My Year at Skills Alliance

Yesterday officially marked my one-year anniversary as an employee of Skills Alliance. With 100% sincerity I can report that this has been the best year of my life professionally as well as one of the best years of my life overall.

After a relatively rocky start to my career, comprising two incomplete traineeships, the first at a small boutique agency and the second at the largest human resources corporation in the world, I wasn't ready to give up but also understood that my third go needed to work out.

Over 3 months of using the skills I'd learned from my two recruitment experiences to enhance my own job search, interviewing at almost every agency in the Zurich area, I'd realized that the only way I was going to find a true fit was to be completely transparent about my story so far.

Enter Irina Bouras, Assoc Dir Europe. From our first conversation over the phone forward, I was plain and simple about my successes and failures thus far. Marketing oneself so transparently alleviates the pressure that results from trying to cover or put spin on the less attractive events of one's track record, allowing one to really sell one's positive traits in a more relaxed manner.

Long-story-short, despite not necessarily being keen on taking on any new headcount at the time, Thomas Tsangaras, Dir Europe, agreed with Irina to take me on as an intern. "Third time's the charm", Irina assured me. "Yes,", I replied, "but 'Three strikes and you're out'".

At the start of my internship, it went without question that I would be training to become a 360° consultant. As time went on, though, it soon became clear that my strengths and potential contribution to the business seemed to lie more at the back-end of daily affairs and be predominantly tech-oriented by nature. This resulted in the co-creation of my role in the team.

On top of finding solutions to support the team, I was also soon noticed for my exceptional ability to consolidate information from the internet in a neat and usable manner in spreadsheets, always striving to go steps further in terms of functionality and presentation.

As such, my internship resulted in my becoming Skills Alliance's first Intelligence Specialist and the parallel development of a new service which we've been providing clients and I've been responsible for developing. We've even hired a new intern to support me on this, which has resulted in my first management-like experience and marked the beginning of what could ultimately evolve into my own team.

An immense amount of work lies ahead of me, if I'm to realize the position within Skills which I aspire to obtain, but if anything is certain, it's that I wouldn't have achieved what I have so far without the open-mindedness and progressive attitudes of Thomas and Irina.