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Work Experience- Blog 3

Hello readers!

As I have progressed through my work term, I have had the opportunity be a part of meetings with senior management. With an increasing interaction with company’s Vice Presidents and Directors, I have been thinking of interesting questions that I could the senior leadership to understand the direction the company is headed in.

My first question to anyone in the Senior Leadership team would be to ask about the initiatives the company has taken to increase its outreach in Western-Canada?

This is because Reliance Home Comfort has significant presence within Ontario and Eastern provinces, however it is growing into the western market and the management is trying to build a brand name in British Columbia and Alberta. Therefore, I think it would be interesting to know what the management has planned in order to build a brand name in the western provinces.

Secondly, I would be interested in talking to Chief Technology Officer who along with his team is leading the company’s digital transformation and migration to better systems. This question in extremely relevant to Reliance since the company is in its growth phase and is currently evolving which means investing in and improving its technological capabilities. My follow up question here would be, how the current job roles would change with the new technology.

My third and final question would be to understand how the company’s business is being impacted due to COVID and the initiatives senior management has taken to grow the business in the current economic climate while ensuring the safety of its employees. In my few months at Reliance I have seen various updates from the senior management team about COVID and the emphasis on employee safety. Hence, I am sure this is a regular topic of discussion in management meetings. From this question I also hope to learn how leaders tackle and navigate unique challenges like a global pandemic.

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Work Experience- Blog 2

Hello Readers

This is my second update on my work experience. 

I am glad to report that my experience at Reliance so far has been challenging yet enjoyable at the same time. I have settled into the role, I have made constant efforts to work more effectively with my team members and to improve processes as we go along.

It has been challenging to start fresh in a role during COVID where almost all of my team members are working remotely from home. Initially it was challenging to have effective communication with not only my line manager but also other departments that I consistently coordinate with. In order improve communication, I proposed a weekly online meeting with my manager where I discuss any pending issues and credit decisions that I have taken during that week. Moreover, I have also scheduled meetings with the Sales team in order to make sure we are on the same page. Having regular virtual meeting during the last 2 weeks has definitely improved communication between me and my team members and allowed us to work more effectively.

I also worked on an internal application tracker so my manager and I are better able to monitor the progress of credit applications that come our way. Through this tracker, we are able to capture reoccurring issues that we face in our process and escalate these to the senior management. This has also allowed us to identify some flaws in our current processes, which in turn has made us work towards making valuable improvements.

For both these improvements, I have received extremely positive feedback from my line manager who has recognized my hard work and appreciates my input. I am glad that I am working in a cohesive environment, where my work and insights are valued and I am given the opportunity to bring my ideas to light.

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Blog 1- Work Experience

Hello Readers!

Today marks the end of my first month at Reliance Home Comfort. I have been lucky enough to secure a job at this ever-evolving company as a Credit Risk Analyst.

Reliance is nationwide provider of Heating, Ventilation and Heating (HVAC) equipment with a team of over 2000 employees across Canada. Their Head-office is located at North York Toronto (which is where I am based) and they have smaller regional offices across the country. Each of the regional teams have sales and technical staff who go door to door generating leads and providing HVAC solutions to their customers. Given the extreme weather here in Canada, Reliance’s role is extremely important in making sure that their customers are warm and comfortable during winters and cool and fresh during summers.

My role as a Credit Risk Analyst at Reliance is divided into two main functions. First half of my job is to audit the paperwork that the sales staff obtain and making sure that the agreements and approvals are all in place prior to scheduling an install for an equipment. The second half of my job is to carry out due diligence on external dealers who are signing up to represent Reliance in their areas. If authorized, these dealers can offer Reliance’s equipment and financing solutions to their customers. If these dealers are fraudulent businesses, Reliance runs not only runs a financial risk but also a reputational risk. Hence, in my role I evaluate these businesses and approve or reject them based on my findings.

Now that I have explained what Reliance is and what I do there, lets talk about a challenge this business is facing. The company has grown multiple folds in the last 5 years, both in the revenue it has generated and in terms of the number of employees. The business is focused on growing its reach to the most remote of areas in Canada (especially in the western provinces). However, while on-boarding sales personnel and external dealers from across the country, it is often difficult to train them in making sure they abide by the company policy and stick to procedures outlined without cutting corners to meet their targets. In a competitive environment, it is often difficult to maintain a healthy balance between risk and growth. Having identified this issue, the leadership at Reliance is continuously investing in training, safety and regular audits in order to minimize the risk associated with business expansion.

It is an exciting time to have joined Reliance since the business is growing and I get to play an important role in making sure that it grows safely.

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Networking

I moved to Canada in January of this year (almost 8 months ago) with the hope of finding a place I can call home. You see, in the last 20 years of my life I have lived in 4 different countries i.e. Pakistan (my birth place), United Arab Emirates (where I went to school and lived most of my life), Malaysia (where I went to University) and finally Canada. Having lived in these 4 very culturally diverse countries has allowed me to work with people from around the world and has helped me expand my professional network beyond geographical boundaries. I take pride in the fact that I have friends and colleagues from around the world and I believe is my biggest professional strength.

What I have learnt along the way is that at the end of the day, your career’s trajectory is largely based on people you chose to surround yourself with, those you connect with, the ones who mentor you and whose experiences you learn from. In short, the key to a successful career is NETWORKING.

This is was the primary reason for me enrolling into a postgraduate program at George Brown College (GBC). I knew that with a limited professional network in Toronto, it would be extremely difficult to jump start my career in a new city. Hence, I carried out an extensive research on which of the colleges in GTA had the best relations with employers and this eventually led me to GBC. This idea of ‘networking’ was reinforced at GBC from the day of orientation itself. I remember listening to one of the speakers on my first day who asked us to look around and appreciate the fact that these group of students are going to be our core network as we progress in our career.

While we began to explore the various areas and applications of marketing in today’s industry at GBC, we were constantly reminded by mentors such as Michelle Kanfer and Nancy Spotton to build out network and connect with people from our target industry. During the first semester, Nancy spent a considerable amount of time on making sure our Linkedin profiles communicated the right message to future employers and invited various guest speakers and encouraged us to connect with them.

Similarly, our marketing seminar course in the second semester was solely focused on the idea of networking and learning from the journeys and paths other successful marketers have taken. Each one of these speakers shared their unique experiences and journeys that have led them to success and shared their advice based on their experiences so far.

The speaker whose talk I could connect with the most was Brian Walsh. This was primarily because his words really encouraged me to re-think the idea of a customer’s journey and experiences. This resonated with me on a personal level since the science behind understanding a customer’s phycology and decision making is what pushed me to take up this course in the first place. Like most of the other speakers, Brian was kind enough to connect on Linkedin with me. In addition to this, I also connected with GBC alumni Jordan Veenstra, Asta Schouten and Natasha Burtenshaw-deVries who were all very relatable.

Leveraging the GBC network and the learning from the classroom, I took a few steps in my journey to networking here in Toronto:

- Narrowed down the industries and kind of jobs that I would be most interested in.

- Identified key individuals that were key players in such departments and organisations.

- Found out the common interests, connections and familiarity in background with these individuals.

- Drafted a personalized message concisely asking for what I was hoping for while giving a brief background about myself.

- Sending the message to the person using Linkedin Premium, which I identified as the best resource.

It is pertinent to mention that my in-person networking opportunities were very limited during the last 6 months due to the novelty COVID-19 pandemic due to which most of the networking events that I would have hoped to join were cancelled. However, during my first semester I attended 2 of the events organised by GBC career’s team hosting TD and CIBC’s recruitment teams. These events also proved to be very useful most of my professional background in commercial banking. The recruiters answered a lot of my questions relating to the hiring process in Canada’s banking industry and I was able to share my resume and connect with these recruiters on Linkedin.

As I mentioned earlier, due to limited in-person networking opportunities, Linkedin and Indeed proved to be my best friends in my efforts towards getting hired during a global pandemic. Surprisingly, I think I used more of these job search engines than Facebook or Instagram during the last 2 months. Here are some of the stats relating to my recent job search:

- I applied to 106 jobs in the last 3 months (I tailored my resume for most of these jobs).

- I had interviewed for 6 different jobs and 4 recruiter interviews.

- I got rejection from 2 of the jobs that I interviewed for, 3 of them are pending or on hold thanks to COVID.

- Here is the interesting part, after all the efforts, I am glad to announce that I GOT GREAT JOB OFFER last week for the role of an Credit Risk Analyst at a local HVAC company.

Having gone through 3 rounds of interview and a strenuous job hunt, everything seemed to have paid off when I received that offer letter. While I heard about this particular job opportunity through Indeed, I leveraged the GBC network to reach out to one of the college’s alumni who had worked in the company to inquire about the work culture which helped me make my decision on accepting this offer.

So here are my learnings from my experience so far.

- Persistence is the key. I had less than 6% success in getting call backs while applying in a job market that was severely affect by a global pandemic. There were days where I lost all hope but then again, I no other option but to keep applying, which at one point became second nature.

- Network, Network, Network and don’t be shy in doing so. It takes a while to lose the initial hesitancy in asking complete strangers for a favor or their time but its absolutely required.

- Last but not the least, manage your time well. Applying for jobs is a full time job itself. Managing your routine well is the only way to make sure that you make enough time to put in meaningful applications for jobs you are interested in.

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Understanding your customer’s journey

I remember getting introduced to the concept of journey mapping during my first semester in the CRM fundamentals class. The idea behind journey mapping is simply to understand every step of a customer goes through from the time of realizing the need for a product/service, all the way to post-purchase experience. At its core, journey mapping allows marketers and researchers to empathize with customers and eliminate any potential pain points to improve their overall experience.

The latest speaker in our marketing seminar class Brian Walsh, shared some important insights and encouraged us to think beyond our conventional understanding of journey maps in improving customer experience. From the get-go you could notice that Brian has an in-depth understanding of consumer behavior and psychology. The fact that he worked with such a diverse range of multi-national brands including Cisco, McDonalds, Allianz and Air Canada allowed him to gain invaluable knowledge that he shared with the class through a story.

The story involved a design engineer named Doug who on a visit to the hospital to inspect the MRI machines noticed a little girl who was unwilling to enter the machine. This girl was scared to a point that the medical staff had to sedate her in order to get her MRI scan. Doug was deeply impacted by this experience and set on a pursuit to improve the experience of other such children who need to get an MRI. Hence he created a persona of a similar little girl by the name of Sofia to understand exactly what her experience leading up to the MRI would be and how it made her feel. Doug and his team traced Sofia’s step by step journey all the way back to the first time she walks into a hospital.

Breaking down this persona’s experience and understanding this persona’s pain points made Doug realize how scary this experience must be for children and encouraged him to redesign MRI rooms for a better experience. MRI room were designed to mimic a spaceship, camping ground and pirate ships. With this innovation, the need to sedate children for MRI reduced from 80% to less than 1%. This story elaborated the importance of journey mapping and the fact that it goes way beyond marketing. The fundamental idea is to improve a consumer’s experience and to remove any hurdles along their way.

This captivating story really made me reflect on how marketing tools that we learn in our class on daily basis can be used to solve problems in our day to day life. During the current global pandemic, researchers and marketers would have to re-think their customer’s journey and how they would have been impacted by COVID. This presents a unique opportunity for budding marketers like myself to think about problem solving innovations and empathize with those around us by understanding their journey.

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Marketing Seminar Journal #2

This post is about another online marketing seminar that I attended for my Postgraduate in Strategic Relationship Marketing. I had the privilege of attending a seminar conducted by  Kareem Perez who is a professional career coach and speaker and is trained in motivating those on their professional journey. 

The one thing that I especially enjoyed about this seminar was that not only did Kareem shared his entire professional journey but also gave us a look into what he learnt from his success and failures while he was still in school. He talked about skipping 2nd grade and problems he faced in high school. This made Kareem and this seminar very relatable for me.

As a motivational speaker, Kareem explained to a class of budding professionals that it is completely fine not knowing were you are going at this point. He elaborated that more often than not a person ends up discovering their destination as the progress in their careers.

Another lesson from the seminar was to realize the value of team work and reliance on team members. During this seminar Kareem reminded us not to be heroes and that we will always need people to help us.

I really enjoyed Kareem’s seminar and would like to thank him for sharing his journey and some valuable lessons with us.

[aasil-i]

Marketing Seminar Journal #1

The first marketing seminar had a panel of three George Brown Marketing graduates who shared how their career had unfolded since they graduated from GBC. Natasha and Jordan graduated from the Digital Media Marketing program and Asta from the Social Media Marketing program.

Asta is currently working as a graphic designer and social media specialist, while Natasha works at a smaller agency called ‘The Design Thinking Agency’ as  SEO and Digital Marketing Specialist. Jordan on the other hand is employed at at Starcom which is a larger digital media agency. The experiences they shared gave an important insight to the working environment within the Canadian marketing industry and also presented some of the different career paths that I could pursue after graduation.

What was especially interesting to know was that much like myself, two of the alumni’s enrolled for their respective programs to pivot in their careers. Jordan who was a political science major transitioned to marketing after graduating from the Digital Marketing program. This allowed him build and leverage his network in the industry that eventually led him to his current job. On the other hand, Natasha who initially wanted to become a teacher realised her passion for digital marketing and backer herself by acquiring the necessary education and knowledge that allowed her to be involved with a small marketing agency.

Listening to both Jordan and Natasha, further strengthened my belief that while my background in corporate banking is not directly related to the sort of marketing jobs that I am looking for, there are plenty of transferable skills that I can use to pivot in my career. 

The alumni panel also emphasised on the importance of continuous learning and working on adding both hard and soft skills. There was consensus on the importance of social media certifications including Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Speakers also encouraged us to make use of the free Canadian Marketing Association membership we get through the school. In addition to this, Asta talked about adding graphic design to gain an edge and being comfortable with Adobe suite and free apps such as Canva.

Prior to a career in marketing Asta had experience in graphic design. Although she stressed the importance of hard skills and networking, she also pointed out that it is essential to leverage prior experience and soft skills to become more desirable for potential employers. Asta was able to secure her first marketing job by using her design background to create a mock-up social media page for the potential employer. Once she got the job the employer pointed out that the social media mock-up was something that no one else had done and ultimately led to her offer. Though Asta’s prior experience she was able to stand out above all the other applicants. The discussion ended with the alumni talking about leveraging transferable skills, emphasising on soft skills such as communication, presentation, and the power of networking.

The first seminar also gave me a sense of what to expect in the coming weeks and the importance of preparing questions and learning about the speakers before every session.