Career series (1)- Digging deep
Journalling my HR journey.
Prelude: Exactly a month ago, I published a post that sort of impacted the trajectory of how my year has been so far. It was a summary of how my 2023 went and I recieved a lot of comments, questions, feedback, and encouraging words that has kept me going.
If you read the post, you’d realise I’d mentioned that I was job-searching and I was going to start applying for roles in January.
Well, tbvh, I didn’t apply to a lot of roles (or maybe I did and didn’t keep track), but I have had some really engaging interviews with some reputable companies. It is the first time I am doing this, the first time I am searching for a job and during these interviews, I noticed something unique.
As I answered questions, gave scenarios and talk about the amazingly brilliant HR works I have done, I realised that I do not have a summarised, documented piece of my career journey so far.
I have a bit of me scattered here and there (on LinkedIn, on different blogs and on my youtube channel). This is why I am starting this series, to journal my HR journey so far, share some lessons I learnt and hopefully come back to read it in nearest future and relive the expereince.
It’s going to be in three-part covering the three major organisations I have worked at(read praticed HR at) , and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Intro:
It is important that I highlight that I did not start my career in HR and GE wasn’t my first place of work. I started work (a day after graduation) with a company named Taxaide Professional Services as a Tax intern, then became a Tax Trainee before moving to General Electric. It is also noteworthy that I volunteered with an amazing community called NaijaStartUps owned by a wonder-woman named Aramide Abe as a Recruitment Assistant and I picked up my first set of HR skills in this volunteer role. Having established that, let’s dive in.
General Electric: Digging deep.
There are two kind of people; those who know GE and those who don’t. When I joined GE, it was how I measured people. When people ask me where I worked, and I say GE or General Electric, there are two kind of responses; those who say-
“Erm, who are they and what do they do” and those who go
OMG! That’s huge! How did you get in, you are a big boy o”
Of course, I was a big boy, I worked at GE, earned in the upper echelon, strolled into AXA Mansard place like I was a consultant, and ate the most sumptous lunch every Friday. I was living the life (even though I jumped danfo from iyana-ipaja to VI everyday, got home at 11pm and then wake up 4 am the next day), but who cares, in Lagos, packaging sells, and I knew how to package myself.
Before we go far, let me tell you how I got into GE. Remember I said I worked at Taxaide professional services? Well, I was a Tax Trainee managing Personal Income tax and Payroll Management. The organisation had just launched an app named Tbook that helped automate payroll processes, this meant I was continously interacting with HR managers, getting feedback from their experience, reconciling numbers etc. (It was at this point that I was reassured about my desire to pursue a career in HR), thus when I was going for my NYSC, I I told my career stakeholders (Hadassah and DD), that I was looking for HR roles. Infact I interviewed with Unilever twice, got the role once but didn’t accept it because the pay was smaller than what I was currently earning (I have always been choosy ehn), I also interviewed with Softcom and one or two other companies, until GE knocked.
The one who likes to work:
There is a saying in the corporate world that the reward for good work is more work; while it might sound controversial, I think it’s a mantra you have to accept at the beginning of your career because it’s the reality. When I joined GE, I didn’t join the HR dept but I made it known to the HR Manager that onboarded me that I wanted to do HR. I also proactively organised One on One sessions with the HR team in Nigeria, sharing my journey, my story and why I am sure that HR is what I want to do, and at the end , I often asked that they share or pawn off any tasks they think I could do that won’t breach any confidentiality. GE had a system that allowed you take bubble assignments with other departments of your choice. My time would come few months after.
I love talking about my first HR bubble assignment as it highlights the importance of personal branding, showing your work and letting people know what you want. My first HR task at GE was to manage the end-to-end comms of a Company-wide (and Nation-wide) Employee Engagement.
The ask was simple (in retrospect, it was not so simple), to create exciting comms (written, visuals, email comms, etc), that stirred enough anticipation for everyone (about a 100+ employees) to look forward to attending this 3-day engagement. My delivery was excellent.
I got this assignment because people mentioned my name; people said I wrote well on LinkedIn and I had continously indicated my keen interest in taking up HR assignments.
The event was immaculate, we (myself and other colleagues who got pulled into the project) delivered a flawless event and the whole HR team was super-delighted afterwards. We were even taken to a celebratory dinner and we all got an impact award (there is another story about this, but let’s keep reading). I christened the event Chat and Palley (a name the HR team will use for a very long time) and we recorded a 96% attendance rate, the highest the HR team had recorded in a while.
Everyone knew my name, everyone in the Lagos office knew there was a “Faith” who worked with the HR team. Trust me, in the corporate world, this is major, it is important that people know you, what you have done and what you can do.
This was my open door to HR, to an array of opportunities.
Building roots:
The thing about opportunities like this is how pivotal they could be to your trajectory; Malcolm Gladwell calls it tipping point. After Chat and Palley, everyone wanted to meet me, interact with me and of course , members of the HR team began to trust me with HR assignments that werent confidential. I also worked with really kind-hearted people and they were quick to give me credits (where due) for the good work done. Because GE was a multinational , it meant that people in Ghana, and Kenya and other countries knew my name. I started exploring these opportunities by asking for One-on-Ones with HR managers outside Nigeria, sharing my interests, progress on the HR tasks I worked on, and my desire to build an amazing career in HR and other lofty HR dreams I had and as you can guess, the response was giving me more HR tasks and projects to work on.
In my language, we’d say omo wa se, ori ise, which loosely translates to, the one who asked for work has found more than enough work to do. That was my case, I was doing a lot of projects, from working on a Performance Management project, to co-building a balance scorecard for a regional business, and collaborating on building a Learning and Development program for Nigerian employees.
My next biggest task was spearheading the planning and execution of a regional event. We were having executives visiting Nigeria from everywhere in the world and it was a 3-day event. (GE must have something for 3-day events). To say I was overwhelmed was mild. Here was I, an early starter sending emails to Business Leaders in the US, communicating with HR Business partners in Kenya and Ghana, managing the itineary, of Senior Sales and Commercial leaders. It was the first time I would hear people speak a lot of languages in the same space at different point in time.
There were occasions where people will start a conversation in English , then switch to French (because a Francophone speaker and joined), then they all switch to Portuguese (because a Lusophone speaker) had joined, then they all come back to English because there is a Brit or American. It made me realise how deficient and lackadaisical Nigeria (as a system) was when it comes to foreign Languages. There is absolutely no reason why French shouldn’t be integrated into our learning curriculum.
I remembered on the first day, an HRBP asked me if I was fine because I was flustered;. After that interaction, I went to the toilet, looked at the mirror, told myself, black don’t crack three times, alongside some other motivation words and came out with a brilliant smile while managing 57 simultaneous interactions. As you can imagine, it was another successful event, and at this point, I had fully integrated into the HR team.
After this event, I went on an unofficial rotation with different departments; from People Operations and Immigration, to Talent Acquisition, to Learning and Development, and Compensations and Benefits. Infact, at some point, I was working with four different HR Business Partners across different countries , executing simultaneous projects, building capacity and making great impact while at it.
Major lessons I learnt.
1. Do not be shy about what you want: I remembered telling a friend very recently that I missed the unabashed passion I had when I was just starting out my career. Do not be shy to ask for what you want (of course, ask rationally and sensibly) but I have seen people get the most random (and almost impossible) things just because they asked. Nobody really does care about you, until you make them see reason why they should care.
2. Build your career capital: It is very important that you amass what Cal Newport calls Career Capital. Career Capital comes from doing good work consistently, and showing your work. When people feel like they can trust you with little, they give you more to do, that’s how you stretch., that’s how you grow.
3. You need to trust yourself first, before other trusts you: This sounds like a motivational speech but it isn’t (even if it is, you are sha reading). To be honest, you need to take a bet on yourself first before others take a bet on you. I remembered that while I was doing multiple HR projects for different HRs, I couldn’t do a lot of things my colleagues did. I couldn’t see movies, or go to lunch or stab CDS (during my NYSC) like my colleagues because we didn’t have the same need, desire or goals, and I knew i had to trust myself, and continously bet on myself if I want others to bet on me.
4. There is something you can do, something unique to you; maximise it: For me, it was writing. I could do anything that had to do with writing, I also loved the stage and I was often asked to anchor events, be an emergency Emcee or coordinate small gatherings like birthdays, anniversaries, departure of an employees , etc. This made me court the spotlight, and let people, a lot of people know me.
5. Show your work: Remember the impact award incident? Well, a lot of things happened that I can’t share but I almost missed out on the award because my manager ( who was in the United States around that period) had said I wasn’t doing a lot of work, or she didn’t think I was doing a lot of work to merit an impact award. It was my HRs in Nigeria that spoke for me, defended me, and ensured I got the award (even though the price was slashed). The summary is that, it is important that you have people speaking for you in rooms that matters, and it is important that you show these people why they should speak for you. I heard or read from Carla Harris that in US, people actually walk up to senior colleagues, asking them to be their sponsors, and show them reasons why; I haven’t done that before, but I know it is very important that you show your work, and that you show it to people that matters.
As I often say, this is 2024 , it is the dilligent man that the king sees or hears about that stands before the king.
I could keep writing but I have to stop now, so that this doesn’t become another unending essay.
In the next part, I shall talk about a place I called home, until home became the mouth of a shark.
Till then, please read, share, highlight and subscribe.
All my love.
EF.
