July 13,2015. it’s been exactly 14 days I’ve finished my graduation. I’ve updated my LinkedIn profile as a graduate by this time. That time, I was working in the Innovative Partnership project of Save the Children. I had to coordinate that project from Save the Children part. There were 8 other partners like VERC, mScoial, dNet, now I forgot the rest of the partners’ name. There were 31 schools in Savar, Dhaka, where I had to visit almost every month. That project was basically focusing on monitoring water and sanitation situation in schools by using ICT tools.
I was heading towards a high school to attend a pre-scheduled meeting. Suddenly, I got a call from a recruiter. He was trying to know whether I am open for a new opportunity or not. What I’m doing in my present Job. And, he was also describing me about the role for which they are looking for someone.
Long story short, he was saying that he is from Prothom Alo Digital. The title of the Job is “Content Specialist.” Assigned person will be responsible for looking over content, and there is an opportunity to work with the Business Development team.
Since I have finished my graduation and decided to start my full-time career in business, not in development field so, I said yes, and then I joined in Prothom Alo Digital by facing the 2-month long recruitment process. Prothom Alo is a newspaper of my childhood. I used to work for Prothom Alo Bondhushava but, I never think that I will work (do Job) for Prothom Alo. Anyways, I was quite excited about the role and my full-time career. I started in Prothom Alo on 1st of October 2015.
My office was in Gulshan tower, and I was responsible for the following tasks (If I say on a very high level) there;
- Copywriting, copy editing and design the content plan;
- Planning, organizing and coordinating the promotional events.
- Organize training;
- Work with the brand team of Prothom Alo;
- Providing assistance to documentation and develop internal communications materials;
- Developing and managing contents for the Job advertisement;
- Developing and containing contents for Career Development section;
- Giving customer support over the email and phone calls;
- Developing the business proposal and project proposal;
- Building partnerships with universities and arranging job fair in collaboration with career development offices/ clubs.
I love to write so, developing content and internal & external communication materials were fun for me. I have organized many events in Save the Children life so, organizing job fair was not a new challenge for me.
As I was a master trainer of the different training program and had to organize training & workshop at the district level previously so, coordinating the training program was a very known domain. I was involved with NGO’s project proposal writing so, I had a basic idea on proposal writing. I had applied my business knowledge with previous experience to develop a project proposal/ business proposal. See, what I did is connecting my earlier experiences with my current role, and I linked my interests with my day to day job. If you ask me, what is the secret of enjoying your Job and be efficient in execution, my answer is, please read previous lines.
I learned a couple of new things here like content monetization, digital business and digital product development. I realized that I understand digital marketing and partnership development very well.
I have organized so many training & workshop from chakri.com with the training team, 5 Job fairs in Dhaka and Chittagong with sales and event team, developed a project proposal for blue-collar workers (job searching) for World Bank, Developed SRS for Chakri.com mobile App, and a strategic business plan about how Chakri.com will work in next three years under the supervision of my reporting boss, Head of Business.
In six months of joining in Prothom Alo, I started my MBA in American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), and marketing was my major. Life was in a very tight schedule at that time. I used to wake up by 8 am, and the office was from 10 am and ended by 6 pm. After office, I had MBA classes from 6:30pm 3 days in every week. I consider this period is a transitional time of my life.
I was applying myself in the real business field at the same I was getting a broader overview of business in my MBA classes. 40% time I was learning and 60% time I was applying my knowledge, skills and experiences in a day, it was very fascinating to me.
I learned content monetization, digital business management, product management, professional business communication and partnership development. I applied my communication, writing, event management, project management, people management and in-depth analysis skills. And I improved my stakeholders’ management skills, professional business communication skills and overall leadership skills. Being a student of Marketing in MBA, I finished a few online certified courses on digital marketing, product management and app marketing from Google and Alison that time.
I directly reported to the head of business, but, I got the chance to work with the chief operating officer sometimes, the business development team and the event-marketing team as well. Which helped me to improve my cross-functional work skills and internal stakeholders management skills a lot.
I worked for 22 months in Prothom Alo Digital. I found Prothom Alo as a newspaper a visionary, innovative and agile to grab the new business opportunities. I’ve seen how far Prothom Alo was ahead in comparison with the competitor in digital business/ content monetization. Prothom Alo dot com was the most popular/visited site in Bangladesh after Facebook. Prothom Alo Digital team achieved this second position in Alexa ranking at that time. I was lucky to participate as a Prothom Alo family member in different programs like Meril Prothom Alo puruskar, Kishor Alo Utshab, Biye Utshab, Week-long foundation day celebration, Mayday celebration and so on around the year.
I still miss my colleagues, adda in Gulshan tower’s dining and white house cafeteria, travelling in different cities to organize events and mostly working for the biggest Bengali newspaper in the world.
