Introduction to our Promotion Policy

One of the benefits of working within DevelopmentAid’s bounds is our proprietary Promotion Policy. Namely, our Policy implies that most senior roles in our company are reserved for employees, with recruitment for these roles being kept almost exclusively on an internal basis. This ensures that our employees can achieve seniority and occupy more senior or management positions as a result of their ambition and consistent performance over their tenures.

Moreover, offering such opportunities for our employees ensures that senior roles within the company will be occupied by someone experienced, with sufficient knowledge of internal processes, our business model and corporate culture. Overall, at DevelopmentAid we place a focus on offering our people the potential to reach any step of the career ladder they aspire to, while keeping a close-knit work atmosphere and promoting our employees to the top!

Career Path in DevelopmentAid

When we think of the career path that can be managed in our company, we often envision a young graduate looking for experience that turns to a seasoned specialist with time. Most of the time, that’s exactly how it happens with us! Most of our positions opened for external candidates are junior or entry level vacancies. This means that we invite candidates with minimal experience in the field, but who possess specific skills related to the role in question and have high potential.

At DevelopmentAid, we don’t shy away from recruiting candidates at the very start of their career paths (or even before that when they are still students). This is because we believe in the power of placing them in the right environment and supporting their personal and professional growth with the right team and resources. Thus, our employees become part of a friendly and like-minded group, which is the perfect ambience for their career and professional development.

Employees are encouraged to progress to other roles after their performances peak and they reach certain achievements, and when such opportunities become available. Over the course of their career paths, we monitor their journey and prepare them for either lateral moves in totally new roles or growth into a more senior role. In this way, our employees’ work at DevelopmentAid is dynamic and responsive to their needs, level, and ambitions. For this particular reason, managers and HR are conducting periodical checkups and career discussions, in order to understand employees’ perceptions and work goals. As a result, sometimes different directions are explored and employees are promoted into more senior roles or starting a new experience in a different area, which is encouraged and facilitated.

Employee Promotion Stories

Our Promotion Policy is better understood through the perspective of success stories of DevelopmentAid employees. We’ve discussed with several colleagues that have benefitted from it, both for lateral career moves and seniority promotions.

When we asked Madia about her coming to DevelopmentAid, she mentioned being hungry for “new challenges and knowledge”. She joined the Corporate Sales Department as a Business Development Manager, and was in this role for almost two years! Then, Madia told about the day when our CEO, Luc Vocks, invited her for a one-on-one discussion, which made her nervous at first. Then, she recounted her experience of being promoted to lead a new project, DEVAID.IT as the first Head of Business Development. She told us:

Madia is happy in her new role and sees it blossoming even further in the future. When it does, she will be there for the ride, sitting in the first row! Coupled with her great ambition, Madia has grand plans for the future of DEVAID.IT and DevelopmentAid. Regarding her vision, Madia described that “I see myself building a strong prosperous team, attracting more and more clients to the company, and expanding the awesomeness of the DevAid group”. Well-said and awesome, Madia!

Mariana has been with us since 2012, when she responded to a job advertisement for a new team member in the Career Center. Even though this was Mariana’s first job in Moldova, she discovered that she had a positive feeling that she belongs to DevelopmentAid, which she still experiences. Under the guidance of Career Center’s director Irina, Mariana has learned and accumulated experience in her position, becoming a full-fledged professional. Then, Mariana was offered to move to the Corporate Sales Department, as she was interested in working in the B2B field. Following this promotion, Mariana has worked as a Business Development Manager for 7 years, a time during which she completed her knowledge even further and accumulated more expertise. Mariana credits Corporate Sales Department’s director Sergiu for a lot of her success – he shared his skills and passion for the job with her, while allowing flexibility and creativity in the process. As a result, Mariana has gradually shifted her focus to donors – a group of DevelopmentAid users she is still very passionate about.

Nevertheless, this was not the only career move Mariana has gone through. Since January of this year, Mariana was promoted to DevelopmentAid’s new project – DEVAID.IT in the position of Department Director, as a result of her stellar performance and sales results. Even though the IT sector was new to her, Mariana took on this challenge with excitement and saw it as a great opportunity to break into it. Reflecting on her career promotion, she told us:

“The global pandemic, the spike in digitisation and the growing importance of Information and Communication Technology are other factors that have confirmed the correctness of choice for my career path. I can see how DevelopmentAid becomes the Google of development cooperation sector. With loans4development, government notices, exclusive competitive features and automated tools DevelopmentAid will be the first place to search, for any stakeholder of development community.”

Mariana sees herself creating value for this future in multiple areas, focusing on “strategic partnerships that would bring not just sales and contracts for DevelopmentAid Group (DA IT, DA) but also long-term, reputable and reliable partners”. We are excited to see Mariana and our colleagues implementing such visions, and can already see it happening!

Diana has been with DevelopmentAid since 2011, first applying for the Data Entry Specialist position after being recommended our company by an employee. She has worked in this role for two and a half years, and in 2014 she pursued a promotion from Data Analyst to Team Leader within the Data Management Department. We asked Diana what she thinks led to her promotion, and she gave us some great insights. She told us that she owes her promotion to:

“My skills that I had managed to exhibit throughout my activity at DevAid at the time, such as organisational skills, punctuality, a sense of responsibility, and last but not least, the fact that I was really good at what I was doing and I was able to do my job independently.”

Diana has also shared with us how she sees her career path within DevelopmentAid in the future. She told us she really loves her current role of a Team Leader, and would gladly remain in it for the foreseeable future. Firstly, Diana’s appreciation for her job stems from the responsibility it offers her. She mentioned that “I genuinely like performing work that involves a good amount of responsibility, interaction with new people, guidance, and training”.

Moreover, Diana described her pride and motivation when knowing that she has contributed to the growth and promotion of another staff member. In this case, the Promotion Policy benefited and significantly enhanced Diana’s experience in DevelopmentAid, giving her the necessary leverage and resources to fully uncover her expertise in the field.

Anatol joined DevelopmentAid in 2017, when he was looking for a job in an international company on job posting pages while being only a student. He started in the position of the Internet Researcher within the Corporate Sales Department and after a year was promoted to the Data Management Department, continuing to combine the job with his university studies in IT.

When looking for an internship the DMD director Veronica Sandu has guided Anatol into the IT Development team, in order to fulfil his practice there. Alas, Anatol really enjoyed his time in IT, and has decided to change his field and migrate there, in order to explore this opportunity and specialise. Now, Anatol is a QA Engineer within the IT department, and is content with his interesting career journey. We’ve asked Anatol how he sees his future career in DevelopmentAid: “I will remain in the IT department as a QA to annoy developers and improve the testing workflow within the department”

Our colleague Sanda has been employed with DevelopmentAid since 2015, when she came into the position of Lead Generator in the Corporate Sales Department. Back then, Sanda was looking for a job in English, and DevelopmentAid was one of the very few on the market to offer this, and it caught her eye. However, the process of joining the team was complex – Sanda had to go through four interviews to get hired! She described this experience by telling us:

“The first interview was the usual one with the HR department. And then I had three for different positions, for 3 different departments. When HR called me to invite me at that last interview, I was so close to saying no. I was starting to think they were messing with me!”

Despite this interesting start of her career path, Sanda now looks back to the process with gratitude and happiness. But let’s go back to the start! After settling in the Corporate Sales Department, Sanda has worked as a Lead Generator for almost two years. Nevertheless, she has always gone beyond the scope of her role and started studying what Business Development Managers do, the next position per superiority. In this context, Sanda started exploring the possibility of progressing one step above after one year of being a Lead Generator. It is important to note that from the start, her ambition was nurtured and supported by the CSD director Sergiu Casu, as well as Sanda’s manager at that time, Mariana Soltan. When Sanda came closer to her second anniversary at DevelopmentAid, she has decided to take the next step and become a Business Development Manager. The main reason for this decision was Sanda’s intrinsic belief that as a Lead Generator, she has capped her performance and wanted to learn much more. We then spoke about future career path prospects, and Sanda confided that irrespective of her 6 year tenure with DevelopmentAid, there is still so much to learn and achieve. For instance, Sanda told us about the progress she’s made during the years that makes her proud:

“During my career, I understood that to grow, you have to get out of your comfort zone once in a while. I started by having online meetings with clients, then face-to-face meetings during business trips, participating at events, being a guest speaker at webinars, etc.”

Nevertheless, she is excited about the things to come and is ready for the challenge. Sanda told us “there is still room to advance, and I am excited to add new skills to my profile. Plus, with so many new projects done by DevelopmentAid, you never know when a new opportunity may arise!”

Always an avid IT lover, Egor has been with DevelopmentAid’s IT department since 2015. Actually, it was his passion and ability for web development that brought him here in the first place. Egor recounted that he once offered to fix the “Ce? Unde? Cand?” community website, after he noticed it was written on an old PHP framework. His result was noticed by the IT Director of DevelopmentAid, who promptly invited him for an interview. It was successful, and Egor became a Junior Developer. Nevertheless, in 2017 Egor parted ways with DevelopmentAid, and began working in another company. Soon enough, he realised that his growth potential was limited, and decided that he wants to become a team leader. He came back to DevelopmentAid asking to get more responsibility in his role. Encouraged by his IT Director, Egor worked towards his dream for one year, a period of time in which he demonstrated his abilities, skills, and aptitudes. He achieved it – he was promoted to Tech Team Leader. When we asked Egor about his views on his professional future, he told us there’s one promotion he has in mind:

Madalina’s story at DevelopmentAid started when she graduated her Bachelor’s studies and was looking for opportunities in Chisinau. Her cousin, then working at DevelopmentAid, suggested she tried the company out. In this way, Madalina applied for the Lead Generator position in the Corporate Sales Department, went through the recruitment process, and got hired! Having worked in this role for almost one and a half years, Madalina came to understand that she has capped her performance and needed a bigger challenge. Nevertheless, she grew to love DevelopmentAid’s culture, so she considered a lateral move within the company, but those were only thoughts at that point. And since destiny arranges all things in a timely and perfect manner, Madalina had a discussion with the Career Center’s director. Thus, she was invited to explore the Career Advisor position, which deals with B2C sales of our service. Madalina applied, got in, and understood that this role is the link she was missing all along! This career move promoted her skills and expertise to a new level, giving her the opportunity to fully uncover her potential. She says:

“At that point my life changed, I think this is the best decision I could make for myself at DevelopmentAid.”

Reflecting on her promotion, Madalina mentions that courage to leave your comfort zone is the step you need to take in order to make a change. Moreover, she notes that any doubts about work should be addressed and analysed. Sometimes, the necessary change is so close, and needs a little ‘push’ to happen. We have also asked Madalina about her views on her professional future. She recounted that being a Career Advisor is a great position to be in, because it offers her the potential to be her own boss and bring tangible result. Nevertheless, she’s not stopping here – there is always the possibility of bringing better results and making more sales. That’s why Madalina sees herself in constant development on both professional and personal levels, learning new techniques, improving her capabilities. The road ahead is difficult and interesting, but Madalina is up for the challenge…

To conclude…

We believe that each employee has his own vision and career path, which must be cherished and promoted. We will continue writing about our employees’ stories in our further posts, so you will keep reading about their career journeys and ambitions! At DevelopmentAid, responding to our people’s needs is at the core of our culture. This means that employees’ intentions to aim higher or change fields are encouraged, and necessary resources are provided. Somebody once said that the only constant in life is change. So why should our employees stop in a spot and be unable to move? This is the reason why we place a strong focus on employees’ career development and aim to normalise seniority and lateral career moves. Modestly, we think we’re doing a great job at this, given our colleagues’ warm testimonies 🙂

If our work culture and its benefits appeals to you, please check out our available vacancies HERE and apply! We’re happy to grow our team with like-minded friends, so hop on for the ride and become a DevAider!