Julie, tell us about the beginning of your career in IT?
With a degree in Software Engineering and a Master 2 in Combinatorial Optimization and Artificial Intelligence, I started my career 16 years ago as a developer. I quickly realized that I had a strong attraction for the organizational and relational part. Young and daring with one year of professional experience in my pocket, I asked my sales representative of the service company where I worked at the time, to think about me for a future position as a junior project manager. A few years later, I had the great fortune to hold this position in an Agile Scrum context for clients such as the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Agence des Systèmes d’Informations du Personnel de Santé, and PSA Peugeot Citroën.
How did you come to Qim info?
Having family in Switzerland, I regularly came for holiday and fell in love with the peaceful pace of life and the beautiful natural landscapes. After 9 years here, I am still absolutely amazed by the unique and changing colors of the lake, mountain, sky, sun, as the day and seasons goes by.
When I arrived, I exchanged with several well-known service companies in the area, including Qim info, where I went for an interview for a project manager position. The exchange took a totally unexpected turn: after 20 minutes of interview, the CEO offered me the position of Business Manager, a position I didn’t associate with a brilliant image due to my mixed experience in the previous service company. After listening carefully to his personal vision of this position and all the difficulties involved, it was obvious to me that this was the position I needed, as I was thinking about a career change.
So, almost 9 years ago, I arrived one morning at the Qim info offices, with no commercial training but with my great determination to prove them they were right for having taken the risk of offering me this incredible opportunity!
How did you start as a Business Manager?
I started as a Business Manager at the Carouge office. These years were intense in work, rich in learning, filled with great joys and great disappointments, pleasures and difficulties, hard work and dedication and the creation of links with new collaborators and clients.
After a few years, I was surprised to be asked to join the company’s Management Committee! I saw this as a concrete opportunity to add my own contribution to the beautiful company we were all building together.
During this period, I gained confidence in my work and in myself, finally free of that terrible impostor syndrome and of that permanent feeling of not being up to the task, and I continued on my way with intuition and all my colorful emotions!
I have learned and grown from my mentors, Karim Sekkaï and Vincent Flatin, men who are both successful and humble, men I adore and who have continually supported me and trusted me.
And then the Lausanne agency… ?
After this first success at the Carouge agency, the founding members asked me to take over the management of the Lausanne agency. My first answer was obviously negative! It was unthinkable for me to leave the people with whom I so much enjoyed exchanging on a daily basis and who made me wqnt to go to work every morning with enthusiasm! As the months went by, my ambition combined with their pugnacity and their pertinent arguments, I gave in: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
Driven by a deep will to succeed, I packed my box in which I put discipline, authenticity, dynamism and high standards. This change of agency also gave me the opportunity to evolve as a coach of Junior Business Managers who were integrating my new team and that I hoped would be promising!
After 5 years, during which my team and I have given our best, we have succeeded in meeting a number of challenges and we continue to work to share a beautiful image of Qim info in terms of quality of service and follow-up of our consultants, to our clients in the cantons of Vaud, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Jura, Valais and Bern. We are delighted to help our clients finding solutions to succeed their own challenges, We are delighted to help our clients finding solutions to succeed in their own challenges, to help candidates in the market looking for a new project that motivates them in their career, and to exchange with our consultants with whom we have the chance to share a piece of history.
Tell us about your team!
I’m lucky to have a great team of business managers and recruiters, and they are the ones who make my day-to-day life sunny, so a special thanks to Kamélia, Alex, Léo, Kevin and Chloé.
My role is to train them, to give them tools and feedbacks, and to help them reach their goals. In our open-space, filled with plants and colors, I encourage and cultivate transparency, collaboration, collective intelligence, empathy, high standards, kindness, questioning, humility, creativity and laughs.
For the past few years, what drives me the most in my various roles is coaching these young people (now I sound like an old woman), which I see as an opportunity to participate modestly in their professional and even personal development. I’m particularly thrive in this role because I deeply enjoy the idea of having a positive impact on people and transmitting a galvanizing energy. It gives me great pleasure to accompany them towards their goals by using their personal resources and their own motivating factors.
At the end of the day, what is important to me is to make sure that they are happy to wake up every morning to come to work, all together towards a common challenging goal, and at the same time, in a serene and fuuuuun atmosphere, and that it pulls them up!
What’s next ?
I don’t often ask myself “What’s next? For the past few years, I have been one of those people who savor the moment with a lot of gratitude because I consider myself so lucky with my life situation. I like to leave a real place for lightness and spontaneity to live a less organized, less planned life.
I am currently fully fulfilled and stimulated by this project to consolidate and grow our agency in Lausanne. I choose to continue to work with passion and heart on what and with those I love, and for now, it is here, at Qim info, where I continue to learn and pass on. I will welcome the next step according to the opportunities to come, often unexpected in the past, and my evolving aspirations, in balance with the great life I lead with my little family that I adore!
The final word?
I am always very inspired by little maxims that I read. The one I’m loving right now that sounds like me, “Live a colorful life!”
And my favorite from my mom: “There is no one who will take better care of you than yourself!” (read with the accent for authenticity)
