5 years of struggle and success

I had no idea where I was going. I just knew that I needed to be part of this team.

Five years ago, one night, after I put my kids to bed and worked very late on some report, I saw a Lemax job ad and applied.

I was not planning it, and I didn't have a clear career goal in front of myself; it happened somehow spontaneously and without too much analysis (awkward for me:-).

I had no idea who those people in Lemax were.

I had never heard of a company before, and even the job ad for the HR generalist role was on the lower level of quality and information that I would expect (sorry guys;).

But, something was intriguing about their story, being small, unknown, and with ambitious goals.

So, I applied.

One interview led to another, then to a business case, and then to an offer! What now??

It sounded challenging and exciting. From my perspective, I had the same chances for failure as for success.

Testing my boundaries was luckily stronger than the safety net I like to have, so I decided to join Lemax!

And when I announced to my network that I am going from the corporate world to a small, overall unknown Croatian IT company, with only 19 employees, I got many questions and comments like: Are you crazy? From who will you learn? The small private company instead of a ‘safe’ corporation? Who are they? Don't do it...etc…

One month after joining Lemax, I knew I made the right decision.

In September I celebrated five years in Lemax!?

Lemax tested my boundaries, gave me a chance to meet so many interesting people, and I developed much more than I could imagine.

And I have a feeling that I am just at the beginning of a learning curve.?

These five years were full of experiences, unplanned situations, struggles, hard work, fun time, learnings, successes, and failures.

So, to celebrate these five years, I decided to give myself the same assignment we usually give to candidates in recruiting processes (usually for managerial roles).

The assignment is to present key learnings, successes, and failures from previous experiences.

Often we tend to rush forward without taking enough time to look back and reflect.?

With this, I am somehow forcing myself to stop and wrap up a significant period of my professional life.

In the next five days, I will share five short articles about my journey at Lemax:

1. Why were these five years a struggle for me?
2. What I want to remember forever, or why was it successful ?
3. Being part of a growing software company, especially as the first HR person - my major learnings
4. What I would do differently - my mistakes
5. Growth insights - my key organizational growth findings - from 20 to 100 employees

Stay tuned??

Jasmina