In December 2019, during my MBA studies, several business owners from across Australia attended a lecture at Bond University in which they shared their business journey and success stories.
One of the invited guests was Tim Tocco, the owner of HTG Solutions. As I listened to his inspiring story, asked questions, I realized in that moment, without a doubt, that HTG is a company where I’d like to work.
What resonated with me the most was when Tim spoke about the corporate & social responsibility in the company, the attitude towards employees, their steward approach, and the company’s values themselves, I just realised how much I understood that and shared those values.
After the lecture I approached Tim and asked if there is an internship program in the company, seeing as this is part of my MBA, and was so happy when he said, “You are more than welcome Zara”.
In March 2020, my fascinating journey began as an intern in the Marketing department, unfortunately not long into my journey COVID-19 struck and many of the different projects and events planned had to be put on hold. However, despite this, the pool of work in digital marketing remained and it was a great pleasure and excellent opportunity for me to apply and practice my knowledge.
The Marketing team was incredibly friendly and cheerful, led by a wonderful leader and just a great person – Danielle Norton-Smith. Like all people, she probably has both good and bad days, but trust me, you would never know which day was the bad one. Dani has an incredibly contagious, positive and optimistic energy all day long; I already miss our daily morning conference calls. During the calls everyone talks about their priorities for the day, how they feel and what good things have happened since our last meeting, these 15 minutes in the morning charged you for the whole day….so thanks for that, I learned so much from you all.
In Marketing I worked on many of the HTG brands, which included Telstra Retail, Telstra Business, Techwell and, of course, HTG. I was given the opportunity to use my years of experience in video production, in which one of my tasks was to organise a video shoot and edit the videos together with the Graphic Designer, which was a very interesting experience.
I was also involved in creating content for social media channels for all three brands and developing a procedure (presentation) on video conferencing, to assist staff in continuing communication with their clients, these were some of the highlights amongst so many other interesting tasks I performed.
As I mentioned earlier, my internship occurred during a very challenging time because of the coronavirus, but thanks to the excellent team and HTG leaders, even during this difficult time, we did not lose optimism and created some amazing new projects such as #wegotthis and #ProjectPhoenix, which I was fortunate to be a part of.
Like most companies in the world, HTG Solutions had a number of key challenges during the coronavirus, which is why the Phoenix Project was launched as a plan for the full recovery of the company.
I am sure that if there was some opportunity to stay in the company after the internship, I would have been offered it. But I always remain positive in any situation and grateful for what I have and for all my experiences. Today, I can say that I had a great experience with the HTG Solutions Marketing Team, in a few months an MBA Diploma, 10 years career experience behind me, endless enthusiasm and plenty of creative thinking.
I am immensely grateful to Tim Tocco and HTG Solutions for the experience and opportunity to work in a remarkable and friendly team, and thankful for the many new friends.
It was a great pleasure and I hope we can work together again in the future
Written by Zara Gafarova