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If anyone can tell you what a real career evolution is, it’s her! Her resume seems to have everything: from a collection company to the Leadpanda marketing agency, from public service to media, from crises to new starts. And not a single turn was accidental.
In this conversation, our CCO of Panda Media, Alyona, talks about everything and without embellishment: about burnout, new challenges, moments when she wanted to give up, and how she made her own growth system out of all this.
This is not just a story of a professional path, but a story of transformation.
Sometimes I think that if I put all my experiences in my resume, HR would think that I either have overproductivity syndrome or am just “a little off”. Despite this, I have always been quite stable in my work, as I have not worked anywhere for less than three years. But the variety of areas I’ve managed to visit amazes even me.
I started at 16 (a classic of the genre) as a promoter in a supermarket. The funniest experience was when, at the age of 17, I was advising customers on cognacs. Before that, by the way, we were given a generous tasting, which was generous for that age. So I’m even afraid to imagine what I recommended to people there.
Then it got more fun:
I joined the company in a white marketing agency, and my involvement in the media happened a little later. Before employment, of course, I did my research, superficially read what affiliate marketing is, but, to be honest, I didn’t understand much.
My attitude to the niche was rather negative at first. I’m a person with fairly clear principles, and it’s important for me to be honest with myself, to work on something that makes sense and is useful. And this is exactly what I fully realize in Leadpanda Agency.
At the start of media engagement, it seemed to me that it would be much more difficult to figure it out. But in reality, I just “burst into the niche from the doorstep”: conferences, networking, and acquaintances at once. Thanks to my experience in commercial management and sales, it was easy for me to understand the internal logic of the processes, build relationships, see the company’s strengths, and improve those areas that needed improvement.
The choice of the company was primarily due to the agency, I have always worked in the service market and was well versed in marketing. I was interested in this particular business logic, structure, and systematic approach.
I also came to the media consciously, I wanted to better understand the niche from the inside, its specifics, processes, team dynamics. Besides, I am not one of those who stay in one role for a long time. I have never been limited to one position or direction in any job, I always need development and new challenges.
Probably, in the time that we all have now, the desire to “stop and give up” has arisen more than once. But I am a positive person by nature, and I see any crisis not as a catastrophe but as a point of growth and transformation. And, as experience shows, this is how it usually happens.
As for the barriers after working in white niches, the main one is probably that the level of qualification of specialists in gray areas is often much lower. The general level of neutrality is also striking: the position “not everything is so clear” has become almost a rule.
For me, integrity and professionalism are not empty words.
Whatever it may sound like now, it was a collection company that became a milestone for me. It was there that I went from an ordinary operator to the head of a large department. And it was there that I acquired those basic but critical skills without which it is impossible to become a strong leader: people management, crisis response, process automation, optimization, structure building, teamwork.
Each job left its mark, each experience added new facets to me, and they are all important. Thanks to this diversity of niches, I learned to adapt extremely quickly to new challenges and environments.
And, perhaps, this is my superpower now.
In fact, this experience sounds like it was the end. But for me, it was the beginning of growth. Absolute burnout, mental exhaustion, being sent “to distant mountains”, nervous breakdowns – I went through all this on my own experience. It was hard, painful and exhausting.
But that’s why I came out with a different, more conscious, more holistic victory. And, perhaps, it is thanks to that period that today I am the version of myself that everyone knows now.
I was taught, of course, by practice and my former, pronounced “achiever mode”. I don’t remember what I was proving to whom then, but the main thing is that I don’t do that anymore.
There have been a lot of courses over the years and continue to be. As well as professional literature. Most of all, I have always been interested in the topics of management, automation and process optimization, everything that helps to build effective systems and teams that really work.
The mistake that changed everything was to give up on myself, to give myself completely to work without leaving myself there. Without a stable mindset and when you don’t know how to be happy with yourself, nothing will work out, or rather, it will work out, but not for long.
In fact, I am grateful for absolutely every experience I have had and would not change anything, because it is they who made me who I am today. Without those mistakes, experiences, defeats, and victories, I would not be the person I am today and this article would not exist.
Oh, the same 2020, the crown. Then I was ready to go to Silpo as a cashier, but everything turned out so that I went to the Kyiv City State Administration and created a monitoring center to counteract COVID-19 with 200 people (103 days without a single day off, a total shock from the work of government agencies – I do not recommend anyone to repeat it).
Were there moments when you really thought: “It’s a fake-out, I won’t make it”? How did you get out of this state?
Of course there were, and not just one. Both the experience during the coronavirus and the experience of organizing events during the war were experiences with constant challenges and where nothing could go according to plan. But it worked out, and I created, and in the system, and in profit.
I mentioned above. It is a panic with “neighbors” and often low expertise of people in the niche (not all of them, but, unfortunately, this is a common story).
Hunting is very common in our niche, but probably the strangest was the offer to become (quote) “a team leader of team leaders” in an onlik))
