Mary went from salesperson to HR Project Lead in 8 years at the company. In this article, Maria shares with us her story and tips on how to grow quickly in your career.

I started my career as a part-time salesperson at H&M. I was studying and like many of my classmates went to work in order to be financially independent. I didn't think about a career at the time.

After 4 years I became a department manager, and after another year and a half I applied for the position of store manager. I failed miserably at the interview. But I made a lot of conclusions and went back to the store to work on myself, to try again. A year later I went for my job interview again, and this time everything was great: I was offered the position of store director. It was the perfect job for me: my job was to create a strong, effective team in the store. I was great at it.

And after six months, the regional HR offered me to help her in addition to my main job. I, of course, said yes. And then the pandemic began. It worked to my advantage: the stores were closed and I had a lot of free time for HR. I could express myself as an HR: I conducted training sessions online, made development plans for my employees, which was cool.

After a while I was offered a temporary regional HR position for the time of my maternity leave, so I took it. But six months later the HR came back from maternity leave and I had to get back to the store. It was a hard time because I enjoyed working with people so much. Every day was like a holiday, I was getting high at work. And then it had to end.

Suddenly I was offered the role of Project Manager HR in the central office. It was beyond me at all, because I had no experience with projects at all. Moreover there was a global gigantic IT project going on and I had no skills whatsoever. It was scary, but I accepted the offer and coped with it.

I always wanted to do my job better than anyone else, to do more than is expected of me, I was engaged in my own development. I realized later on that I needed to expand my network of contacts in the company to go beyond first my store, then the region.

After one of my meetings with the coach I realized how important it was to ask for feedback on my work in order to understand how my performance matched the performance of my colleagues and executives. I asked the regional director what kind of HR she would like to work with and asked her to evaluate me. She explained everything to me, after that I already had a clear idea of what I was missing.

At the time when I became a project manager in HR, I think I already had my personal brand, name in the company, people knew me. That helped me get that position.

I was advised by a colleague of mine, whom I respect very much. I took a competency assessment test and after that I had a meeting with a coach.

In general, I was upset with the results of this test because it showed that I have difficulties in managing conflict situations and asserting my interests. I had never thought about this at all. I realized that the further I went, the more it would hinder me in my career. And thank God we worked with that, because now, when I work with my international colleagues and have to defend our country's point of view, it helps me a lot that I've learned to keep track of my weaknesses and work with them. Without that skill, I don't think I would have been able to get great results.

When I became a regional HR, it wasn't easy for me to build relationships with my colleagues. Thanks to working with a coach, I began to understand the tools of coaching, which I could then use in my work when communicating with my colleagues and with my family. I used to offer my solution right away: a person would come to me with a question, and I wouldn't even listen to him and say, "I understand everything. Do this and that." Now I have realized that this is not at all what is expected of me in most situations and I have started to work differently and this has led to other cooler results in my relationships with people.

I work in a central team as an HR project manager and run several projects in parallel. I would like to do my own training now and need to break down what will contribute to my continued success.

1. answer yourself the question What kind of development do I want? What am I interested in?
2. take responsibility for the results, because most of it depends only on you
3. analyze your actions and understand to what extent these actions help you to achieve the goals you have set for yourself or you just work a lot, but it does not give you any results
4. talk to the person in the role you want to develop. Understand what skills helped you achieve that role
5. talk to your executive and ask what you lack to fill that role
6. don't pass up opportunities. I have vivid examples of colleagues who are so used to being in their role, fixated on the day-to-day generally stupid stuff, that they don't notice opportunities that are just right there on a platter.
And they also have a lot of fears that it won't work out. But you can always come back, so I think that even if you're scared, you have to try.

But the most important thing is that you should enjoy your work, and then career growth is already a bonus. If you think only about the result and do not get any pleasure from work, it is impossible or very difficult to achieve results, as it seems to me.

1. First, decide what you want and are interested in. Take more responsibility in these areas, do more than is expected of you. Have fun with your work, and the results will not keep you waiting.

2. Spend time and attention to building relationships with people from different departments in the company. Your goal is to make yourself known to as many people as possible.

3. don't be shy about stating your ambitions and asking for advice. Other people can point out your weaknesses, you can't see them yourself.

4. Don't think "it's impossible. Masha's example shows us that you can grow from a salesperson in the region to a position at the company headquarters.