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Madis Vaelja
Head of Marketing and Communication
bei AIESEC
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“Inbetween I discovered my passion towards entrepreneurship and leading a team.” Nowadays Madis Vaelja works as Head of Marketing at AIESEC. What he likes most about his job? “When you see people apply to an organization based on a campaign that you organized.” His advice? “Travel more and be more open-minded towards other cultures. You can learn from them!”

Transkript

Wer bist du und was machst du?

My name is Madis Vaelja. On my business card it says “Head of marketing management.”

Worum geht’s in deiner Lehre?

My job handles all the members in AIESEC in terms of their own personal development inside the organization. In terms of marketing, my goal is for our events, our bigger international events, our products, like volunteering or internships abroad or even membership or being a leader in the organization. I'm responsible for finding these members among students inside of all of the universities in Austria. So my goal is to communicate in a way, how students actually like to hear about this. Also what we can provide from an organization side. So about two products that I'm handling marketing for is external events, like you've to business where a lot of students around Vienna in this example come for one event that I'm responsible and organizing a team take care of it. Then there are internships abroad. I go to the internship department and think if I was them, “okay how to approach to rinse for internship that they like for 6 months go abroad.” Or then there's a smaller going abroad that we have, is volunteering abroad that are also with that department and there I just clusterize for products instead of one big one that would confuse the students. In a 2 month I'm spending six weeks in Vienna inside the office. 1 week in Vienna going around our local offices, we have the two major offices here. Then all around Austria we have five other offices that I visit once every two months. So for one week, I will be traveling around Gratz, Linz, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck and Salzburg visit all of their offices, see how they're doing how the promotion is going, how their current feeling is, how well they understand the product and how prepared they are for the next quarter for the next promotion period.

Wie bist du zu dieser Lehre gekommen?

I was born in Estonia and spent most of my life there. I was first in a science space in gymnasium and from there I graduated in to our IT department in my hometown University. In between I had a a job as a system analysist in Estonia for the biggest IT company we have there. In between I’ve discovered more of my passion towards entrepreneurship, towards leading a team, managing other people. From the side I saw that actually this is something I would enjoy myself more in, in task oriented position in the organization. Then I transferred to an other university, a technical university where I studied business IT. I started at AIESEC four years ago, march 2010. I was a team lead for 2 months, then I was marketing manager for international events for half a year. During that period I’ve also became the marketing manager of AIESEC Estionia for 1 year, from june 2011 to june 2012. After two years in AIESEC I’ve discovered that being only in my country I can’t get enough relevant global experience with different nationalities. To get the full picture even in Europe, you need to travel further. In may last year I came to Austria as a marketing manager, and that’s my current position until next June.

Welche Eigenschaften sollte man mitbringen?

Personal skills and talent with past experiences are a good bonus to start in the organization in a concrete position. I think the magic of our department is no matter of the background, if you you’re say willing to do the job and you're willing to be educated on how the job should be done then you can still do it. We will provide the personal education from the ground u, until the highest level possible, as long as the person is interested to learn.

Was ist das Coolste an deiner Lehre?

The last campaign I worked on is a 3 months old campaign called seven reasons why not to join AIESEC. Because of the negative approach towards joining an organization. It's really hard to rephrase this, we did it in English, in German, it took 3 months and once the design and everything, the product is packaged and you have the poster in your hand. Then you finally see your 3 months of work in your hand. That's the greatest moment. The next greatest moment is when you see people applying to the organization based in the campaign that you organized.

Was ist die größte Herausforderung?

Only thing that really is limiting me, is my chance to go to all of the cool conferences AIESEC offers in other countries around the world. It is because there's like two conferences per day in some point in the world. Of course if you're in the higher management there's not so many conference you can go to because there's no meaning for it. There is more opportunities right now than I can take. So that's kind of my restriction that I need to be here and not only to go to conference to other countries.

Der wichtigste Ratschlag in deinem Leben… ?

Pay more attention what they teach you in the gymnasium. Travel more! Be more open-minded towards other cultures and nationalities because you can learn a lot from them.

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