MONICA NGUYEN Share with us one story that explain your determination, your perseverance, your grit. At age 37 with 4 kids, bored with my recruitment admin role, I was on the search for a flexible hour job that was close enough to the city for school runs. Acutely aware, this would greatly limit my options, I decided that after having accumulated nearly 10 years’ experience in the corporate business services world, I should play on my strengths and applied for the generic office manager role in corporate services. I turned up to my face to face interview in my best red dress, just to be told that the Part-time Office Manager role was taken. I hadn’t even digested the shock of the non-existent office manager role when the co-founder immediately pitched me a Cryptocurrency Broker role for a new start-up. My mind was already whizzing away from the surprise sales pitch to darker thoughts on whether this was a legitimate role or business. I was quickly brought back to the room by the job offer. ‘Do you want it?’ “No!” I replied, followed by the reasons below; 1. I did not know anything about Cryptocurrencies. 2. I did not trade. 3. I did not come from a financial background. With my CV waving in his hand, my arguments were quickly interjected with my previous experience in operations, sales, commercials running business centres and why these were transferable skills valuable in a start-up. Still not convinced, I agreed to do more research and to return for a second interview. Little did I know, how difficult the search would be, I didn’t know anyone in crypto and it quickly dawned on me how loud and noisy this industry actually was. Most of the online searches came up with get rich quick trading schemes while BBC documentaries were exerting caution and it didn’t help that I had no understanding of all the buzzwords like blockchain let alone what bitcoin really meant. Coincidentally, around the same time I was offered two other office manager roles with flexible hours and both with more money! After weighing the pros and cons, it was clear that I could always return to office management or recruitment and besides, this recent job search taught me it was a rarity for any employer to offer you a role without background knowledge and the willingness to train you from scratch. I did worry of the high risk tag associated with start-ups (because 90% fail) but ultimately concluding that even in the worst case I’d still be acquiring new skills, improving my knowledge in a nascent industry and diversifying my CV. I did not know whether this opportunity would ever come around again, I accepted the job! There I was, all by myself in a startup business on my own for almost one year! Being the only person in a quiet startup gave me the chance to catch up on my education, starting with listening to podcasts, reading and online courses. I got to see how a business was built from the ground up, all the way from creating the administrative processes to managing the crypto trading desk, over onboarding clients through the compliance process, up to networking and exhibiting. Basically, I was wearing many hats but deep down, I was still struggling terribly with confidence issues. Despite being fully immersed in the space, I was feeling overwhelmed because I still didn’t understand everything about trading, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. I was expected to take conference calls, to pitch the business, to networking, yet whenever I had to speak, I literally choked up and I struggled to articulate everything that I had been learning.
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