#1 What were the reasons for you to make a big career change?

I started my career in the banking industry, and my journey was very smooth. I was the youngest manager back then and won the Best Employee and Best Change Ambassador Awards throughout the years. Since then, there have been many jobs offered to me by many companies.

Being in the banking industry for eight years, I felt myself being trapped in my comfort zone at that time. I’m the kind of person who loves challenges, and I found that the start-up company’s fast-growing pace is the culture I was looking for. Therefore, I decided to take up a digital marketing course at RevoU and was hoping that I could step into the tech world. I knew that was a brave decision, but I would like to give it a try since I was still young.

I was very determined to be one of the best students, and finally, I achieved it. Then I got a part-time role of team leader at RevoU, to assist the next batch of digital marketing students. Again, although it was a part-time role, I worked my best to be the best team leader, until I got the RevoU permanent job offer as a Product Manager.

Thanks to my competitive character, within a year, I had proved myself and was promoted to Senior Program Manager, responsible for RevoU’s digital marketing, tech-sales, advanced social media, advanced SEO, data analytics, and product management full-stack programs.

I would say that my daily working life is very dynamic, and I love it. We are in the remote working system now, so I need to make sure people management and performance management are in place, especially since we all have to work independently now. We must make sure we have good time management and know how to prioritise work.

I always tell my team to develop a creative mindset. “Creative” to most people are always related to design or visuals, but for me, creativity could be how we do data processing, how we solve a problem or make copywriting as well as strategic thinking. As in this ever-changing digital world, we must be versatile enough to explore and learn new things.

In short, a can-do attitude and high initiative are very important to me as we have to sharpen our skills consistently to be competitive in this fast-growing tech world.

For me, the challenge is that the working culture from corporate banking to tech start-up is different. When I worked in a big corporation, there were many SOPs to follow. For instance, when I want to develop a new idea, I need to prepare a proposal first, with analytical data to support it. Then it will be followed by a long process of evaluations and approval from different departments. 

Whereas this EdTech start-up is very dynamic and flexible. I can easily convey my ideas to the management, and if it meets the budget, I can just execute it. When issues occur, everyone will look for solutions together and solve the problems. So, we all have to develop the “just-do-it” mindset.

Another initial challenge to me is this “paperless” world. In the banking industry, the majority is still paper-based, and all our proposals or working documents need to be printed out and go through 14 aspects of completeness checking. I’ve been used to that way for the past eight years, so when I first joined the start-up and worked remotely, everything was so different. I felt so amazed that we just have to use communication platforms, apps or cloud-based shared access software for idea sharing and work in progress updates, the approval process is much easier and faster.

So for me, all these challenges became a good learning curve as I experienced the best of both worlds now.

I regret that I’m not getting out of my comfort zone quickly. It was my mistake for taking so long to decide to switch my career path. 

I remembered when I wanted to move to the tech industry back then, there was a job offer that I took up. I thought it would be the place for me to try new things and explore the tech field. But, after almost a year, I felt that I haven’t moved on from my comfort zone. So, this moment strengthened my will to move to a start-up. I even decided to lower my position or salary, it was a tough decision, but that was the only way.

Another regret of mine is not having a mentor at the beginning of my start-up career. I always feel that a mentor will make my career journey easier. And I’m hoping one day I can be a mentor to others as well.

Honestly, I’m an ambitious person and I love challenges. Being in the tech industry, there are always new challenges that I have to face every day, but I love it because it helps me to grow and develop my skill.

Apart from that, the tech industry has never been static, the pace of change is very fast. Be it new technology or new tools, we are first hand to know and always get the up-to-date technology news and knowledge. I would say that it seems like we are making “new friends” every day.

1. Be determined in your life!
2. Define your career journey, create concrete planning and set the highest target.
3. Find the right mentor! And I’m more than happy to help you.
4. Learn, learn, and learn.
5. Get out of your comfort zone without hesitation.
6. And always give above-average efforts in every single thing you do.