Education and learning have always been of primary importance to me. Ever since I was a child, I have shown a keen interest in quantitative sciences such as Mathematics, Physics and Informatics. I tended towards these subjects due to their analytics based structure which I enjoyed very much. Being naturally good at these sciences and passionate about learning, I achieved a level of excellence in them during my high-school years. In contrast to exact sciences, I have always been fascinated by business and its application in life. Throughout my high-school education I used every opportunity to be an active participate in various projects related to business modeling, case studies and leadership projects held in England, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
I proceeded to pursue higher education in the Azerbaijan State Economic University. Admitted to the undergraduate program of Information Technologies and Management with an excellent admission score, I was awarded an opportunity to receive Azerbaijan State Monthly Bursary for 4 years of my studies. In the second year of my studies I was accepted to the Special Talents Faculty, which is a kind of an honors program consisting of a unique faculty with a credit system and modules taught in English. The admissions process into the program consisted of three stages – the essay competition, academic exams in Mathematics, Economics, English and Information Technologies (all exams were taken in English) and a final interview with the Dean and the Rector. The education program in Special Talents Faculty consisted of a combination of courses from the disciplines of International Economics and International Business. During the education process, both humanities and technical based courses such as Statistics, Organizational Behavior, Corporate Finance, International Law etc. Moreover, Special Talents Faculty had a carefully selected staff of professors educated in Western Europe and USA. With most of the professors of the faculty having previously possessed management positions in the biggest companies of the world and all of them educated in Western Europe and USA, the faculty of Special Talents gave us invaluable mass of excellent education and professional experience to learn from.
I commenced my career during my second year of education for a part time position at GRBS
ompanies, major professional qualifications company in Azerbaijan as a Program Manager in International Professional Qualifications department (IPQ) in June 2012. Working at GRBS, I was involved in various administrative and program management related projects. I have a team of 3 people under my management and we managed several projects within IPQ like an administration of professional qualification like CIMA, ACCA, NEBOSH, PMI® of which our company was a local official representative. Those responsibilities gave me unique chance to increase my professional skills like organizing events and manage teams.
In December 2012, I was selected among 400 students to participate in Youth Business Leadership Project, sponsored by British Petroleum, Junior Achievement Azerbaijan and American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan. Within this program I attended to several trainings provided by trainers from sponsorship companies with various topics like corporate ethics, management, and communication management. At last, I was chosen as a best trainee and received a job offer from local telecommunications company – Azerfon LLC, a former partner of Vodafone in Azerbaijan. I started my work in the company as a Sales Performance Analytics intern. Three months later I received a job offer for the position of a Junior Sales Performance Analyst. My core job responsibilities including Information Process Management within Sales Department, Performance Analytics per Sales Channel, Traffic & Product Analysis gave me a lot of opportunities to go deep with Analytics, Systematic Thinking and effective communication skills.
In cooperation with my manager, I optimized the information flow within the sales department in the following ways: created Compliance Management Database, unique Point of Sales Database, Employee records Database, Assets Database, built Enterprise Content Management for archiving and sharing document flow within the Sales Department. Those projects give invaluable effort on sales results of the company. As a results, I was awarded to the nomination of Best Young Employee of the 2013 within Sales Department. During almost two years of working for Azerfon LLC I received a promotion twice: from intern position to Junior Sales Performance Analyst and later to become a Sales Performance Analyst. Hence, I found myself in the area of heavy numerical data, analytics based decisions and information flow management.
Extra-curricular activities have always been a part of my life. I believe that my engagement in social activities played a crucial role in my personal development in terms of leadership and skills and achievement of success. I took part at Eurovision Song Contest as a volunteer in May 2012. I was a supervisor of sector arrangement and was dealing with security and placing issues. After the contest, I was chosen among 1200 volunteers to be presented with a certificate for excellent services provided during the contest by the Ministry of Youth and Sport of Azerbaijan Republic. One of the biggest local Non-Governmental organizations “Ireli” Public union, organized “Winter University for young leaders” project in February 2013. It was short term project for 5 days, during which we had very useful trainings on management, simulations, team projects and discussion panels. 100 people were selected to participate to participate in this project among 1000 applicants. My application was successful. This project was very beneficial for me, because I had a chance to share my experience, obtain new information and expand my network.
An important highlight in my professional career has been Azerbaijan Business Case Competition held among the top University students of Azerbaijan. This competition gave me deep insides into business processes. We have analyzed and researched a number of business cases and I believe that exchanging professional opinions with opponents and among teams served a function of enhancing my knowledge in the field of business and business process management in particular. Another significant factor was that I did all operations regarding business management including preparations of financial statements and conduction of marketing researches. Each of the team members was responsible for a particular side of the business. This variety of roles and sense of competition made the case contest very beneficial for my professional and personal development. My team was selected to finals, but due to personal reasons we had to pass up to participate.
When I saw first time a one year Master’s program in Business Analytics, Operational Research and Risk Analysis in Manchester University Business School I was very excited. Curriculum of the program, professors and graduation opportunities admired me. Master’s program in Manchester would give me unique set of skills and knowledge, which will help me to succeed in my career path. After graduating I am eager to come back and work here by my major. Azerbaijan is in need of young specialists in this particular field; therefore I think this is my chance to make my contribution and bring international knowledge and experience to my country.
