Alejandro Sanchez’s Success Story – Love what you do
August 20, 2020
Alejandro, tell us about yourself, how did you start your career at OnTheGosystems?
My name’s Alejandro Jose Sanchez Parra (quite long, eh? They are actually 2 names and 2 last names) and I currently live in Italy but I was born and raised in Venezuela.
I started working at OTGS in October 2018 and have loved every moment since. This job is full of challenges and constantly pushes me to improve myself, both as a person and professionally, which is exactly the best part of it for me!
I currently cover the following roles:
- ATE “Dedicated” Supporter
- One of the WPML team leaders
- Training Manager
- 1st Tier WPML Support Technician.
We saw how greatly you have grown professionally since you started a relatively short time ago. You are leading the training for WPML now and more, so I will ask you – what’s the special magic that’s been carrying you through?
Back in 2018, I was hired to work as a 1st tier Support technician for WPML. This meant that I’d help users of the plugin solve their problems and answer their questions.
I loved this job from day 1 because it involved 2 areas that I really like: IT and helping people (customer service). Every single client has been a growth opportunity for me; some cases are easy to handle, others are not so much, others are super particular but each one was unique and taught me something new (and it still does).
I love what I do. It used to be my hobby to build sites and improve them and that hobby has slowly turned into a career (I’m a very lucky person!). This means that I have and will continue to challenge myself to always improve what I do.
How do you learn?
I always try to get feedback from people: Tips, suggestions, advice, anything that I could use to improve or implement to help me grow.
I had the best trainer from day one for my support role (and I’ll always be super grateful for this): Vincenzo Carrubba.
He trained me very well so I could start this new role with everything I needed to know. From the very beginning, he gave me such good tips and suggestions on how to improve, that I immediately tried to implement them on every task I’m presented (and still try).
When Vin was promoted to Systems I was super lucky to take over his duties as Team Leader which was my first promotion within OTGS.
After a while I was also offered the opportunity to train new hires, and I have to thank Amit for that since he saw something in me that I would never have even thought about seeing (let alone do). I took on the challenge and tried to improve. To do that I seek advice from my fellow trainers Lauren and Andrés, awesome guys who fill that position with pride and so much knowledge.
A few months after that last new assignment I was offered another one: Taking charge of the entire training system which was another nice milestone for me.
What helped you achieve your current position?
Through the entire journey I have learned so much and what I believe lead up to what I do today was:
- Motivation: I try to keep myself motivated so I can improve my performance ( I gamify my job so I can stop seeing things solely as “work” to make the working day easier).
- Research and feedback: So I can find my weak spots and work on them
- Excellent Team: They made it quite easy to grow inside the company
- Excellent Management: Management never stopped me when I had an idea and actually took the time and explained why something could or couldn’t be done.
In short, what advice would you give someone who wants to grow within the company?
The advice i’d give to people is:
- Work doing what you like: that is the self-investment we can do
- Always seek advice: It’s difficult to learn new approaches by ourselves, and feedback will help us find our weak spots so we can work on them and/or see things in a different way, so we can always grow
- Find a suitable working environment: If you like your co-workers and the management, you’ll always be motivated to improve your work
- Discover your own practical workflow: Working remotely means that you need to be self-disciplined and a simple desk and laptop will probably not be enough for you to work correctly. Some people like to move around, travel, others like to have a fixed workstation or even a specific room where they want to work. Discover what you like and try to find a workflow that allows you to work comfortably.
- Last but not least, try to never say no: We set our own limits. If you’re up for a good challenge, try to not hesitate too much and take it on! This attitude will push you to improve!
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