These days, our shopping behavior changes along with technological advances. It is no surprise that online shopping becomes very familiar to everyone. These changes contribute in the growth of e-commerce industry. Are you looking to pursue a career in this industry? Are you curious about the industry? If you are, we will be getting insights from Frissila Taslim, Business Development of Shopee.

Frissila and Prasetiya Mulya

When Frissila was about to graduate high school, she envisioned a campus is a place where she would explore the subject she liked and where she would grow her network for her future career. Surprisingly, Prasetiya Mulya was her first choice for university in Indonesia. She set her eyes on economics because she loves numbers. Our campus was on top of her mind because it offers the best economics major in Indonesia that not only emphasizing on theoretical knowledge but also practical. Based on her passion for numbers, Finance and Banking was the appropriate major for Frissila.

There are many things about our campus that Frissila likes. First, it was the learning system. She felt that the credit units have been managed by campus in balance to maximize her learning experience. Second, she was satisfied with the facilities provided by our campus. Third, Frissila loved the lecturers. She felt that most lecturers are practitioners and they are very open and encouraging. Last but not least, the balance between theoritical and practical knowledge was the other thing that Frissila loved. She remembered about the seminar sessions and companies visit. In addition, she appreciated how she was encouraged to gain hand-on experiences through internships. Her learning process and experiences in campus have taught her hardwork. It is what helped her to adapt and survive her career life.

Frissila and Her Career Journey

When she was still studying, Frissila has her career aspiration. She envisions to become a management consultant. To pursue her dream, she participated in many competitions, such as business case competition, that would allow her to improve the skills required for consulting work.

Hir first working experience was in banking industry. Started her career as Product Manager – Installment in HSBC that she received the information from our Career Development Center. The recruitment process began with case study, HR interview, and panel interview with the management. Adapting to working life was quiet challenging because she wasn’t well informed. She didn’t give up and she learned how to be more independent. In addition, her colleagues had different responsibilities so she didn’t have anyone to help her.

As a Product Manager-Installment, Frissila was responsible for 3 credit card product installments and she did the daily operations too. She also designed strategy to increase the customers’ take-up-rate (TUR) of the product. Working in bank gave her a sufficient work-life balance. Unfortunately, Frissila felt her work was a bit held back due to the bank’s bureaucracy since it is a regional bank.

Since her career aspiration has always been as management consultant, she studied the company. The gap year between her graduation and the consulting firm intake made her decide to try banking first. Her goal was to adapt herself with professional world. Frissila participated in McKinsey’s campus recruitment. She took the PST test after the company presentation. Once she was informed she passed the first stage, she did 2 case interviews with the project manager. Passing those interviews, she must go through another 2 case interviews with McKinsey’s Partners.

“The responsibilities of a consultant vary from projects. We usually do 4-5 projects per year. In each project, a consultant is given a work stream that must be done individually with the help of the Project manager during a discussion that we call Problem Solving session. The output of our work is called a deck or power power presentation consisting of our analysis and recommendations to the client.”

Frissila perceived the consulting industry very interesting because she had the chance to work on many different projects so she never felt bored. Her line of work also allows her to meet many company leaders. “For a fresh graduate, it was an amazing experience meeting large companies’ leaders. There are also a lot of lessons learned both in terms of knowledge, ethics, and communication.”

As a consultant, work-life balance is nearly none. Frissila also felt that she couldn’t give an impact because most of her work was consulting and developing strategy. She didn’t see the impact after her recommendation was implemented by the client.

After 2 years in a consulting firm, Frissila made another career change. At that time, she saw that e-commerce was growing. She personally shopped less in conventional store. She was driven to become a part of the growing industry and to learn all about it. The job offer was given through LinkedIn and she was subsequently interviewed. Frissila is now the Business Development of Shopee.

“I am in charge of various projects. So my responsibility is to run the projects from the planning process, coordinating with related parties, rolling out to implementation. For my current position, my background in Finance is not really applicable.”

Frissila’s View on E-Commerce Industry

“E-commerce industry growth is interesting. It’s the appeal. Couple years ago, people may not be familiar and even imagine that there would be an e-commerce platform. But now, e-commerce becomes people’s destination to shop because is more time efficient.”

The working culture in e-commerce is very positive. The colleagues and the managers are open minded and the bureaucracy is very minimum. Everyone is open to share his/her idea and/or input to anyone at work. The industry is very open to fresh graduates. “We have a training program catered to train fresh graduates into becoming future leaders.”

In Frissila’s opinion, the challenge to work in e-commerce industry is the constant change. “Working in this industry means you have to be agile because we must be able to adapt quickly to every changes. If you’re not agile, you will be overwhelmed with the constant change.”

Based on that, Frissila added few more skills required to succeed in e-commerce. You have to be self-motivated because no one will guide you and remind you of the deadlines. Most of the time, you will be required to find and identify things by yourself. Last but not least, they are also seeking leadership skill.

Frissila’s Words of Advice

Campus life and working life is very different. Frissila said the first big difference is the independence level. In campus, no matter how hard the assignment was, she still can discuss it with her friends and her lecturers. While at work, one would be hard to seek guidance. “The manager might give you unclear task. So, we have to be comfortable with ambiguity and be able to make the decision ourself.”

The second big difference is the responsibility. “When we are still a student, there is relatively no binding responsibilities because the impact if we didn’t perform was personal. But in the working world, if we do things irresponsibly, it could affect and harm the company.”

As students, we need to maximize our experiences in campus to achieve the career we dream of. Frissila suggested to think outside the box. She believes that there are many ways to do your job and we have to independently think about the ways. To add, we also need to improve our organizational skills since we will be working with many people. The more we take part in organizations, the more we learn how to adapt which will help alot in the professional world.

Frissila encouges  us to gain as many opportunities to learn practical knowledge instead of the theoritical ones. She reminded us that the transition to working world would be challenging therefore she advised us to have more internship experiences. Last but not least, participating in many competitions would be a good way to bring us closer to our career aspirations.

We are so proud seeing Frissila’s journey since the graduation. We hope that we can learn from her experiences and become more ready to work hard to pursue our dreams.