Tech Transitions:

Welcome back to our mini-series on career change journeys within Mindera! In this series, we’re promoting and celebrating beautifully unique individuals who have changed career paths within Mindera or moving into Mindera!

This series aims to showcase that anything is possible; whatever career role you want to try your hand in, you can achieve it with support, guidance, and the right environment.

In this edition, we caught up with Sally and Joana!

Sally Wright:

“Hiya, my name is Sally, a delivery lead at Mindera. Born and bred in Leicester (lest-ah), and I am here to tell you about my 'Journey at Mindera'.

I joined in 2019 when a mate of mine told me about Mindera. I knew that it was where I wanted to work. Before Mindera, I had worked in tech for over eight years, and before that, I was a ski instructor; yeah, I can hear you thinking, "That's a bit of a shift Sally!".

When I joined in 2019, I was on the MetaPack team as a QA with a lovely bunch of people. Mita was an account owner/PO on the account, and she was an inspiration and a great mentor.

I very briefly moved to Zurich, Switzerland and then came back to Mindera, I knew it’s where I wanted to be. When I returned, I went on the Clear Review project with one of my best friends, Darshak. It was his wedding this year, and I got to experience a proper Indian wedding, it was so beautiful!

Anyway, back to the work, we delivered what they asked for and more on Clear Review, and then I started my 2-year stint on YNAP as a QA and transitioned to a PO. I loved working on the YNAP project, I met some really smart and funny people. The tech and strategies within the business were innovative and kept me on my toes.

One of the great things about working for Mindera is that you are able to change positions internally when you want to or if there's a business need. This means things don't get boring, and you are learning more and more as time goes by.

As I said, I loved working on the YNAP account, and one of the reasons for this is that I was lucky enough to meet one of my best friends, Graça. She's a beautiful soul with a wicked sense of humour. I've visited Porto now quite a few times. My favourite thing about coming to Porto is catching up with friends and being able to work with them face-to-face in such a beautiful city. Some things I love doing in Porto are spending time with friends, wandering around the hilly streets and eating the best food!!

I left the YNAP project and started working for Mindera directly in Employer Branding. It meant I had time to help make a difference in the day-to-day running at Mindera. Sorting out events, looking at employee engagement and retention. I really enjoyed it and felt I had more focus on doing the things I loved.

I was asked if I could join a BA team for a short period on the YNAP account, and of course, I said, "Yeah, go on then!". On that team, I met a great BA called Jamie, who had SO much knowledge and was just a fantastic mentor; I learnt a lot from him and met a great friend along the way! I felt very lucky I met Jamie; I was really thankful and happy I said yes to the opportunity.

I am now a Delivery Lead on Avios working with a brilliant back-end API team, it’s a new challenge for me that I am really enjoying. My team is spread across London, Leicestershire, Porto and Istanbul, we are planning some trips very soon.

Besides the day to day, I continue to work closely with Mindera internally, and on the sidelines on a internal project called Swag Store as a PO.

Besides all of these different roles, from QA, BA, PO and now DL, as many people already know, I LOVE to be sociable. I like going out to different environments outside of the office, making new friends, chatting with existing ones and building relationships. I like to go to local events, tech and non-tech... mostly creative. I am a co-organiser of the local ProductTank events, getting like minded people together and chatting everything product! I love to travel; when I go away, I like to go on road trips without fully knowing where I will end up.

The Budapest 2022 and Madrid 2023 trips were incredible with Mindera; we just had such a great time with each other and too many laughs. Even though it took me a few days to recover from both trips, I would do it again in a heartbeat. Bristol and the 3 peaks were just as fun. I have so many amazing memories of all of the adventures I have been on with my Mindera family.

At the moment, I want to continue my journey and see what opportunities there are. I love being in Product; it's become a huge passion, so that I will continue with it for now, but who knows, there's always something around the corner! I know one thing for certain, I will enjoy the good times ahead.”

Wow! That’s one heck of a journey, Sally! Thanks for sharing that with us, can’t wait to see where you go next within Mindera!

Joana Alves

“Hi there, I'm Joana, and my journey at Mindera started two years before I really joined the company.

A friend of mine told me about a company that was focused on people and was all about sharing ideas in a safe space, and that got me in awe! I went to an open day to check for myself and had amazing conversations, and I was sure I wanted to be involved with them somehow.

It was only in 2020 that the opportunity to join Mindera came, and I was over the moon; I was joining the Portuguese scout team, and everything was new to me. I learned about technology, development teams, agile methodology and, most important, self-organisation!

In my first year at Mindera, I was focused on learning with every person I connected with and challenging myself to try new things. I knew I was passionate about letting people know about Mindera and explaining to them how we work and what we value, especially while doing our cultural interviews.

Entering my second year, the scout team was experimenting with new ways of connecting the recruitment process with each project we were working on, which meant we were paired to work with specific Account Owners and help them find the best Minders. That's when I entered the YNAP world. During this time, I got the chance to become more aware of how our Minders were helping out on projects, but I also got to know more about the relationships we were building with our partners.

The endless possibilities that remote work brought us in these past years also brought us some challenges, especially in getting people to feel supported, engaged, or even creating social moments to blow off steam. With this in mind, and after a few months supporting YNAP with just the recruitment part, I was challenged to do a completely new role within Mindera, a role more focused on getting a sense check of how our Minders were doing and feeling in our projects. When we are talking about helping people, I'm in!

I continued working closely with YNAP, but also with another partner from the UK; I got the chance to meet a lot of Minders, help them unlock some of the issues they may be facing, help them think of what they wanted to do with their paths, create team buildings, gatherings and so on. I also talked directly to our partners about solutions to make people feel good in their day-to-day work. This journey was one of the most challenging so far; there were a lot of moving parts and high-paced solutions, but the gratification of seeing people be more connected was amazing.

This experience let me know that helping others was what I really enjoyed the most, so it was clear to me that whatever my next move was within Mindera, I needed to be focused on that, and that opportunity came!

Currently, I’m part of our Lemon team; it's a global team focused on Mindera Culture but also creating training, team buildings, coaching and different activities and initiatives, always prioritising the Minders!

So far, this has been an amazing journey, and I truly feel that I'm learning and growing every day.

Looking back at these three years, it is incredible how everything unfolded, how the opportunities came and how I needed to pass through all of them to be where I am today, and this is something that Mindera adds a lot of value, is this chance and openness for you to try something new and be ok even if the outcome will not be the best (we are HUMANS!).”

Incredible story, Joana! Thank you for sharing your journey so far.

Changing roles at Mindera

When joining Mindera, we are never tied to a project or role. Minders are individuals, and our contributions are not limited to our role. We can join initiatives or start our own, such as the Sharing Group, Writing Class, workshops, events, etc.

When our projects change, we can search for another opportunity inside the company. Changing projects to learn something new in our role is also possible! Allocating Minders is a priority of the “People Team”, and each person is involved in this decision.

Join us for this series as we explore more stories of Minder’s career journeys!

If Mindera sounds like a perfect fit for you, check out our vacancies!