require you to think on your feet and be super flexible. And so once you go through those experiences, you then relate back to that and you're like, oh, I did that. So like, how hard can this be? You know, so you always have some of this kind of precedent in your mind that—

I think we should call the episode How Hard Can This Be?

Honestly. But it's, you know, it's that idea of oh, I've done something similar in the past that was at that moment frightening, or at that moment I thought, okay, I'm not capable of doing this, and it went well. So this time around, yeah, why not?

I, I'm really fascinated by, by this idea and this mentality, or, you know, how hard can it be, or just throwing yourself into different things. Because it's like, I, I firsthand have experienced the benefits of just doing something that is not in your comfort zone while at university, and maybe not joining the rat race of applying to all the same spring weeks or summer internships whatever, like, but I think that I always wonder how inherent that is within someone, or whether it can be cultivated by maybe a product of your environment, or, you know, whatever it is. I mean, you— was it something that always came naturally to you? Was it— were there tangible things that you remember doing that like eased you into this? Yeah, this ability to go up to someone, say, I think I can help her, yeah, without actually knowing if you can really.

I don't think these kind of things are inherently like within someone. Obviously there's like an element of character, like your personal character, but then most of the things are very much influenced by your environment and the type of experiences you had. I worked from a very young age. My first job, I was 14, you know, I worked in a restaurant, but that idea of having to work while you're like very young, and doing something that most people wouldn't do and being okay with that was one thing. I also did lots of sports as a child, like everybody does. Not everybody does, but a lot of people do, which again puts you in very competitive situations or challenging situations. So you do build that confidence in your skills and your abilities. I do think that the more diverse the activities you have growing up, the more likely you are going to be more adaptable in your first, let's say, years of your careers or at uni, and you're not going to kind of withdraw into like, oh, my degree is the only thing, or like, I'll just do one thing, which obviously it's nothing wrong with that. It's not for me, but I'm a big advocate of trying things before, before ruling anything out and to kind of become a more well-rounded type of person. That's the approach I took and that made more sense for me throughout my career.

Yeah. When you were at university, were you really focused on, okay, I need to think about which career path I'm going into, I need to figure out what company has the entry-level positions open that might be a fit for me, or were you just like, I'm gonna just explore university. I see you're shaking your head, so.

Didn't even think of it. To be honest, I used to go to all the career fairs. But never had like a company in mind. I was very invested in my extracurriculars, to be honest. And this specific organization I was at, ISAC, gave me the opportunity to lead teams. And then so I got a bit of a high on my kind of like opportunity to manage teams and manage people at such a young age. So I got really invested into that throughout uni. I first volunteered and I worked in their head office in London. In the UK office. Then I went back to finish my degree. But even when I was finishing my degree, I wanted to do a bit more within the organization, learn something more, because I saw the kind of benefit that I got from putting in practical, really practical work and translating everything I learned at uni and marketing and very, very practical tasks and in a practical environment. So when I back went back for my final year of uni, besides, you know, dissertation, all that, that you do, I looked for an office job as well where I can practice a bit of that. So I got like a sales job, but at the same time I also went on and volunteered for the back then head of PR at a global level for the same organization to kind of assist and learn more on the PR side of things because I felt like I've got a good background in content marketing, brand marketing, a lot of sides of marketing. I was lacking a bit the PR comms side of things. I was like, okay, let me do this for free for this person. Let me help the—

That's cool.

Head of PR. And I did throughout my last year of uni and then out of uni I didn't apply for any graduate scheme. I didn't apply for any kind of standard company that would be a grad fair, but rather I applied for the global head of marketing for the same organization. Again, youngest person in the office. Made it great. And I was in a role of head of B2B marketing, which very quickly turned into being B2B marketing and digital marketing, then B2B marketing and PR and communications because of a lot of changes within the company. It was a COVID year and so that disrupted the organization massively. Now, as a side note or explanation, What the main thing the organization does is it moves people around the world. So it places students into internships or volunteering experiences all abroad, so different from their home countries. So when COVID hit, we had tens of thousands of young students in different countries that couldn't come back that we needed to sort out. All of our revenue was coming from those internships, which obviously not happening. And so everybody was freaking out. And I like to see myself as someone who doesn't freak out. And so there's another quote that I really like which says that leaders emerge in a crisis. So I really took that as an opportunity, seeing everybody freaking out, say, you know, we've got this, I got this, put me in charge of like communications, crisis comes, I'll do that. And that was for me very formative. That experience of leading crisis comes in that specific moment of crisis. Gave me a lot of confidence in myself, I would say, because nobody was— nobody knew what had to be done. So, you know, yeah, everything you would propose could be tried. And so we tried a lot of things and some things were really successful. So I was very happy with that. But that's sort of how I transitioned from uni into roles. And then I got that kind of management experience that, that allowed me to kind of expedite my career growth later on.

A quick question because we're coming to an end. If you had to put a percentage on extracurricular and experiences and on your actual university degree, what you've learned, how much has the one or the other helped you in your career journey?

Now you have to maybe 80/20. 80 what? 80/20, where 20 is the uni.

Okay.

Yeah. So definitely, like, would I, would I be able to perform all the jobs that I have had in the past without the degree? More than 80% of everything that I had to do, I could do without that formal preparation. Yeah.

I find it interesting with your career journey that you know, a lot of what your personality and everything that's come from it has almost been when you're back to being put to the wall, or you've had to start working early, or you've had to move to a different country and learn to converse in a different way with different kinds of people. Like, these are all skills that, you know, the context has made you have to learn them, but I think they're really essential ones. As you can see what you can gain from like the art of conversation. As an example, like, that's now something you use every day in your job, and you cultivated just that by having to adapt, right? Um, so yeah, I kind of want to know, with your— with yourself, yeah, how do you think that you can kind of like prompt yourself to, to, to learn skills that potentially, like, like, even right now, like, you need to continue to push yourself out of your comfort zone, but It might not seem— you could very easily cruise and just stay in your role now, but like, how are you still trying to push yourself forward and cultivate that new context, I guess?

I think it comes quite naturally, to be honest. Even the role I'm in right now, Head of Internal Communications and Employer Branding, last year I was just Global Employer Brand Manager. We had let go of our internal comms team and there was nobody doing that. And we saw that that's an issue. And I was like, hey, I can do that. Put me in charge of e-comms as well. So it was again, so I saw like there's a gap and I saw myself as somebody that can fill that gap. So I went for it because if I see— I'm the kind of person that if I see a problem, I cannot just let it be and hope somebody else will solve it. If I think that I've got the skill or I have something to learn and gain and can perform that job to a good kind of satisfactory extent while learning and gaining something for myself, which is most of— most often is experience and learning, I would go for it. So it comes quite naturally in that sense.

Yeah, my final question to you, um, I ask every single one of my guests this question. When you first moved over to Manchester for university, you would have had a certain idea of what maybe a successful career would look like to you. Fast forward to now, having experienced what you have in your career, how has that definition of success changed?

It's a good question. How has my definition of success in my career changed? I think it changes all the time, right? Um, it, it's, it's never been fixed. So I didn't go to uni with something very set in mind, I would say. Um, and that, I think I mentioned at the beginning, it's both good or bad, because if you've got something, you know, super clear, then you can be very focused into achieving that. Whereas if you're very adaptable to every situation, you might be pulled in a million directions and might end up somewhere you never thought you would be. I never thought I would be in the HR space, to be honest. I mean, I studied marketing, I did marketing, I still do communications, right? But thinking that I would be in HR, I was like, hell no. Like, I don't think I would do that. I enjoy what I'm doing. I love what I'm doing. So that definition of what the goal is changes a lot. For me, at least, it changed a lot. And I see that as a positive. As I saw again, the concept of jobs for life is kind of disappearing. So not being hyperfixated into, oh, I want to do this. And then once you reach that point, you're either, oh, it was not as good as I thought it would be, or that role changed, or it doesn't exist anymore. And then you're lost again. So again, that Flexibility applies to also how I see my goals, which are changing all the time, and for obvious reasons. You learn more, your perception of life changes a lot, so that influences how you see success in the near and distant future.

Yeah, I love that. And I think it's really clear that like a lot of the success you've had in your career has you know, it's been a product of you kind of accepting who you are and what your value add is and, and running with that. Um, and I think that's a massive lesson anyone listening can take from this. So thanks for co-hosting, and thanks very much for coming on, mate. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.