Sandra Bichl
Sandra started her international career in recruitment in June 2002 in Budapest, Hungary at TMP Worldwide (then Hudson) in the Legal Recruitment Department that has become Legalis. She has worked with executives in CEE while being based in both Budapest and Warsaw, Poland. In June 2010 after a 2-year break in recruitment (Sales & Marketing Manager in Latin America), Sandra decided to change, though not moving in-house, but to what she likes calling “the third side” of the recruitment process: supporting executives in their job hunting process. Sandra works in English, Polish, German and Spanish. She also speaks Portuguese and French.
Why are you a Career Angel? What’s your favourite part of your work?
When I was a recruiter I always felt that the candidates should have somebody on their side. At the end of the day, a recruiter – even with their best intentions at hand – works for the paying client, usually a corporation; never for the candidate. There’s an innate conflict of interest.
There are actually a couple of things that I enjoy:
– being part of somebody’s success story
– improving somebody’s financial situation (& stability)
– challenging C-level executives as, admittedly, most have become complacent over the years.
And it doesn’t matter how many CVs I work on or format, I still love it! Even after 10 years!
What’s your life motto?
“Fortune favours the prepared.”
I do believe we are the masters of our own destiny and we can influence how we progress, or how we react to events and decisions that are out of our hands – like a pandemic or somebody deciding to let us go.
What’s the best & worst career advice that you have ever received?
The worst career advice – although with good intentions – was from a business owner who told me early in my career, “Sandra, you gotta stop laughing so loudly if you ever wanna be taken seriously.” I didn’t listen and kept on having my infectious laughter. It shows that I’m authentic and actually attracts people to “my table” at the networking events.
The best career advice I have ever received was actually something I read in a book written by Tim Ferriss, “If you are thinking of doing something and you are afraid of taking the plunge, make a list of all the things that can go wrong. In other words, verbalize all possible worst case scenarios. More often than not, you’ll realize that nothing really happens if we give it a try. And that we can minimize negative consequences upfront by being prepared.” Thanks to that, I had the courage to try being a freelancer before founding Career Angels.