Sliema, Malta

New challenges

Hugh Clack Exchange view

Though content writing was great, I faced some difficulties outside the office: my son caught every possible disease from day care, since we did not have resistance to the bacteria and viruses here. I needed to be at home a lot with him. This reduced my sick leave: in Malta the system is very different compared to Finland! You have a certain amount of days in a year you are entitled to use for sick leave for your children and yourself. I ended up having to use all of them, since as said, son caught everything!  

I tried to negotiate with the company that on those days that my son is ill, I could work remotely from home, since my tasks were something I could in fact do remotely. This hughever (see, I did it again) was not possible according to the company policies. They offered me a chance to do use my vacation days in case my son is ill again, which seemed unfair to me, since after all, I wrote 2000-5000 words more in a week that was required of me. It was time to look for another job. 

I noticed a job announcement of a position of a brand executive for an online casino. They told they were looking for someone who could work both in Finnish and Swedish. I hesitated for a while, since my Swedish is not completely fluent, but on the other hand I like the language and can use it pretty well anyways. I decided to take my chances. It paid off, I got invited to an Skype interview. It went perfect and the next day I already had another interview with the brand manager. After the interview I received a case study. I needed to come up with a plan on how to turn non-profitable customers profitable, plan an entire campaign that included cross-selling and finally, write a blog article. I did it all in just two nights, 6 000 words, since the task was just so interesting.

And I got hired! Lesson here: take your chances, believe in yourself, go for it!

 

Hugh Clack
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