Growth is something personal you don't need to prove to anyone. Yes, anyone could paint whatever photo of you that they want, but we can't control anyone's perspective.

The Activist (2010 - 2013)

When not standing out for anything really helped me define who I am.

"When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice."

After 19 years of being timid, afraid of most new things, reserved and very conforming to others, I made a sharp turnaround in both how I act, and how I let others perceive me. It came as a deliberate decision when I went to university: as nobody in my university knew anything about me, therefore I decided to define for myself who and how I am.

The decision was fully about taking ownership and not letting a situation, that I am not happy with, to continue. From there forward looking for opportunities to take part, lead, speak up, stand up for something, bring people together and create something new, is strongly intertwined with my core behaviour.

💡If I could only give 1 recommendation to any young adult, it would be not to let others define you by putting on you labels. That is a view they see from their standpoint but it does not have to be your truth.

Learning by doing.... everything (2013 - 2016)

When having no experience means you depend on others.

"May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears!"

The start of my professional career in HR started due to 2 different internship experiences: first was in the Ministry of Interior, where I was analyzing a new EU policy regarding the Citizen of the European Union Act and what changes would be expected from our internal legislation. Imagine a screen full of text, paragraphs, prescripts, and decrees, 100% computer-based while being alone in a huge office.

The second was in Tallinn Prison, where I rotated in their General and Admin Department from documentation team, to legal to HR and did everything: from registering inbound letters, to organizing the archive records (imagine a 30m2 room full of shelves from floor to ceiling) to being involved in anything people related. Imagine days surrounded by colleagues, leadership team members coming to pick the HR team's brain for solving edge cases, team brainstorming and sharing ideas, and time shared between focused work and interpersonal interaction.

After the internship, I got a full-time job in the HR team and:

• worked up my knowledge of Employment related legislation to the complete law nerd that I am today;

• had my first experience with employee experience design from owning the onboarding process to managing the full employee lifecycle;

• got to learn from huge and influential organizational change projects like the merging of 2 organizations, pilot program of new leadership approach and creation of new structures, implementation of many new org-wide programs, and personally develop numerous low-resource yet high-impact systems to make People Operations more scalable.

On one side, it was a period of learning by being curious and having to show initiative to try and understand the why behind how. On the other side, it was the beginning of really growing my adaptability and independence, as for example during this period I had 6 different managers. In the end, this chapter of my life made me proficient in researching and troubleshooting, as I did not have the luxury of someone to mentor me.

Mastering (2016 - 2019)

When confidence is your start and stop.

"Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information but of unlearning old limits."

A period of really digging deeper into specific professional topics like leadership development, learning facilitation and behavioural change. It turned out to be one of those once in a lifetime periods due to opportunities aligning:

• time of Estonia holding the presidency of the Council of the EU (the next one will be approximately in 2030)

• handling a 1.5 million euro budget for my projects

• being elected to lead Training Managers Association.

In the end, for me, it was a conflicting time. On one side, having deep knowledge really is a point for creating more high-impact results. On the other, being so immersed in a specific HR area, L&D, I found myself craving to have something unique about my professional skill set - to be in the front of something fresh, new and niche. Therefore I sought out a very under the radar HR subtopic, foreign IT workforce and relocation, that in Estonia was mostly unknown, making it an opportunity to master something completely new in an unknown environment - in a startup.

The Mother of Spreadsheets & building systems (2019 - 2021)

When wanting new could end up consuming you.

"The one who who falls and gets back up is so much stronger than one who never fell."

I fully believe all previous chapters were meant to lead me to this point. To the point where I got to utilise everything, I know about researching and influencing legislation, lobbying the officials, creating systems and workflows, holding ownership over projects, managing multiple stakeholders, defining processes, and finding solutions until your brain is twisted while transferring knowledge to the growing team. Doing it when all is good and you are high on energy. Doing it while everything around you is just falling apart. Doing it while the world goes into lockdown and you have people stuck around the globe in different countries. Doing it while it has never been done before. Doing it while doing also things beyond you could have imagined.

All the main elements that I had felt to be missing at the beginning of my career, I got to oversee and personally make sure they are provided for my team. I got to be there to mentor and share knowledge with my team or stand up for what is right - so that others would not have to conform to dominating yet harmful opinions.

💡Knowing when to leave is important. At least now I have found out for myself that my cue to go is when I see a misalignment with my values.

From startup to scale-up (2021 - )

When I switched from default to customised settings.

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."

After working in a very high-stress environment I started to see in myself signs of burnout. Looking out for other people's needs I had lost my own.  It was a very extreme lesson to learn how to be a helpful person but still be able to say no. Nevertheless, a lesson that can be taken forward and applied in many situations. The era I am in now is focused on taking a break from doing everything and instead, leading transformation in a specific HR area. The difference with the previous is that we are talking about a global 1000+ employee organization with 10 offices. Leading co-creation of future, estimating budget and planning allocation, preparing Annual Operating Plan with cost and return analysis to presenting investment asks to the Executive is all built on the foundation that only expertise and experience can allow.

12 years of challenging myself and working on my change muscel has been the investment to become the People field strategist and professional that I am today. I could have just gone through the motions and do what others have always done, but instead I have always chosen the trickier path - creating something new, making a impact and leaving a mark.

🧍Hadiya Nuriddin (LinkedIn)

🎧 MindTools "How do we 'mine for stories'?"

📕The StoryStudio (link)