I didn't have much work experience when I was a student, nor a clear vision for my career, so although I was about to graduate from university, I still chose to start with an internship at KOL Radar, then strived for the opportunity to become a full-time employee here.
A Structured Employee Career Development Plan
Facing my first job after graduation, what I value most is "career prospects". The reason for choosing iKala's KOL Radar is that I believe I can grow rapidly in this ever-changing industry; at the same time, when I was browsing jobs, iKala was one of the few that mentioned learning and development. Thus, I decided to join iKala and become a member of the KOL Relations (KR) team at KOL Radar.
After entering iKala, I can feel that the company is putting emphasis on employee career development. For example, the CDT (Career Development Table) allows new employees to discuss their expectations for work and their personal career development plan with their managers. This way, not only can new employees understand the company's goals and strategies, the management can also know how to allocate resources to help each team member to grow.
In the first few months, a mentor will be assigned to new employees. I am very grateful for my mentor's encouragement, so that I can set higher goals, and continue to challenge myself.
How I Create a Sense of Accomplishment
In addition to improving my skills to maintain KOL relations, I think my best learning so far is "internal communication". We work closely with different teams at KOL Radar, so in the weekly KR meeting, we share the challenges and best practices of cross-departmental communication with each other. Every time when I am reviewing the meeting minutes or the closing report, I can feel that I have grow along the way, and this becomes the motivation for me to move forward.
In the past, I always felt that I was the one being helped. Now I can work independently and I have the opportunity to lead interns. Since I also started as an intern, I can better understand their problems, guide them to ask the questions they have in mind, and think about how to make interns grow from different perspectives.
When it comes to KOL relations professional skills, I can now manage more than 300 influencers within a month, which I can never imagine before joining the team. Furthermore, after working with so many influencers, I develop my own standard operating procedure for managing micro-influencers. The procedure was then endorsed by my manager, and shared among the team. I can really feel a sense of accomplishment with this.
My Suggestions for KOL Relations Enthusiasts
One thing that I love about iKala is its transparency. We can be updated on the company's goal in our weekly team meeting, and the C-Suite also shares the business situation in the bi-weekly TGIF all-hands meeting. I won't feel forced or obsessed, but I make better decisions at work, at the same time stick to the organization's goal.
As a KOL Relations specialist, one should be good at communicating with strangers, because you never know which influencer you are going to face. Therefore, for those who are interested in KOL Relations, I suggest you participate in extracurricular activities, or take part-time jobs and internships beforehand. And for young talents who are interested in influencer marketing and data solutions, I consider the internship at KOL Radar a good opportunity, because you can work with sales, marketing, product, and even the tech team, and you can definitely broaden your horizons.
Join the KOL Relations team: https://ikala.ai/zh-tw/job/kol-radar-kol-relations-specialist-contract-ch/