I believe it’s wise for professionals to diversify their skills. This helps one to multitask and be ready for greater career opportunities.
Despite having close to 8 years of work experience under her belt and steadily growing throughout her career, Irene Wachira has proved to have an interesting renewed passion for continuous learning. You have probably come across some of her comments on Fuzu’s online courses.
We caught up with her and had a chat where she shared her career journey, love for impact work and why she believes constant expansion of one's skill-sets through learning is the best way to keep up with the ever-changing job market. Read on!
My name is Irene Wachira. I recently resigned as a Marketing Supervisor where I was working with a successful urban SACCO for the last 5 years because I decided I’d love to scale greater heights and needed new challenges. During this time, I also worked in various departments i.e., credit, customer service, administration and data collection. My experience in marketing has greatly increased my passion for marketing, networking and interacting with various kinds of customers both corporate, white-collar and blue-collar professionals.
My marketing career started right after I completed my cooperative management course at Cooperative University in 2011. I later joined a SIDA (Swedish International Development Agency) funded NGO called Hand in Hand Eastern Africa. I owe this achievement to the then branch manager who patiently trained, encouraged and nurtured my career.
I loved networking with women, men and youth groups training them on savings and enterprise creation and helping them start businesses and create jobs for others. My every day joy was knowing I was creating a positive impact in their lives and at the same time meeting my set targets with ease.
I got to know about Fuzu through a friend in October 2018. She kept updating her profile and applying for jobs on the platform, later she got a job in one of the leading financial institutions in the country. All along I’ve been recommending my friends who are seeking jobs to join Fuzu and three months ago I became actively connected with Fuzu after soul searching. I’ve been taking advantage of the learning content in addition to the recommended job opportunities.
In as much as its good to specialize in a specific field, say marketing, I believe it’s wise for professionals to diversify their skills. This helps one to multitask and be ready for greater career opportunities. I’m currently growing my knowledge in digital marketing and branding since I want to continue instilling growth in my career.
Over the years, the marketing industry has greatly evolved and I’m glad to have been part if it for the last 8 years. The world is rapidly advancing in technology, for example, social media platforms. So, organizations have diversified in different ways to reach their target audience and be competitive in the market. It’s no longer about door-to-door sales and other orthodox methodologies. One has to be updated on the current state of affairs in order to create a marketing strategy for their company. We are living in a world where marketing is competitive and redundancy is at the blink of an eye. A good example is the banks. Most of the products they are introducing are for the millennial generation since they hold the future, are the larger part of the population and are actively participating in the growth of our economy. The FMCG companies are not being left out as they are also introducing products that cut across all income earners.
I’m passionate about continuous learning and currently pursuing my Bachelor of Commerce (Marketing option) at Kenyatta University. I also hope to do short courses on digital marketing and branding. I am hopeful that these courses will help me continue being relevant in the job market, scale greater heights and help in continuous nurturing of junior marketing officers.
Come 2021, I hope to grow my career by working with firms and helping them in meeting their strategic goals. I hope to interact a lot, uplift the community and mentor young marketing professionals.
My spirit animal is the leopard. They make calm, calculated and accurate moves. They are also beautiful but most importantly they never give up. To my fellow job seekers, enrich yourselves and be competitive. Those already working, don’t be too comfortable, challenge yourself to be better every day. Service to human is service to God.
