How did your find your way to ESL, when did you start working and what was your first position?
Back in February 2009, I was unemployed because I’d spent 5 years working in the UK and I’d just gotten back to Switzerland to start my life again. I was living at my parents’, it was winter and my dad was unemployed too – so I was in a pretty weird mood.
I applied for a couple of positions, including an SEO internship opportunity at ESL. I thought I rather needed a long-term job, but also that it was probably the right time to learn something new. So I signed up – and a whole world opened to me. What had piqued my interest at first became a passion: I knew a little bit about user experience, so I learnt a lot about SEO, which share a lot of the same principles; then, I learned about community management, then PPC, and so on… ESL made me discover what I was made for!
What’s your current position at ESL and how did you get there, which development did you follow?
My role has changed a lot over the years; I was first in the Web team, then in the Marketing team; at first, I had only one colleague, but then I started to build a small team, which grew bigger and more international.
Today I am the Global Online Marketing Manager at ESL. A lot of things happened since I started – within the company, in the world, in my own personal life – you know, Life happened.
What keeps me going strong still is exactly that – to me, a job should not be static; it should evolve, grow with you and along with the people you meet in your career path, in your personal life.
I enjoy change, and I like working in an industry that keeps challenging what I do, and how I do things. I also like working for ESL, a company that acknowledges all this, helping me learn along the way and supporting me through all this change.
What do you like about working at ESL and what do you think has been key to ESL’s success in the last 20 years?
Working at ESL means a lot of different things to me; it’s a place where you’re going to meet a lot of people from very different backgrounds, with very different work and life experiences. It’s a company where you learn to be flexible, open-minded and agile. You need to adapt to change, but most importantly, you need to be human. You need to understand what it means to support a project that will change people’s life – it’s a big deal.
I truly believe this mindset comes from the founders, who have a very human and humble approach to doing business; that is what I like most at ESL, and what I believe is the key to ESL’s success.
Oh, and the (big) bonus: I met the love of my life at ESL, and we have two beautiful children together.
Maëlle De Bernadini
What do you think?