Mastering a career start, daring to change careers, being open to change: Your career path doesn’t have to fit a template. In this series, we introduce you to three Kookus and ask them about their beginnings, new directions they have taken and tips for shaping their careers.
We spoke to Josi during her time as a project and team leader at Kooku about her remote working life. Almost three years later, she has not only left Bali, but has also decided to make a career change: While her team has grown, she has stepped down from her recruiting and project management duties and is now responsible for the company’s strategic and operational sales measures as Head of Growth and Success. Here she tells us how this career change came about, where she sees parallels to her previous job and what she would do differently today.
Did you have a specific career in mind after leaving school?
Originally, I wanted to go in the direction of hotel, service or event management. At the time, I considered various degree courses, each of which combined a tourism element with a business management element. After leaving school, I took a year off and tried out various jobs in the hospitality industry alongside an internship in a hotel to take a closer look at the opportunities in this area.
In the end, you chose a different degree course. How did this decision come about?
Exactly. In the end, I studied business psychology at Bachelor’s and Master’s level. After my internship at the hotel, I realized that it would make more sense for me personally to complete an apprenticeship and then work my way up within a company. However, I always wanted to go to university, so I reoriented myself. That’s how I became aware of business psychology: a combination of business administration and psychology. There were also various specializations, such as marketing or human resources. I didn’t have any specific career aspirations at the time. My initial intention was more to have a broad base.
In the course of your Master’s degree, you will have decided on one of the specializations on offer.
Yes, I chose to focus on work and organizational psychology. For example, we dealt with the topics of team and leadership development, change management – generally human processes within a company or business environment. My Master’s course had a scientific focus, so another focus was on investigating various issues on a statistical basis and drawing conclusions from specific hypotheses.
Which modules in your Master’s degree did you particularly like? Has a career aspiration developed as a result?
During my studies, I also studied subjects that can be categorized in the larger field of personnel selection, such as aptitude diagnostics. There we dealt with various test methods, such as assessment centers or other personality tests that are used in personnel selection and development. I found that super exciting! I then used the internship time during my Master’s degree to take a closer look at the area of personnel development. Then I realized: HR development is tedious and difficult to measure; it’s not possible to see success very quickly. What drives me personally is receiving continuous feedback and seeing the results of my work. That’s how I came to recruitment. The work involves a constant feedback loop and is less long-term and conceptually oriented. I enjoy this more than purely strategic activities.
What did you do after your Master’s degree?
After my Master’s degree, I started working in recruitment at a personnel consultancy. That was classic headhunting. I didn’t have any practical experience in recruiting at the time, but fortunately it was easier to get into this field without professional experience than, for example, in personnel development. I then worked there for five months before moving to the recruiting department at Deutsche Bahn. I really liked recruiting itself, but not so much the working methods in HR consulting.
What was it that you wanted to change?
The environment in the HR consultancy was very performance-oriented, there were very clearly defined daily targets, external control and pressure were correspondingly high. The daily structure was very precisely defined, which meant that I personally lacked the freedom to develop and contribute my own ideas. I also didn’t feel comfortable with the way I worked. That is the reason why I initially opted for a job in in-house recruiting: At Deutsche Bahn, I ended up in trainee and student recruiting, where we planned and carried out assessment centers, gave presentations at schools and attended job fairs, for example. In addition, the classic pre-selection for various positions and conducting initial interviews were also on the agenda. I was there for two years and I really enjoyed it.
Which station followed?
After my time at Deutsche Bahn, I took some time out and went traveling. In the meantime, I started freelance recruiting, again using the headhunting/provision model, but this time self-organized and self-directed. At the time, I already wanted to be able to work from abroad and then tried my luck on my own, so to speak, because at that time, which was 2018, I didn’t really see any way to do this in a permanent position. Until I came across Kooku.
Perhaps you could give us an interim summary: After starting your career and your first years in recruiting, what made you want to continue on this path?
Recruiting can be very different. However, one common denominator of the different stations that I always really enjoyed was the variety. The opportunity to get to know many different job profiles and career paths. I’m repeating myself, but a very big factor for me was and is also seeing the results of my work relatively quickly and receiving feedback. The easy measurability, which goes hand in hand with positive feelings in the event of success. The work in recruiting is varied, dynamic, fast-paced and never boring.
After your return from abroad, you joined Kooku.
Exactly, I started as a recruiter at Kooku and shortly afterwards I became a senior recruiter. We work for small and medium-sized companies as well as large corporations in interim recruiting and recruitment process outsourcing. As part of my first job at Kooku, I worked on various client projects and took on operational recruiting tasks, direct searches, conducting interviews and client communication. In some cases, I also worked as an interim recruiter at various companies on site and temporarily supported their recruiting departments for three to six months. This allowed me to get to know completely new areas and gain a lot of knowledge. At the same time, I then started to build up my own team relatively quickly and to develop myself further in the area of team leadership, to take on new tasks in project management and to gradually outsource the operational recruiting tasks. My role as project manager then mainly involved quality management, guiding and strategy. A first professional reorientation: the content of my work was changing at this time, new tasks were added and replaced old ones, at least in part.
You are now Head of Growth and Success. How did this professional reorientation come about?
During the coronavirus lockdown in 2020, many of our customers stopped recruiting, which ultimately meant that I no longer had any projects. As a result, I thought about how I could help the company and then started to support our Managing Director with sales measures, i.e. making cold calls or contacting customers. When the project business started up again a few months later, I continued and expanded my sales tasks in parallel, for example I also familiarized myself with contract processes. In 2021, Kooku grew more and more and, as a result, so did the company’s need for customer projects. In the end, my role was split into three parts: In addition to my work on customer projects and my duties as a team leader, I dedicated 20 to 30% of my time to the sales area. At the beginning of last year, we decided to create new positions, i.e. a sales and account management function and a people function. As I had already successfully held the sales position for a year and a half at that point, the logical next step for me was to make a complete change and thus a definitive professional reorientation.
What made you decide to focus entirely on the sales area?
I enjoyed working in Sales more and more, especially the direct customer contact. I now work 100% in an internal function and support my team at the same time. I also continue to manage projects in my role as Account Manager, not just in the acquisition process. Otherwise, Sales and Recruiting are very similar: fast-paced and dynamic. I am very flexible in my work and enjoy developing the company and constantly learning new things.
Which skills that you have acquired or deepened in your previous career are now helpful for you in Sales?
Be quick! Answer quickly, react quickly, implement things quickly, find solutions quickly. This is important in both recruiting and sales. If you are too slow, you will lose. Flexibility is also important. Keeping an eye on the big picture, thinking about alternatives, being able to present everything that is or could be relevant: be it services for customers or job opportunities for candidates. Listen actively and well. What do customers or candidates want, what motivates them? I think that’s what I learned during my studies. A good understanding of numbers is also fundamental. I am constantly dealing with figures, for example in the form of turnover and hourly capacities.
What factors made your professional reorientation easier or more difficult at the time?
It was very positive that I slowly grew into the new tasks and was able to decide along the way whether I liked and suited them or not. What I could have done better: I think I could have taken more time for professional training at the beginning. I’m still learning every day. Especially now that I’m passing on knowledge to others, I realize how immensely important a solid foundation is. I now also have external advice to help me with this.
How can companies support career changers?
At Kooku, we offer a very comprehensive, well-structured onboarding program that starts with various training courses to teach the most important basics of the job. In addition, every new employee is assigned an onboarding buddy. This is a person who is not also the team leader and who can be approached with confidence in the event of questions or uncertainties. Starting straight away is great. I think the combination of theory and practice is a sensible concept and supports professional reorientation.
How can companies benefit from career changers?
I think that career changers bring interesting perspectives from other jobs. New ways of looking at things that can lead to new solutions and strategies or refreshing new insights that you wouldn’t necessarily have considered.
Are you looking for a career change, but don’t quite know where to start? Our career counseling experts will help you take the first step.
