Meet Nikola, our rookie business developer and sports aficionado — goodbag spotlight

Have you ever heard of the employee or team spotlight? Or read something about it? In case you haven’t, employee or team spotlight means presenting the company’s employees to the outside world. Publishing their stories or something interesting about their job and life.

We decided to do something similar with the „goodbag spotlight“ series, where eventually you will find articles about every goodbag team member. They will be in the interview-form and consist of 3 parts.

1. General-intro questions (which are the same for everybody)
2. Specific questions about each team member’s job
3. Short questions with instant answers (again, same for everybody)

Today, we are talking with Nikola, who will share some things about his life and experience at goodbag. We will kick off with our general section i.e. some introduction questions.

Hi Nikola, could you tell us something about yourself and your role at goodbag?

Hi everyone! My name is Nikola and I come from Serbia. I am a 22-year-old student currently doing my internship at goodbag. My internship is mostly in the area of business development, however, I try to assist in some HR tasks as well. In startups, we all usually have to wear multiple hats, which is something I really enjoy at this moment.

How and when did you join the goodbag team?

I joined goodbag in March 2020.

They were looking for interns via Aiesec, I applied, had an interview, got accepted, came to Vienna, and started this wonderful experience.

What motivates you to be a part of the goodbag company?

Back when I was in high school, I always desired to work in a startup. I imagined it to be quite different from an average SME or a corporation. I consider goodbag to be a startup and in a way, my wish came true. The special thing about goodbag is that we are really trying to bring a positive change and impact the environment for good. It is a challenging process, but we are all able to learn a lot and experience many new things.

I would like to add one more thing here. I am really motivated by other teammates’ examples. They have interesting backgrounds, compelling habits, cool interests, they strive to live healthy lifestyles… Those are some things I try to acquire and replicate in my personal life as well.

What are the 3 things you like the most about goodbag’s culture?

Continuous learning — there is always something new and interesting to do, even if you encountered something similar before, you can try doing it in a different way now. We always work on developing our soft skills and expanding knowledge in different areas.

Feedback-oriented — I would say that feedback is one of our core values. We always strive to be open and honest when we work together. Feedback helps us all improve, be more effective and productive.

Similar values — as I mentioned earlier, in a way I see my teammates as my role models. I am glad that we share many values and traits, and I think that is why we fit so perfectly together.

Do you manage to learn while working and how?

That is why I am here. (smiles)

I am a strong supporter of the Dunning-Kruger effect and I believe that the saying “The more you know the more you realize you don’t know” is completely true.

During my interview, Chris, our CEO, said that one of the benefits (of working at goodbag) is a huge opportunity to learn and gain unprecedented experience. I can only say that he was more than right. Every task I take brings something new and opens a path of knowledge. Even when I am working on something I did before, I find and test new ways to solve problems and reach solutions. The great thing at our startup is that I can learn a lot both internally and externally. I am really grateful for that!

Thank you, Nikola, for answering those general questions, now we will focus more on some specific questions regarding your work specifically.

Could you tell us something more about your (intern) tasks at goodbag?

I am an intern at goodbag, so my duties really differ which is great because I can see what interests me, what I am good at, and consequently in which areas I need to improve.

My tasks include market research, lead generation, B2B and B2C sales, assisting with the ads, constant audience engagement, content preparation, HR and culture tasks… I really try to take as many tasks as possible and gain different experiences. Sometimes those tasks are routined ones, and sometimes they require a lot of creative thinking and different approaches.

What surprised you the most when you came to goodbag?

Well, a lot of things surprised me, to be honest. Not in a negative way of course, but I did not have a lot of experience prior, so most of the things were new and some of them surprising for me.

One thing that I can mark off was at the right beginning. It was the first or the second day of the internship, we had the onboarding meeting and Chris was telling us about the goodbag’s team. I saw 10 team members on the presentation slide, however, when I turned around I identified maybe 1–2 people from there. I wondered where they are, and then Chris said more about them. Oliver is in Australia now, Nora is in Cape Town, South Africa, Todor was on some business trip I think, others were working remotely from their homes in Vienna… The team was so remote, I could not believe it. Keep in mind that this happened a little before the pandemic started. Although remote work seems so normal now, at that point it took me some time to realize that we can coordinate and communicate flawlessly from different parts of the world.

And one more thing, Johannes’ ping-pong level surprised me as well. He was giving some weird rotation to the ball when we played… But more on that some other time. (laughs)

Which part of your internship was the most interesting so far?

Huh, again, there were so many awesome things, but here is one interesting anecdote.

We were doing the sales, and internally, we divided the markets. I was in charge of the UK, and at that moment I was also helping a bit on the Swiss and German markets. Unfortunately, my German is not so good, so using it in business calls was no option. Therefore, I was planning to do everything in English. However, when someone picked up in German, I had to ask them (in German) if we could switch to English, and usually, that worked just fine.

At one moment, I forgot that people in Switzerland speak more than just German or English. One woman picked up and started speaking French, and I was speechless (as you can guess, French is not on my language list).

After that call, I did a bit of language preparation for French and Italian speakers, so now I have a few prepared lines that I know by heart. No surprises anymore. (smiles)

Since you started the internship in March 2020, how did the global pandemic affect your overall work and experience?

I was coming to the office for 2 weeks and after that the outbreak was declared and we switched to remote work. It definitely affected my work and experience in the sense that I had less face to face interaction with teammates. Moreover, we were supposed to have some business trips and attend different trade fairs across Europe, but unfortunately, all that got canceled.

On the other hand, I have to be grateful because I had the opportunity to continue doing my internship despite the happenings. I try to look at it from the positive side, I managed to experience a different way of work and I was not bored during the lockdown. (smiles)

And we came to our final section, where we will go through some short questions to find out more about Nikola :) So, tell us:

• Where is your favorite place to be? Beach/Ocean.
• What is one thing you cannot resist? Stretching.
• Would you like to visit space once in your life? Not for now.
• If you could meet anyone, dead or alive, who would you meet? Honestly, I would like to meet a lot of people, at least just for small talk. I would not name anyone specific now, but from CEOs, innovators to athletes, travelers, philanthropists…
• Do you have a favorite quote? “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” — Miles Kington.
• Do you have an (office) nickname? What is it? Niko.
• What is your favorite book so far? Work Rules by Laszlo Bock.
• If you could choose one place worldwide where goodbag opens its next office, which place would that be? South of Spain.
• Who would you most like to swap places with on the team? With Todor or Johannes. Just to see how the programming stuff works.

That was our intern Nikola :). If you liked the article, make sure to follow us on our social media channels. In the following weeks, we will be talking with other team members and getting to know them better. Stay tuned :)

About goodbag

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