My story

I was born in Russia, URSS at that moment, in Siberia in the simple family who worked hard to gain their lives. When time to choose my education came, I decided to become sociologist to learn about social relationships, groups, and communities.

During my education, I had one course that inspired me so much, it was about Human Resource Management, it was at this moment that I find out about motivation, people engagement and development. I found out that exist companies that could care about you and it’s in the world of international businesses, so different to what all Russian companies were look like at the moment.

So, I decided to switch from sociology to HR. My first job was junior HR manager in Auchan, international French retail company with great culture. I loved so much this job I worked hard for about 8 years there, learning a lot and become an adult who is ready to take responsibilities. At this moment I was surprised by understanding that exist so many people who are unhappy at work. It was a chock. I didn’t understand, what is it about: culture, management, personality? Why are they staying and continue to suffer? I think that these questions based my current passion about careers management.
In Auchan I also met my husband, Pascal, he is French, we married, and I decided to change a company.

I worked in H&M next 8 years being an HR and also store manager. During this management experience, when I was directly responsible of my store staff, it was about 100 persons, I continued to search for solution – how to how to ensure that all employees feel recognized, satisfied and engaged.

Once I read research made by Gallup about employees’ engagement. They are asking questions about how satisfied people at work are, if they see perspective, they feel recognised by their hierarchy. They are doing research from 2009 each year and statistics is pretty the same year from year can you imagine that only 20- 30% of people around the world could say that they are satisfied and engaged. Surprising, isn't it? We can say that only 3 of 10 your colleagues feel themselves at their place.

I understood that it’s not only about companies and their HR practices that I am working on, but also about us, people. And I decided to learn coaching to help people understand what they really want from their jobs.

In 2018 I had my coaching certification and first external client not from my company. I fell in love with this job: I could see how I can help person pretty quickly, in 2-3 month to relaunch their careers and find new exciting opportunities. So, I left H&M and focused on individual career coaching at HR consulting for companies. It was perfect: I could help people and companies at the same time.
I learned at this period a lot about international careers as political situation in Russia became more and more difficult and people needed support relocating to different countries. I decided to focus on EU job market and learned a lot to find solutions how to help people to move by work.

In 2021 war started. We decided to move to France where my husband is from originally. And it was my turn to search for a job on EU market without good language level, in France it’s extremely important.

I was so happy to speak English that helped me to position myself as a part of international job market and not to concurrent with locals.

I developed my strategy and in 7 month of search I had my job offer from Decathlon. In my current role as a Talent Acquisition Manager with a global focus, I oversee recruitment for Decathlon's strategic positions in production and value chain. This role provides me with good opportunities to navigate diverse work cultures and address the challenges that employees facing while working abroad.

Here I am now. Happy about my job, still searching for solutions to help others feel the same. I don’t know what the next period of my career would be, but I am sure that I want to continue supporting people in their career transitions, relaunching their careers in the new job markets, finding their sense and pleasure in work.