Life at Wilson | Henco's career journey

Hi everyone. My name is Henco Rheeder I am the Senior Talent Administrator and Coordinator here at Wilson. And today I'm going to be taking you through my career journey since joining Wilson.

So my role at Wilson has evolved quite a little bit and took a little bit of a weird turn and everything. So it's been quite an interesting journey with Wilson. So I started off as a talent administrator and coordinator for a client called GXO Logistics. I then managed to work my way into a new project, a new client that we launched, Open Society Foundations, where I managed to gather more experience. And then an interesting turn in my career was I applied for an internal position for the global events manager role based off my previous experience and knowledge of events management. I then worked in the marketing department for about a year and a half to two years, being the global events manager and then transitioned back into the recruitment world as a senior talent administrator and coordinator and project support for AB inBev Early Careers Program.

Quite a lot of things that has assisted me in being the person that I am today, also with the career growth that I have seen within my journey with Wilson. But one of the things that I would say is definitely communication. Communication the way I used to do communication working in a office-based job ompared to a fully remote job is a little bit different, So I always would over communicate because I would rather let them know what is happening then having someone guess what is actually happening but also one of the skills that I would say is also very important is having a a growth mindset, you know, growth mindset is something that I've always believed in and I'm very passionate in expanding my skills and stuff. I hate being comfortable in a position and when I don't learn, I feel like, you know, there's something just wrong with life and my work balance and everything.

I would say one of my most valuable lessons that I've learned was from my very first manager when I started Wilson. he always encouraged me to look for options on how I can do my work more efficiently. You know, with the amount of work that we have as coordinators within the organization, it can be very admin heavy. And if there is any way that you can make your work more efficient, and to be able to get some time back in your day. It's always something that was encouraged and it's something that I live by till this day.

So one of the ways that you can be more efficient in the way we do our tasks is I always strive myself to create quite detailed training manuals for new onboarding people So one of the ways that I've managed to do a little bit more efficient process mapping within Open Society Foundations is we were allocated to do travel relocations for candidates that got offered jobs and had to relocate to different countries. And this system at the beginning was very confusing. No one knew what to do, what steps were supposed to be done, in which order as well. And it always caused a backlog of travel relocation. So I've managed to set up meetings with the team to go through the process. And it has managed to save us tremendous times where a task like that usually would have taken us about an hour just to do one relocation. We've managed to cut back the time and the team is able to do it within 20 minutes now.

This is a very interesting question because it's also a very important question to me because we are a fully remote organization, know, keeping yourself motivated is probably one of my top priorities. for me, it is staying busy. I am a person that I cannot sit and do nothing because that will honestly just take away my drive for work, my passion, my desire to work. So for me, staying busy whether it is physically doing the tasks that has been allocated to me, or it might be just keeping myself busy by learning something new, or just testing my own knowledge and my own capacity.

One piece of advice I would give someone that is just starting their career as a coordinator with Wilson or any recruitment company is take as much information as you can, practice as much as you can. When you start in any organization, you are going to get overwhelmed by the amount of information that's going to be shared as well as how tasks are being formed. My advice is take the information and make it your own. At the end of the day, we each do our tasks differently and you need to find something that works for you. And it's going to take some time. So don't be hard on yourself in the beginning. Just take it easy. Take a breath and just continue. You will find your groove and everything will become much easier.

I can honestly say I have never worked for a company like Wilson. I wake up every morning and I'm excited to work. be honest, I have never worked for a company that I'm proud of as well as recommending to my friends and I've never had that opportunity with a South African based organization. you know, being part of this global company has really taught me a lot. know, the team culture and the team spirit within Wilson is also something that's very infectious. You know, when you join calls, people are always on camera smiling and it's just a very nice environment to be.

So, you know, I am the person that strives to do everything 100%. But one of the things that really got me was in my first year within Wilson, I was actually nominated for a DNA Award and it was for the DNA Award of Passion and I managed to take the Passion Award that month. And it was just so rewarding because, If you ask any of my friends, know, they always say I'm a very passionate person to be around, you know, I'm very infectious with if I'm happy, you know, people always see it. And that is usually what I bring to the table.

I'm a very big dreamer. So I've got very big plans for the rest of my career within Wilson. My first and biggest dream is to be the first director of anything based in South Africa at Wilson. And it is still my dream today. And you know, that's why I moved back into recruitment so that I could work my way up becoming a TAS, going into recruits so that I can eventually make it into the ROM account director positions.

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