Valentina Ericson is the Vice President Indirect Procurement & Head of Packaging at Signify in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She was previously the Global Director Indirect Procurement at Nouryon and Global Director Procurement Strategy at Volvo Construction Equipment in both Belgium and Sweden.

How do you feel the workplace will have changed as we emerge from the global pandemic?

I believe there are a few themes as we look at the workplace post-COVID. An obvious one is the philosophy around office attendance, which is something both companies and employees seem to have mixed feelings about in terms of way forward. You can see both extremes, from companies and people wanting to go back to five days per week without exception, to others saying, let’s just work from home and stop this office thing altogether. In my view, the sweet spot is probably somewhere in between, where we acknowledge that working from home can have its benefits, but equally recognize that coming together is key to feel a sense of belonging, form relationships and allow for more spontaneous interactions.

Based on my own experience of recruiting in the recent months, it’s been clear that many candidates are seeking more flexibility and freedom to manage work-life balance, and want the possibility to partially work from home. This will, without a doubt, be a factor to consider when competing for talent in the market.

It’s also clear that the pandemic has taught us that we can do more things remotely and challenged us to be more creative in how we do things. It’s no longer necessary to travel all over the world every week or month. However, the experience of joining a new company during the pandemic by going through an entire recruitment process virtually and initially only working from home was definitely a different experience for me. Building relationships or even just being able to meet people by only using online tools is clearly more challenging and time consuming than doing it in person.

What do you see as the biggest challenges for:

1. Your business? and
2. Your own role over the next 12 months?

I think for many industries, including ours, managing your supply chain has been extremely challenging and it continues to be. Facing the impact from COVID-19, the Suez Canal obstruction, component shortages etc. takes a lot of resilience, speed and creativity to be successful. The pandemic also highlighted the risk and vulnerability of many supply chains, where many companies have had too many of their eggs in one basket creating quite some challenges when that supply fails. I anticipate that we need to rebalance the focus on cost with other aspects like risk and availability, but also challenge ourselves to become even more agile and faster in how we respond to different market situations.

Our industry is also evolving at a high pace and, as such, is demanding us to be highly innovative, fast, competitive and customer centric. Digitalization is a big topic across the company, as well as Sustainability, where we have a target to make our packaging plastic free by the end of this year, as one example. Diversity & Inclusion is another focus area, where we have an ambition backed up by hard targets to bring more females into senior leadership roles and hire more young talents into our company.

For me personally, the focus in the coming months will be to build the future Operating Model for Indirect Procurement & Packaging, to ensure we have fast and efficient processes to support the business, and talented people with passion to make the difference and ultimately take this organization to the next level. I’ve spent my first six months getting to know the company, listening to different people to understand what is working well and where can we improve. The work doesn’t stop in the meantime of course, so it’s a bit like building a plane and flying it at the same time, but I enjoy a good challenge, and I’m passionate about change and continuous improvement.

Describe the risks you have taken throughout your career and how did they help you get to the level that you are at?

I think a common theme for me has been to actively pursue opportunities when they have come up throughout my career. In doing so, I’ve many times been forced to get out of my comfort zone, challenge my fears, and leave the easy and comfortable path behind. More than once have I left a position in a company where I felt comfortable and well recognized in favour of doing something completely new and different, simply because I believed it would be better for my personal development.

As a consequence of taking on new roles, I’ve also several times moved between countries away from family and friends, which is not always easy. However, limiting yourself to one specific geographical location will ultimately also limit your career opportunities. It can be a challenge to be a foreigner in another country, but I’ve also found that living in another country is a very humbling experience that gives you fresh perspectives of the world, and on your own country and culture. I would not have wanted to be without this experience and I think it’s also something that has helped me as a leader of a global organization to understand cultural nuances.

The other advice I would have is to have courage to be different and not do what everyone else is doing or always say what people expect you to say. In the early years of your career, I think many people are keen on being perceived as the A-student employee, but adding alternative perspectives or challenging ideas or concepts by suggesting a different solution can sometimes be a game changer and allow you to position yourself differently. Also, try to be strong enough in your own values and beliefs to say, “No, I don’t agree” or, “This is not right” when you feel strongly about something. This can be uncomfortable depending on the situation or even risky, but with the right people you will be seen as honest and gain trust.

Overall, making tough choices and doing things outside your area of comfort is not easy, and it’s not for everyone. I always say that you need to own your choices and actively make them based on what you believe will make you happy in life.

For someone starting their career in Procurement, what advice would you share?

I would say invest in building relationships. I always say that that Procurement is a relationship sport and you are a bit like a spider in the web working with most functions within the company. I often tell people that, to the outside world, you are the buyer, but internally, you are very much selling ideas and concepts, and typically need to manage a lot of change, so you need to have the skills to do both.

Furthermore, I would advise to get to know your eco system (market, internal stakeholders, suppliers) to build a solid understanding of what their challenges, opportunities, needs, etc. are, because that will tell you what’s important for you to consider when you build your strategy, and for you to find the right way to interact and collaborate with those groups and build relationships to be successful.

What would you say is the most rewarding part of your role?

From a leadership point of view, the first would be to work with my people and see them grow, develop and advance their careers. I’m very passionate about people development and I find it to be the most rewarding part of my role. Seeing someone conquer a difficult task or overcoming a challenge or celebrating their new promotion is just a great feeling that gives me a lot of energy. As a leader, your success will ultimately be defined by the success of your people, so investing in your team should always be a top priority and focus. On top of that, having a global team that all bring their unique perspectives and learning from them is something I very much enjoy and appreciate in my role.

Looking at my role as a Procurement professional, I personally like the ability to have a direct impact on the business. Every day, we solve different issues, find a smarter way of sourcing or doing things, and we are a key contributor to the company’s bottom line. I’m a competitive person by nature, so I like to see that what we are doing is generating results that makes a positive difference.

The third and last one is the freedom, everchanging dynamic and creativity of this profession. I like problem-solving and improving things, it’s part of who I am. In Procurement, there is rarely a day that is like the one before and as such it offers a nice arena for creativity. When stakeholders come to me to complain, I tend to appreciate it because it gives me an opportunity to solve and improve something for the future. On top of that, the appreciation you get back from taking the time to listen and understand the problem and then going and fixing it for them buys you a lot of credibility and trust with your stakeholders.

What is the most surprising thing that has happened during your career?

At least on three occasions in my career, it happened as I was just hired into a new role, that the manager who hired me left shortly after. This can be a big deal, because you don’t just choose a job and company, you also choose the manager as someone you want to work with. Additionally, it has happened twice that the office I’ve been based at has closed or been relocated and, a few years ago, I joined what I thought was a public company, only to learn a few weeks later that the business area I was joining would be sold to a Private Equity Company.

That journey became very different from what I originally expected, but ultimately turned out to be an amazing, fun and rewarding experience. Uncertainty about the future can be very hard on your mind, but for me this was an example that what’s beyond the uncertainly can be something great and, if you don’t pull through, you might miss out on interesting things and opportunities.

Who is the most inspiring person in business for you and why?

There are many incredibly inspiring companies and people in the world today doing a lot of good things, so it’s a tough choice, but I will pick the Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, who founded the Ocean Cleanup company to help rid the world’s oceans and rivers from plastic waste.

The story began when he was on vacation in Greece and, sadly, saw more plastic than fish in the sea and felt an urge to do something about it. I think most of us feel frustrated with the negative impact us humans have had on the environment, but he actually decided to take it further and started his own company to make a change.

I find it inspiring to see that smart people with plenty of career opportunities in the corporate world choose to deploy their talent and intelligence for a greater purpose, and I like the way he is adapting a business mindset to identify a problem and doing a root cause analysis: Why is this happening? How do we solve it? And then find a clever way to deploy a solution. It’s great to see when people use learnings from the private business sector to tackle Sustainability issues and other important topics in the world.

Do you have any hidden talents?

Not sure if it counts as a talent, but my friends and family tell me that I am extremely good at assembling IKEA furniture. I guess it comes with my Swedish genes and a lot of experience of moving around. I’m also good at making puzzles and, during the pandemic, where we had a few months of curfew in the Netherlands, I’ve made a couple of them with 1,000-3,000 pieces each. I can usually do 1,000-plus pieces in one evening. Fortunately, it’s now summer and no curfew, so I can hopefully develop a new talent.

Thank you to Valentina for speaking to Michelle Ewing, Director at EMEA Recruitment. 

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.

How can companies reduce bias in the hiring process?

We work on the mindset of the leaders, the line managers and introduce varied ways to equip them to experience good quality interviews completely bias-safe. It is a dedicated and persistent proactivity that we deploy to secure the positive mindset change that eradicates potential types of bias. Helping hiring leaders become aware of this topic benefits their efficiency in the process of capturing the best talent.  

I put my trust mostly in an interaction between a) the definition and roll-out of the right HR processes, and b) the respect to the principles that inspire the organisation culture. It is balance between the cultural and spiritual side of the organisation and process discipline. Everyone needs to be part of this communication and learning experience.

In the day-to-day activities, it is indeed a challenge to identify when bias has happened; it’s really a guess in most cases. We need to rely on the clarity and good understanding of the process to follow, which somehow states the avoidance of any type of potential biases.

From my side, I constantly try to align the HR community around these principles, because they are the ones who act as sort of gatekeepers of the compliance of adequate processes.

How do you feel the workplace will have changed as we emerge from the global pandemic?

In general, we all have adapted to more flexible forms of work. Being an industrial company, most of our jobs demand presence in our sites and customers. However, I believe that this pandemic has increased the awareness towards the need to balance work, personal lives and health. But also, in Manufacturing jobs, it is the development of technology that is bringing innovative ways of work.

Another interesting aspect is related to communication and collaboration technology. We have experienced a rise in technology solutions to support this evolution to adapt work schemes to individual circumstances. This has helped to grow the understanding that solid performance can be achieved through different ways of work; this is a relevant transformation overall.

In general terms, I dare say that, as an effect of these pandemic months, we have developed our individual empathy capability. I mean the way we observe, tolerate and support other colleagues and situations.

It’s a real talking point across different countries now about larger organisations and do they keep their huge offices, do they change and have those smaller hub or site offices where there is that flexibility to come and go, because then you can offer employees that mix of both?

Indeed, that is happening. Office design is in line with the idea of building collaborative spaces for people and adapting an engaging work environment to the way each person is working.

We’re now refurbishing some of our offices following that concept. Clearly, the size of the office needed is smaller, but must be more engaging and facilitate collaboration.

Do you mean where some of your colleagues may be working at home on their own through the pandemic, or they’ve got children and they’re trying to work while they’re looking after the children?

Exactly. Personal circumstances that may need a different way of working or collaborating with others. Somehow, during these months, we opened our domestic environment through the public domain of the screens and in the background sometimes there is a dog barking, or there are children running, or your partner is suddenly coming in and out. And this is now part of our normality.

We have been impacted in our workforce, sometimes going through terrible circumstances, and that kind of moral support, compassion, etc. is a regular attitude that is popping up in the organisation. Not solidarity feelings - all that has been re-bunked; I think that shouldn’t be lost.

What excites you about working for LafargeHolcim?

I think the company is definitely an exciting company. I have been here for 15 years in diverse jobs and I have always found that the company is continually changing, transforming at the right pace, and that transformation attitude has opened options for the business and for our people. People in Holcim are proud of the company. Sometimes it’s the cement plans, sometimes it’s the country where they were, sometimes it’s the region, the group or all together, and now it has jumped into a very intensive and proactive strategy on sustainability; it makes this company quite interesting in the day-to-day. I personally find it very inspirational and engaging to be part of Holcim.

It sounds like it’s a place where you’ve been able to flourish, where you’ve been able to be yourself and be able to bring new ideas, but then if you don’t have ideas at that particular time, you’ve probably got a number of people around you that would have ideas?

We work under the principle of people accountability, empowerment and decentralised management.

Our inspiring challenge is to have a chance to explain, openly, our story, because there is a very exciting story behind our strategy related to our contribution to society and environment.

How do you see the Swiss economy evolving in the next 5 years?

Well, I am not an economist, nor a guru. What I can suggest is a modest opinion. I have a feeling that the Swiss economy will be a strong economic engine in the heart of Europe for many years. I think this country is doing the right things, and attracting the right talent and capital. There is a challenge that I comment with my Swiss colleagues frequently: the relevant opportunity in the relations that Switzerland can build with the European Union, which will make this economy and social model even more interactive and strong.

Switzerland is an example in many aspects, and has learnt to evolve and adapt: this is a guarantee for future.

What are the biggest challenges for a leader overseeing a remote team?

My team has been working in a flexible approach for more than a year. Where I find a new element is in the follow-up of the team, because we were accustomed to come together for morning meetings, weekly meetings… We need to address what the engagement aspects that you need to fit properly in a remote way are, so that everyone in the team feels the closeness of being integrated in the team, even if they are hundreds of kilometres away.

One person in my team is based in Singapore, my colleagues in HR are in Latin America, US, Canada, one is in Madrid, another one is in Switzerland, etc. So, it’s a kind of remote team, but by frequent talks on the key topics and the exchange through different channels, including social media, we keep that day-to-day, we keep that closeness, that confidence. There is something that it’s a bit damaged, especially for HR professionals; sometimes we have the feeling that we’re maintaining ourselves with the efforts done in the past to get to know people. Now we start to know new colleagues, newcomers, through screens, through technology, but we are missing the opportunity to have enough time together to get to know each other face-to-face. So that is a challenge that is not 100% replaced by remote contacts.

It’s not so bad with team members that you’ve known for a long time, but when it’s a new person coming in, that chat over coffee will never be replaced by the remote virtual world.

That’s the challenge and there are ways to balance - we do more intensive talent reviews, for instance. We are planning to do it quarterly, instead of once a year, so there are ways to overcome that difficulty.

What risks have you taken throughout your career and how did they help you get to the level you’re at now?

The trick of the question is, when you perceive a risk is when you’re in front of it and you have to do something about it, then you experience a certain mix of panic and courage. When you go through it and you do something right, then you look behind and you do not see the risk, you see the story and how it has turned into a positive experience.

But what are the risks? I would mention attitude. I’m saying this to colleagues, to anyone that I can, that you really need to jump in the water. When someone comes and says, “Hey, would you agree to do something, would you get into this or that?”, then you need to be ready with the answer that day, you need to be ready to say, “Yes, I take it up”. And then you learn the way, and you plan and find a way to do it; that’s attitude. I have recommended that attitude to our young people joining the company any time that I had the opportunity. You may not do it perfectly well, but you gain that experience from every moment you face one of these risks, let’s call it a challenge. It is a huge learning both in terms of job skills, but also in terms of your own maturity and personality, so you grow as you move.

I like the fact that you mentioned throughout your career, if you say yes to opportunities and jump in with two feet and, yes, there may be times where it might not go so well, but ultimately, those are your learning experiences, and you will carry them with you for the next challenge, risk or opportunity.

When I was living in Madrid, one university gave me the opportunity to contribute as a professor and I could make it compatible with my working hours. So, I said “Okay, fine” and I thought he would come to tell me to teach something about HR or labour of law, and the person came and said “No, it’s about legal ethics”. I was shocked, because that was not my comfort zone. Then I said “Okay, fine”, and I ended up doing 5 years teaching legal ethics and professional ethics. One day I asked that professor, “Why did you ask me that?”. She said, “You know, I did it on purpose, because I was sure you had to fight for it”. The risk can be challenged from things that you are not comfortable with, it’s out of your comfort zone.

What is the biggest myth about your profession that you want to debunk?

Well, there are a few, because in HR most of the things we say sound like myths - sorry to be so realistic. For instance, around Talent Management, there are plenty of myths in the concept of feedback - there are lots of them. We want to believe not only that we need feedback, but also that we’re entitled to provide feedback to anyone and that we do a good thing by providing feedback. That’s a dangerous thing to believe. We need to be modest and adopt a helping, coaching attitude when providing feedback to anyone, understanding upfront that what you do is projecting your experience and opinions to produce a positive outcome for that person. I believe that all around methodologies to understand people’s behaviours need to be revisited continuously.

The other myth I want to mention is more related to organisational culture, the importance of corporate values. I am a bit of a sceptic with exercises of definition of values and the implementation efforts that intend to align everyone’s behaviours around them. An excess of prescriptive frameworks runs the risk of killing diversity, innovation and, in an extreme situation, even engagement.

What is the most surprising thing that has happened to you during your career? What have you found that really made you think, wow I wasn’t expecting that to happen or where has this come from?

Every time I was given a nice project or a job, I was considering that as a great thing that was happening to me and a personal reason to be proud.

Also, I have found working with people extremely motivating; people who you could influence, who you could help to work for them, or they work for you. To see them growing, to see them becoming your peers, that for me is absolutely engaging and motivating. If someone tells me when I finish my career one day what is really the takeaway of my career, I’d say, “The amount of people I’ve seen developing with me thanks to my help or who were collaborating and we grew together”, so that is really what’s worth for one’s career in my opinion.

With the Executive Interview and the approach that we have, why were you quite interested to do this? What were you hoping to get from this as well?

Your questions provoke thinking and, in your day-to-day activity, you mostly do a lot of things, but you think in the middle of a rush. Having the chance to talk now to you and share my views is building on my own thinking. So, I found this was a great opportunity. To have some minutes to reflect and to share, to provoke a bit with the answers, but as you speak you will listen from yourself as well and, maybe next time, I will answer it slightly differently because I’ve learnt in our conversation.

Thank you to Feliciano for speaking with our Manager - HR Division, Keeley Cunningham.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.

Can you identify how SCIEX stands out from the market and your competitors?

When I applied for SCIEX, what stood out for me was its technology. The company has been a major leader in mass spectrometry for the last 50 years. What makes SCIEX different is its innovation used in products and systems. If you look at other players in the market, SCIEX stands out for high precision and ground-breaking technologies. 

Personally, it is important for me to work for a company that helps society and contributes to the world, especially now in COVID times, and that is exactly what SCIEX does.

What is it like working for SCIEX and, as Senior Manager of the Finance Shared Service Centre, how would you describe the culture?  

What I absolutely love about working for SCIEX is its entrepreneurial culture. It is also an environment that cultivates teamwork and a do-it-yourself attitude. Since I joined SCIEX, I put a lot of focus on engagement and purpose creation in my organisation. What my management team and I have done initially is to assess all Finance services that we provide towards our internal stakeholders. As a result, we jointly created a vision statement around how we, as Finance, will become a value adding business partner to various departments within the organisation. For us to build those business partnering relationships, we need to become the backbone of the organisation, providing impactful services to enable our front office departments to support our customers better.

Additionally, my team is based in the Netherlands, Germany and India. It is a very diverse team with a mixture of various cultures. Of course, that brings its own challenges with COVID and being remote. Therefore, for me, more than ever, the engagement and the motivation of the team is very important. Hence, my management team and I are constantly looking for various ways to engage teams across the continents, find a common language, have fun together and connect on a personal level during events we are hosting.

A pertinent topic currently, what does your organisation currently do to contribute towards Diversity & Inclusion (D&I)?

SCIEX prioritizes D&I and we are leading our day-to-day operations with inclusiveness agenda in our minds. There is a lot of focus created, not only in terms of gender, but also beyond gender, such as race, ethnicity, etc.

One topic which is dear to me is the awareness and actions taken by Danaher to increase female representation in managerial bands. This is done through development, mentorships and coaching. In my organisation, we also create awareness and focus on facilitating career aspirations of the female members.

What do you think makes a successful and inclusive work culture? What challenges do you see?

If I look at my own background, diversity has always been part of my life. I grew up in the Baltic States, with a Lithuanian mother, Russian father, was raised in Sweden and I am now living in the Netherlands. I have been very lucky in my life to have had the exposure to various cultures, and what I have learned is to respect differences, not to judge and be open. This is just as important in private life as in business.

By being open, respectful and curious towards new cultures, I believe that one can learn new things and get new experiences and become creative. As a result, you will naturally build relationships based on trust. This is key to a successful and inclusive culture.

What do you love the most about your current role as Senior Manager, Finance?

I love the purpose of the company and being able to contribute to society. In terms of my own role, I have a great and talented team around me, who is always willing to take an extra step, seek good results and have fun at the same time.

I also have support and freedom from my senior leaders to evolve and innovate, and that’s what I really enjoy, too.

What great decisions do you believe you have made throughout your career?

To do my Executive MBA study at Erasmus University was a real eye opener for me. The two years I spent working and studying has put me on a personal journey to better understand who I am as a person and as a leader. I have learned to be comfortable outside my comfort zone. I have discovered my strengths and what drives me as a person. Also, I discovered my purpose in life and learned to see perspective in all decisions that I make. It was a great journey for me.

What are your personal motivators?  

This is a very good question; I think I had different motives before I became a mother. I wanted to be very successful in my career and have a certain role in a certain timeframe, and I was looking to find a purpose in life within the job. When I became a mother, my motivation changed significantly; my biggest motivator today is my daughter.

My purpose is to help her to become a fulfilled person, and to empower her to think freely and not limit herself based on whatever limitations our society puts on us. I would like her to grow up feeling that she is empowered to become anything she aspires to be, and I would like to give her all chances to discover her inner voice and her self-confidence.

What would be your advice to someone aspiring to be where you are now?

A very important thing that I didn’t have in the early stage of my career was a mentor. Having a mentor is crucial when various paths open up. When there is an experienced person to give advice on the future and help navigate the career jungle, it can be an important element in making the right decisions at an early age.

As an interviewer, what was the worst/best interview experience you have had?

The most interesting experience was when I needed to set up two teams for a Finance transformation project at short notice and I had 35 interviews in two days. I remember I had to come up with one outstanding personality trait for each person in order not to forget the candidates. It was a fun and intense experience.

Who was your most admired person in your childhood and why?

My grandfather. He’s passed away now, unfortunately. He was a man with strong opinions and a determined mind. This must have come due to his military background. He taught me a great deal of self-discipline. He believed in values such as honestly, perseverance and rewards for hard work. His way of being has given me a sense of my own worth; that my voice and aspiration matters, and if I do my best I will succeed in the end. I was very happy to have him in my life and all the support he gave to me.

What books are you currently reading? What book could you recommend to Accountants that are wanting to progress?

I got myself Notorious RBG by Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. She was the Justice from the Supreme Court. I find it amazing how one person, through knowledge and perseverance, can change an entire society by leading from behind.

Describe yourself in three words.

Ambitious, passionate (and doing things that are important for me) and caring.

Thank you to Viktorija for speaking with our Associate Director, Georgia Wright.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.

What was the best/worst interview experience you have had?

Best interview experience must have been my first interview for AkzoNobel, and one of the first interviews in my life. I was travelling in the US, met the senior director for audit - an old school American gent, three-piece suit and all - and we had lunch together at Chicago O’Hare airport. He was very tough in his questions and had the best poker face. In the end, I had no idea where I stood. He walked me to the gate, and then asked the TSA Agent, “Where can my colleague check in?”

The worst interview process I had was at a company (I will not name and shame), but one that, after the fact, I have heard other similar stories about, so in the end I think even this cloud had a silver lining. What was so strange is that the entire interview process went well, up to and including the interview with the GM, and I had been requested to provide references. I provided these and had been told that I needed to sign by the end of the next week, to make sure that I would be available for the role in good time. I had drafted and printed my resignation letter at work, and was literally sitting on my desk, just waiting for the contract, when things went quiet. I heard nothing until the deadline had passed, and was simply told that the GM had changed his mind and thought I was too corporate for the role. Turned out they were too afraid to challenge him, so burned me.

How does your company work to retain high potential employees?

Given that I have just joined Nexperia, I cannot yet answer this question for them. But, based on my prior company’s challenges, this is the million-dollar question, and it’s getting more and more important. 

We had the usual mix of short and long-term incentive plans, with vetting periods. That by itself doesn’t cut it at the moment, in my opinion, especially as the vetting period is three years (which is different here at Nexperia by the way). 

I think this really puts the accountability for retention with the managers/directors themselves, rather than to rely on the existing corporate structures. I am, for example, always working proactively with my team members on carving out a career plan for them in the company, to get them mentors and to make sure that they are not being forgotten when positions are being discussed. 

One of the lessons I have learned throughout my career is that development plans should not (just) be for low performers, but are especially relevant for high performers in the team. I prefer for someone in my team to make a step internally than to lose them to another company. Ultimately, I believe it’s a mix of the company and the individual leaders that makes people stay; they need to feel taken care of, both in terms of now and the future development.

What changes have you seen to the employment market in the Netherlands over the years? What, in your opinion, have been the drivers for these changes?

There are two major changes in the NL labour market: the attractiveness of the Netherlands as a work location, as well as the skill requirements needed by the Finance professionals, which is a global phenomenon.

I first moved to the Netherlands in 2007 and being an expat at that time was still not standard. English was spoken, of course, but still the labour market, even at larger corporates, was rather locally dominated. This has changed incredibly since then, creating a seriously diverse workforce, with talent from all over the globe. Even the recent tendency by companies to reduce the classical expat has not changed this (the 30% ruling of course helps tremendously).

In the Finance field itself, the change has of course been the growth of technical skills, away from being linked to Accounting qualifications and SAP (still of course very relevant) to also include system knowledge such as Power BI or coding. When I started working, MS Office was considered a skill. When I interview people at the moment, and they do not know Power BI, I am already starting to question the choice of candidate. It’s amazing to see how new talent coming through the ranks has taken this digital leap and I am super excited to see where this can lead us as Finance, with access to all the data that’s out there. This change is driven by the availability of data and will continue to shape our profession.

What risks have you taken throughout your career and how did they help you get to the level you are at?

My first step into operational Finance (away from the ivory tower corporate roles) was as Regional Business Controller for the Nouryon Polymer Chemicals Business in Asia. I was newly married, had never worked in a Controlling role, and had been sent halfway around the world to take over and improve a Finance department, responsible for both Sales and Supply Chain Controlling. Plus my wife had to quit her job as senior manager at EY to follow me. Quite a bit of pressure… I had impressed the GM of the business as part of a divestment I had run, which had helped obviously with the interview process, but my Controlling knowledge was textbook only, not one minute of operational experience.

What I did realise though, once I got there, is that I was able to take advantage of the fact that I knew nothing, by approaching the whole process with an academic curiosity, which, combined with my project management skills, enabled me to get the team together, leverage their knowledge, thus helping me to finally build a super solid team. This made me realise the most fundamental skillset that I think any Controller should have, namely being inquisitive. If you have the right brain and ask the right ways, one can always find a solution.

If you could go back and give your younger self some career advice, what would it be?

I think the one thing I would tell myself, and what I tend to tell all people that haven’t already found the job for them, is to go into consulting for a period; it’s the way to polish the diamond that exists in all the raw talent that one has upon starting one’s career. Having spent a few years experiencing the most structured approach to thinking possible (including which colour of blue to use), it becomes much easier to adapt to new situations.

Having done a trainee program inside a company was a great experience. I saw a lot, both of the world, as well a  the chemical/pharmaceutical industry, but ultimately the structured approach was not quite the same. I don’t regret my choices, but if I could go back, that’ll be it. For the rest, honestly, I would tell him to try to do (most) things like I’ve done. I’ve travelled the world, seen and worked with some amazing people, and have especially benefited from globalisation.

Who is the most inspiring person in business for you and why?

I wish I could say the CFO, but let’s be honest, that’s not really our role. We can be visionary, but this tends to be closely aligned to the real source of inspiration in any successful business, the CEO. I have been able to work with people like Hans Wijers, who truly had a vision for AkzoNobel and was driven by the desire to see this company become the biggest global player.

This was lived by us every day, and people were willing to go above and beyond to make his vision become reality. Businesses need cold numbers to survive, but to excel one needs more, and this must come from the guy at the top. One word of caution, to be truly inspiring, that leader must be authentic, and this is where I have seen things fall apart in other instances. Do what I say, not what I do has never been able to inspire anyone.

While we continue to face the realities of COVID-19, how have you seen your approach to Finance?

What we have seen during COVID has not been a major change from what I have seen during prior crises; its back to basics, weekly volume reporting, combined with more frequent and more detailed forecasting, in addition to continuous cost focus and reduction.

Going forward, I expect much of the same. We need to be as close as we can to the business, garnering information, looking at trends, trying to identify issues if and when they come. I take the positives from this, as we have been able to push through initiatives that would have taken much longer in the past, with better buy-in from the business.

Given that we rely much more on system data, without ability to factcheck via informal discussions, we have seen the need to clean up the system data, and that I take as the biggest challenge for the mid-term.

Thank you to Benedikt for speaking with our Director - Finance, Hannah Mallia.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.

How can companies reduce bias in the hiring process?

Within Kraft Heinz, it really started by acknowledging that there are inherent biases in the hiring process. A lot of people claim that there aren’t, but you just need to realistically look at it and for us we said, ‘yes, they are definitely there’. Once we all established that we had those biases and articulated what they were, we build in what we call smart checks and controls to actively counter biases.

We don’t necessarily believe in having a quota on certain biases, for instance, the number of women in a firm or the number of people from a certain ethnicity, but we do believe in creating these active checks and controls.

For instance, we more actively use profiling when we hire, recognizing, for instance, that the current Kraft Heinz population might be very blue/reddish with a lot of analytical hard drivers, while for the direction we’re going as a business, we need more creativity, organisers and harmonisers - so the more yellow and green type of people. As such, we’re actively including that in our evaluation of people, countering your own bias, because obviously a red person will be more attracted to a red person in the hiring process.

Second, in every hiring process, we’re including cross-functional interviewers, meaning someone who has nothing to do with the role/team for which we’re hiring, to make sure that we are not biased because we really want to fill a role. In this way, we have someone objectively evaluating the true fit. As such, when we are looking for a Finance person, someone from, for instance, Supply Chain would also talk to the person.

As our last counter towards biases in the hiring process, we are actively trying to make the inflow of candidates in the hiring process a fair representation of society. If, in theory, the inflow of candidates is 90% male, it is not that weird that the output of the process (i.e. people being hired) is also 90% male. What we are now more actively doing is making sure we get our inflow from different sources. Think of, for instance, building partnerships with student associations that are more connected to different ethnicities. The key is to understand that most companies focus on bias in the hiring process (i.e. the evaluation and selection of candidates), though focusing on your inflow in the hiring process is as important.

How does your company work to retain high potential employees?

The thing that Kraft Heinz does differently compared to other companies is offering good career perspective. Not that others don’t offer career perspective, but Kraft Heinz has a unique aspect in offering employees non-restricted career dreams, regardless to where an employee currently stands.

What I personally like about this is that you can literally go in every career direction, zigzag to wherever you want to be. Our HR lead was originally a marketeer, our MD originally managed the field sales, and one of our European Heads of Category used to be a Finance person. Basically, meaning that wherever you want to go, Kraft Heinz will support you. If you start off as a Finance person and suddenly decide you want to do Marketing, you can go to Marketing, although you have never done Marketing in your life. At Kraft Heinz, we believe more in having certain capabilities, rather than having certain experience, when being assessed for a role.

That particularly makes Kraft Heinz unique and, when combining this with our active talent management, it creates strong career perspective. We try to talk ambitions and career planning very actively with our people. If you show your talents that they can become whatever they aspire and we’re going to help you to work towards that, that really gives talents perspective. You need to give talents perspective, so they know they’re going somewhere. 

Second, we are really focusing on the belonging to a certain BU to make sure everybody’s engaged and understands what they are doing in contribution to the journey we’re going as a BU in whatever direction that is, so they have a certain sense of belonging.

I do really think that’s super unique, Darren; I really don’t hear that very often about being able to go in any direction you want, more focused on the ability as opposed to ‘have you done it before?’ and I guess you are already seeing the benefits of that, giving people the opportunity to move to other areas, and you will see the retention in staff I assume?

Definitely, there are two elements. You really see people that enjoy working within Kraft Heinz and are highly talented remaining with us and growing fast, though at the same time we are also a highly demanding organisation. It is also the case that certain people after an x amount of years say, ‘okay, I enjoyed my time doing this, but I want something different now, so I’m leaving’. I personally think you also need to accept that consequence of the way you build your company, in the sense that if you want to create a certain DNA within your organisation, it will mean that not everyone will fit forever. Retention is an important topic for us, where we try to work hard on retaining the people that fit your company, but you won’t be able to retain everyone if you strive for a certain DNA within your company.

What advice would you offer to someone moving to the Netherlands?

First of all, my advice would be, do it. I think the Netherlands is a good place for expats. First and foremost because everybody speaks English, which helps communication wise. Besides, I find Dutch people very open; it is a country that is very open to different cultures, and people are willing to connect and engage if you show that willingness to them. So do it, that’s the first advice I would give.

Second advice is taking advantage of the typical directness of Dutch people. Dutch people are known for being very direct in their communication, which sometimes can be experienced as harsh. Though, at the same time, that also opens up the door for the counterpart to be very direct to them and that is a very unique style in working together, which can be very effective. There is a lot to learn from that way of working, so although on the one hand it can be very offensive to experience for the first time, it can also be a very valuable experience in leadership.

What risks have you taken throughout your career and how did they help you get to the level you are at?

Let’s start at the beginning of my career. I graduated, interviewed multiple companies in the Netherlands, but then I decided I wanted to go abroad and, more specifically, wanted to work in the US region. At the same time, my girlfriend wanted to move to the Caribbean. In the end, I moved to the Caribbean without having a job. I had a lot of conversations in the Netherlands, so I could have easily gone for a very good job, but decided I was going for a change. Eventually, within two months, I got a job, and started at EY being part of the US zone, which set me up to do a couple of years’ consultancy, giving me a very broad experience in running business and business management.

Every step in my career I’ve not really planned for it, but I just have a lot of confidence that if I will make a move, I eventually will get where I want to be. That is, for me, one of the risks that I have taken. Is there any other angle you are looking for, because there is risk in everything, there can also be risk in decision-making, what we’re doing, etc.?

Obviously, it’s an incredibly open question and I think that’s a great example of really pushing outside your comfort zone, and having confidence in yourself that it will work out and that you will get what you want out of it.

For somebody at your level, you’ve got to where you are relatively quickly - I hope you agree with me. I’m a little bit intrigued because to have the title and the responsibilities you have, it would probably usually take a lot of people longer and I just wondered if there was anything there that you might have done differently that made you where you are now?

I don’t often speak about it, I don’t like saying, ‘yes, it went fast’, because I think everybody develops in their own career at their own pace. But the difference here is that every time when I was considering something in my career or was talking about a move, I was very explicit about what I wanted in my career, and as soon as I got an opportunity, I would go all in. It’s the confidence that I know I will get there that helped me to grow very fast.

As humans, we have a tendency to be a bit risk averse and doubt at the moment we get an opportunity; I barely doubt when I get opportunities, I just have confidence. As long as it suits my passion and what I like to do, I go for it and take on the challenge, while being humble and acknowledging I need to work hard to make my next role a success. That attitude helped me in my career progression so far.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?

Determine what you want and go for it. That’s something applicable to everyone, not necessarily only for leaders. Be in the driving seat of what you want. More specifically for leaders, my advice is, understand and acknowledge that leadership in itself is a craft. I didn’t realise that too much when I started in my career. You can become very good in any technical function or area of expertise, but leadership is an expertise in itself and you need to play an active role in mastering that domain of leadership. This means you need to learn it, you need to invest in it, you need to talk to people, you need to get your experiences and, most of all, try to actively be aware of what is required to be a leader.

I think that’s the most important advice, because you will see, in the first couple of years in your career, it is more about your proactive mindset, the way you spot opportunities and go for it. But the higher you come within an organization, the less functionally involved you’re going to be. It’s going to be more about strategic discussions and about leading people, and I think on that part we often forget that leadership is not something that is just there, you need to actively develop it.

Who is the most inspiring person in business for you and why?

I split this one in two. For me, first when you talk about business, the type of profiles that inspire me are, for instance, Elon Musk. If you talk about visioning, if you talk about belief, that is what this guy is all about. Jeff Bezos for me is the same type of guy. What makes them special is that they dare to focus on the real long-run over the short-term, especially when being pressed by external factors as a consequence of being on Wall Street and stuff like that. It is very impressive that they are able to hold on to that vision, go for it, go against all current and eventually build a super big business out of it.

That for me is very impressive. It’s like they’re almost a couple of years ahead of us, thinking about not what’s happening now, but living almost five years in the future, so they understand where we need to be as an organization in the future and move towards it. For me, those guys, when you talk about risk profiling, daring to do something, be confident in what you’re able to do, those are very good examples.

On leadership, which is the second element of inspirational people, I find Simon Sinek very inspiring. The way he looks at leadership and just the constant flow of one-liners that that guy shoots, always being very accurate and very true, is very impressive in every element. He said, ‘leadership is not a licence to do less, it’s a responsibility to do more’. It’s all centred around what do I do as a leader, and how do I drive, really creating the purpose in an organization.

Another interesting one for me is the CEO of Alibaba, Jack Ma Yun, I find the guy very impressive. Not often known for it, but he always said that he built his business on the motto of only trying to find smarter people around me and making sure that these people make his job as easy as possible. He is not often known and quoted for that, but that spirit of, if you want to be a good leader, don’t try to be the best, just try to have the best people around you, I find that very inspiring.

We actually encourage our candidates to read Start with Why by Simon Sinek, as it’s an awesome way of looking at things for sure.

While we continue to face the realities of COVID-19, how have you seen your approach to Finance?

It’s a good question and there are two elements. First, from the business-orientated side, which is not only Finance, it stressed the need for agility, which was a journey we were already on in fast moving consumer goods. The changes are picking up, the trends are becoming more influential, so there was already a need to become more agile, and for me, COVID just accelerated it. For instance, in Finance, when talking about practical decisions on where to invest, due to COVID, food service was going to be locked down for the next x months, while retail was going to boom. So we decided to completely take all our investments from food service and push everything on retail. Those are very disruptive changes to make, because obviously you have contracts, you have marketing plans, you have people investing in there, but it shows that if you’re agile, you will profit in the long-run from those decisions. From a business side, this was my key learning and one we still are trying to apply every day, the way you approach innovations, the way you test and learn on your strategy, I think COVID was showing us once more how fast the world can turn 180 degrees and what you need to do as a business.

The second way COVID affected us as a company was through its impact on people. I have not seen something before that was so influential on people’s energy level and mental stability in my life. In the sense that people all of a sudden realised how important it is to have connections and how those connections are a very important part in our day-to-day business, although we never actually talk about it or recognise it in that way. For me, when talking about leadership, it showed the importance once more of being close to your people, making extra effort for them, which goes in very simple terms as just meeting up one-on-one in person, making sure within the team they have the cross-functional check-ins, making sure you have coffee chats with people outside of your own direct lines. Very simple things, but the effort you make in ensuring that people remain connected and the importance you give to relationships among co-workers can have a big impact on someone’s mental health and happiness. This was once more highlighted to me due to COVID.

Thank you to Darren for speaking with our Director - Finance, Hannah Mallia.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.

Thank you for joining me today for an Executive Interview. As an intro, Lauren is currently Head of Education and Training at Squirro, which I believe is one of the most exciting emerging technology companies in today’s market. Would you like to introduce Squirro as a business for our audience, Lauren?

Of course! So, Squirro is a dynamic tech start-up that focuses primarily on the development of AI - artificial intelligence -driven solutions, and when we talk about AI-driven solutions, the core solution that we have at the focus of our product suite is an Insights Engine. Now, this is a term that I don’t think everyone is 100% familiar with, yet! I am convinced that many of us have our own preconceived idea about what it may be, but as a concept and a term per se, it is still relatively new. So, let me clarify that first…

An Insights Engine is a platform that makes key enterprise insights accessible to users when they need it. It combines cognitive search with machine learning capabilities to provide timely data that delivers actionable insights. It is a fundament to what we offer as part of an extensive product suite and our ‘vertical specific’ augmented intelligence solutions. There are a variety of these, namely insights apps, and these work for specific industries with specific use cases. Examples would be sales insights, marketing insights, service insights and risk insights.

Coming from my side as a consultant who is in the BI & Data market all hours of the day, I find Squirro so relevant and the thing that I really like is how much of a focus Squirro puts on the right insights to the right/relevant person, at the right time, which, in the world of data today, is so invaluable and I’d say it’s the biggest conundrum organisations try to solve. Most organisations are still trying to solve where data should belong, and as a cause effect to this, what the right or most relevant data would be depending on what their data-driven objectives are.

As Head of Training and Education, would you mind describing what your typical day-to-day position involves and what excites you most about working for a company like Squirro?

Of course, as the Head of Training and Education, I’m responsible for the conceptual learning design and development of the educational content that we offer to partners and clients; that is my primary responsibility and this comprises of many different tasks, depending on the core educational task in focus. One day, I could be starting the consultancy and conceptualisation of a training program that trains end users on their integrated Squirro solution, and on another I may be developing a social media campaign that invites the industry to understand more about what lies at the heart of our AI-driven solutions.

What I’ve also noticed is that, given our own developmental status as a start-up, there seems to be an organic movement around the need to build up a cross-functional learning culture within our own established parameters. So, even though my responsibility is very much making sure that our partners and clients understand what Squirro does, and that they’re fully equipped to be able to implement our product, I’ve noticed that the more we grow and develop as a company and as a product, there is a hand-in-hand organic growth that comes with also looking at creating a learning culture within.

I think that the pandemic has strongly contributed to this necessity as well, in that, although people are still working together in roles as a collective company, the siloed working patterns have simultaneously pushed us to prominently notice that, as a growing enterprise, there is a noticeable need to educate, communicate and nurture continuous knowledge transfer.

Therefore, I am constantly in touch and collaborating with the knowledge experts at the heart of our company. I’m not technically educated to the extent that they are, so our courses and our training come from the experts, and I collaborate a lot with the teams and work on content expansion with third parties as well.

Wow! Certainly a lot more than one would think goes into Training & Education. There are so many different facets to what you have just mentioned goes into your day-to-day role Lauren, and I can’t even begin to imagine how you split your day up among those various tasks. But, among all of what you have just mentioned, what would you say is the most rewarding or exciting aspect to your role and what you do?

I’d say what excites me most maybe comes from a personal drive that I’ve always tried to ensure is present in my professional career, and this drive is visible at Squirro in my colleagues, in their passion and, in particular, in the passion and drive of the CEO.

I’ve worked in a lot of large organisations, small organisations, both internationally and locally, and upon reflection, I would say that I think we tend to try and seek what we see in ourselves, in others. This professional stimulation consequently sparks a natural sense of excitement and fuel when working.

I am a hard worker, too, and I thrive from being in an environment with likeminded people. I don’t enjoy being in an environment where people don’t want to work or there is a visible resilience to really getting stuck in. And, luckily, it is not like that at Squirro; it’s very much about bringing your passion, making sure that you put in the work and, ultimately, reap the rewards of being able to navigate success together, and that’s what I value! This is mirrored in the supportive encouragement from my colleagues and the open culture.

What also excites me is the technology, or the results of the combination of technologies. As a linguist, I think that the fusion of natural language processing, machine learning and everything that has to do with linguistics really energizes me and spurs me on to learn more about the field.

So, that’s what excites me, but I think the reward itself reverts back to why I started in this field and maybe my own professional journey through learning and education; being able to provide and offer a possibility of empowerment, which learning fundamentally is. Learning is about growth, it’s about control, it’s about responsibility, and it’s being able to create an opportunity for someone to undertake that.

Everything that I do is about providing the possibility for people to train, to learn more and, despite how cliched the expression may sound, knowledge is power, and this power fosters change on various levels. Primarily, it is cognitive development, but it is also an emotional and social one, and we see that again with the importance of technology and the necessity to push for the importance of using AI-driven solutions, as well. I strongly believe that no one ever has regrets about learning something, but they always have regrets about not learning it, so that’s what’s rewarding for me.

I’m also quite creative, and being able to push my own boundaries and think about cognition obviously as a core is stimulating. Is there a difference between how we approach learning in a corporate environment for maybe arts and humanities? And how we approach tech? And can you umbrella everything under the same learning modalities? I think being able to explore that and the interaction patterns nowadays, as well with the whole push of social learning, social media and organic knowledge exchange, that’s a richly rewarding component of my role.

I must say I really buy into a lot of what you have said there in so many different ways. Being from South Africa myself, I have always loved the core of what Nelson Mandela’s beliefs were, in that education is the most powerful tool that can be used to change the world.

I also am so fascinated by how your role/field ties into tech, despite, at a glance, seeming so far away from tech, when it is actually so closely aligned, as you mentioned. Touching on natural language processing and how that ties into linguistics – but, as well, constantly changing as a result of the changing environment and use case for it.  

Yeah, it’s certainly something that is being explored more and more, and I think that’s what makes it challenging but rewarding, at the same time!

Speaking of rewards, Squirro has been up for some awards as well, I believe, and, if I am not mistaken, there’s been three most recently that you’re certainly quite proud of?

Yes, they seem to be having a lucky streak, or maybe it’s just a little bit of recognition for the investment that’s gone into the product over the last few years. It has certainly been a culmination of effort, blood, sweat and tears, for a while.

Let’s start with the biggest award. So, this year, Squirro was recognised as a visionary on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insights Engine, for the first time! Now, this is obviously huge, given all the other players that are listed on the quadrant and many people will assuredly be asking when hearing this, ‘oh, they’re recognised as a visionary, what is a visionary?’ 

Gartner themselves define visionaries as combining their understanding of the Insights Engine market with strength and innovation. So, they say that we are suitable for organisations who are looking to modernise and transform themselves by tackling familiar problems in new ways, and I think this has been proven in the success that we’ve had in building relationships with companies and partners that are really curious about how our AI can be put to work to gather data, search intelligently, deliver analysis, contextualise that analysis and visualise the data that’s been found. Plus, ensuring, as you said at the start of the conversation, that you’re delivering the right insights to the right people to aid their efforts in trying to find opportunities – where 80% of the time, those opportunities are found in completely unused data, whether it be structured or unstructured.

Amazing! That is serious recognition and certainly well deserved. It almost seems like you guys have got the golden key to unlocking organisational data potential, and the beautiful thing about it is that it’s across so many different industries and domains, as well. Second to that is that AI is a field that is very broad, and often a misunderstood field that still has a long way to go before organisations can say, with a degree of certainty, that they know how to use it in all ways possible and beneficial 100% of the time. To have that as your core product and for it to work so well is impressive.

It is, and even if you silo search behaviour and think about that, looking at enterprise search and how you use search on a daily basis - for the majority of end business users, I think only about 3% or 5% are using advanced search. People don’t know how to really find that information, so that’s why it’s so inevitable and almost mandatory that there is this type of technology to be able to provide people with the insights that they need.

Exactly, and in addition to the Gartner award, there was also the Asset Triple A Award as well for Best Digital Collaboration Project, I believe?

Yes, we won that, and a combination of awards. Triple A is an American institution that does global research around companies that display innovation excellence. So, we won the 2021 big innovation AI excellence award in the natural language processing category for Best Digital Collaboration Project, in partnership with Synechron, Standard Chartered Bank and SC Ventures, for our work on client insights projects.

Now, just to tell you a little bit about that, the solution itself combines the vision of Standard Chartered’s global banking team, the business domain knowledge of Synechron and, obviously, Squirro’s Insight Engine technology to be able to deliver frontline sales with created client insights, extracted from both internal, external, unstructured data, to unlock new opportunities.

I can’t tell you how many organisations I speak to on a day-to-day basis that really struggle to align corporate strategy, as well as how to best achieve the KPIs driven from that strategy through the use of insights from data. To many, it still seems a mystery and a mess at the best of times, so I would say it is almost like you guys have showed up at the perfect time!

Time will tell!

Very exciting indeed. The world of emerging technologies and emerging markets is fascinating, but for you, with regard to education and training within this field (which I already feel is so niche, as you and I have discussed on quite a few occasions), why do you feel this area you are working in is so important in today’s emerging tech market? And how do you feel companies should be looking to leverage Education and Training to its full potential in today’s dynamic market?

I think there’s a multitude of answers. I think what we may place prominence on is that AI, machine learning and data are key contributors in an emerging, but ever evolving field. They are not necessarily at the start of an emerging journey, but in some ways, from a knowledge perspective, it could be labelled as being that. There is a presumed and unspoken assumption that those active in these fields, especially those that are thinking about implementing some sort of AI or data-driven approach, is that they have quite a deep-rooted understanding of what these terms encompass, as well as their possible applications and how they should be applying them.

When, in reality, with experience, we’ve seen that this is one of the biggest challenges that comes with selling this type of software and technology, and it’s about supporting the development of a strategy that comes with this ambiguity, and misrepresentations around the terms and their application. It goes back to language once again, and investing in the beauty of these technologies and how you can’t do that without having a semantical understanding of the words themselves and their uses.

It frequently occurs that our delivery team or engineering team has to go in and clarify the difference between AI, machine learning, and what an Insights Engine is and how it can be used. There is an ever-pushing requirement for training and education in general, in the field.

As for the future of education and training? I mean obviously the pandemic has had a huge impact on answering that question, in maybe a way that I would not have answered it a few years ago. I think that Ed Tech is transforming learning and the rapid acceleration of digital transformation in the past year has put Ed Tech in this focus at the very heart of learning.

Technology helped improve content before. I mean, everyone was looking at how technology can be used to improve the content and we’ve been doing that for a good decade, prior to the development and the emergence of the pandemic. Despite that, it didn’t really change the way we consumed the content.

Recent digital innovation and the propelling prominence now of tech is really changing the way that we learn. I mean, you can take it from every level. From teachers who were forced to put that into everyday use when schools were closed, or trainers or corporations who are working with those currently training and needed to educate in a home office format. They were thrown into taking these linear paths that could no longer be implemented in the workplace and asked to make more customisation, provide more blended opportunities, show that there’s social collaboration - because there is not much collaboration going on elsewhere.

Given that, and being asked to do that digitally, students and trainees have become far more empowered. You can almost manage your cognitive load ten times better than you could prior to that. You have the ability to say, ‘okay, I want to step out of that’, ‘I don’t feel comfortable with what I have absorbed’, ‘let’s re-watch that video’, or ‘let’s take part in that webinar or workshop a little bit later because I’ve already done this’. It seems that there is far more empowerment on the side of trainees and learners nowadays because of this digital push.

Do you feel that, although it’s empowering, there are some dangers with this change as well, especially when we think of the social aspect of learning?

Very much so. I mean, you can even go back to the Socrates times of a teacher transmitting preparations and standing at the blackboard, and realise that you can’t replace an in-person experience. Some might argue against it, but I still think that you need that emotional input in a passive way. There is quite a lot of popular courses on Coursera or Future Learn about digital body language, and it is questionable in itself, but I think that you can’t replace physical human interaction and the positives that are married to it. I think there should be a balance; it shouldn’t all be digital.

We’ve had this crazy year that no one ever saw coming, but would be quite happy to see the back of - how do you feel the general workplace will have changed once we finally emerge from this global pandemic?

I think if you had asked me that question three or four weeks ago, I would have given you a different answer, but I’ve read a lot of things quite recently about the trend for so many people being in this momentaneous phase of romanticising the past. The daily drives to the office, the productive face-to-face meetings, stress-free business travel, and I think it’s quite a healthy component of the emotional processing that we need to go through, especially when experiencing a pandemic. I think, because of that, a lot of us will really emerge with a more realistic expectation on how to work and how to balance our workload, and I think that will benefit people that were really unable to do it prior to the pandemic as well.

From the recruitment perspective, it’s certainly also brought around its joyous moments with regards to interviews, as an example. Which has brought me to the question of wanting to ask you what the best or worst interview experience you’ve ever had was?

It is a really interesting question; I can’t say that my interviews have ever been bad. I mean, they’ve all been unique, and I think with every interview you have the opportunity to reflect on what went well, what went badly, or what could have gone better, and as much as interviews are hopefully supposed to be the start of new chapters and larger chapters, I think they’re always the start of mini chapters, as well. Do not get me wrong, it is not like I would like to go and aimlessly do 15 interviews, but I always feel that you do have these really intensive opportunities of reflection that you wouldn’t get at other points of your life.

To answer that question, I’d say that probably my worst one was being let down by my own ability to read people, because I think I’m quite good at reading people and reading how people have maybe responded to something I said; as well as trying to pre-empt the outcome of the situation. There was one interview where I thought that it had gone extremely well and it hadn’t, so I think that that was probably one of the least enjoyable experiences I have had.

You’ve obviously been living in Switzerland for some time now - it’s one of our main markets at EMEA Recruitment - and I just wanted to hear from you on why you would consider Switzerland an ideal place to live?

Again, a good question. I think ideal - it’s the word ideal - as we know, ideal for one person is not necessarily ideal for another, but I think in terms of maybe standard sort of tick boxes, then it would be a flat out yes.

I think that, personally being enveloped in a vibrant city, towering alps and lake-lined horizons each morning you wake up means there’s certainly little to complain about. The thing that I enjoy the most is being surrounded as well by so many different nationalities. I like that you can stand in a queue waiting for your coffee and you can hear five different languages simultaneously, that you can, without any major concerns, send your child to school and they are provided with a good education, an opportunity to have a voice. I certainly would say that, for me personally, it is a very ideal place to live.

The natural beauty to Switzerland maybe does tie into how enjoyable life can be outside of work, and a lot of people have written many books, participated in podcasts, etc. to discuss this thing we all like to call the healthy work-life balance. I was just curious to know, how do you like to relax outside of work and what approach would you say you adopt to achieving this healthy work-life balance?

I think that this one certainly comes with years of experience. I think you learn to acknowledge more and more the importance of trying to have that balance, and it may coordinate itself with certain stages of your life and what you personally place emphasis on. I think that people who are extremely career driven and career focused may be less inclined to be open to encouragement around the importance of finding that balance. And, in this respect, the pandemic has helped a lot of people realize that they need to look at what is important and bring this balance into their life.

Personally, I have experienced the positive and negative of maybe spending too much time or too much focus on work and then missing out on certain elements that maybe I should have dedicated a little bit more time to, at that particular point. However, it’s always that double-edged sword of maybe it was supposed to be like that at that time to go to the next step, so I think it’s about trying to look at the momentary and consciously assess what should be important at this stage.

And, given that I do have a family and a small daughter, I try to remain with that focus and invest my time wholeheartedly at work when I am at work, and then try to ensure that, out of work, I can give her the attention that she requires and deserves, obviously.

I think that’s where most people, particularly early on in their career for the most part, struggle to find that balance. When you are in the formative years of your career, it is difficult to make the distinction of work is work and when you are outside of work, it’s time to do the things for you, as well as the surrounding people in your life that depend on you.

I think sometimes some people have learnt the hard way. I speak to a lot of senior role models who have often come out with regrets about not having done it differently. It’s okay if one person vocalises this, or if it’s two people, but if you have multiple voices that are expressing the same kind of concern or narrative around trying to place the focus on knowing what’s important, then I think it’s only right that you start looking at doing that for yourself.

Out of interest, do you have any books, blogs, podcasts that you’re currently busy working through that are really interesting and you’d like to mention, and perhaps why?

I think nowadays there’s a lot of pressure on people to read blogs and listen to podcasts. I like music, I love music! I like to seek a lot of comfort in lyrics and I used to read a lot of poetry as an undergrad; I think it comes with the territory of studying languages. But as I got older, I started to favour musical expression more.

I certainly like to read though, don’t misunderstand me. I try to read every day at least a little just to expand my own mind and, when I do, I like to read about countries and the foreign. At present, I’m reading AI Superpowers, China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order and also the other book that I sort of chop and change between is The Gendered Brain; this one’s a new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain. Talking about the hysteria around women and women’s brains, stereotypes, ‘whack a mole’ theories.

What sort of music do you like listening to?

My taste is quite eclectic, it goes from rock, to dance, to classical - a wide spectrum.

If there was one piece of advice you could offer your younger self in your career, what would it be?

I think this is the hardest question. I’m a huge believer in trying to embrace what’s given and what you have to strive for, but I think that if it came down to it, it may be advising myself to choose the right role model. Try to focus on the bigger picture, and really give yourself the opportunity and chance to network more, to find that right role model, to grow more, to learn more from the right people.

Thank you to Lauren for speaking to us.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.