From HIM Student To Growth Hacking Expert
From HIM Student To Growth Hacking Expert
Nina Sophie Nest graduated from Hotel Institute Montreux in 2017 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Hospitality Management. She is now a Growth Hacking Expert at Generali Switzerland in Zurich.
What influenced you to study Hotel Management?
After finishing compulsory education, I quickly realized that I needed to have a combination of theoretical and practical education. I found that I enjoyed the hands-on mentality in hospitality and the close connections formed with each customer. That’s when I decided to study Hotel Management.
Why did you choose to study at Hotel Institute Montreux?
I started studying at a private university in Malaysia to broaden my horizon and explore Asian culture. After I finished my second year, I decided to move back to Europe and I found that Hotel Insitute Montreux offered great credit transfer opportunities. Funnily enough, last summer I discovered a brochure of HIM in my childhood room.
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My subconscious must have already planned every step to studying at HIM. Looking back, this was the best choice I could have ever made.
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Your current position at Generali Switzerland is a Growth Hacking Expert. What does this mean exactly and what do your daily tasks involve?
Growth Hacking is a marketing technique, which I learnt at a start-up in Berlin. I lead a cross-departmental research team to generate customer insights on social media to improve our products and services. This means a lot of conceptual work, project management and leading my team members in the field of growth hacking and data analysis.
What skills make a person well suited for working in Marketing?
There are three essential qualities that make a good marketer. They should think analytically, have the customer in their hearts and curiosity in their minds.
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Hospitality is a great asset to working in the field of marketing because you learn to understand people.
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What would you say are the biggest challenges of working as a Growth Hacking Expert?
Since Growth Hacking is a rather new technique, the corporate world needs some time to adjust to the agile work mentality. It was quite challenging to get everyone on board at first, but once we proved the concept‘s positive results, people started queuing.
What is your advice to those who are keen to pursue a career in Marketing?
Try to get your hands dirty at first. If you want to learn, go to start-ups or small companies, where you can get hands-on experience. It is a tough and challenging time, but afterwards, big corporates will hire you on the spot.
What do you hope to achieve in your career next?
As Growth Hacking Expert at Generali Switzerland, I am spreading the knowledge about Growth Hacking to our other Generali subsidiaries on a global scale. My dream is to help Generali, as well as other companies, to improve their understanding of the needs and wants of their clients in order to shift their mindsets from inside-out to outside-in.
In your recent video published on Ladiesdrive.tv you spoke about the initiative ‘Heroes against Loneliness’ which you launched during this current pandemic. Could you tell us a bit more about this?
With ‘Heroes against Loneliness’, we launched an initiative to connect people via phone who currently live in isolation for various reasons and are feeling lonely due to the Covid-19 crisis. Generali Switzerland’s initiative was featured as best practice by our global head office and the initiative has since been deployed in several other countries.
How is your work at Generali affected by the current situation and do you have any advice on how to handle your marketing strategy during a pandemic?
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In times of crisis, you need to react with even more velocity, empathy and care.
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We realized that Covid-19 requires us to transform into a fast-mover. Therefore, we launched the initiative ‘Heroes against Loneliness’ within 72 hours, provided home training with our running ambassador Tadesse Abraham and produced lots of content about Covid-19 and its effects on the life insurances of our customers.