Kristina Drozd
Kristina Drozd is in her fourth year of ICEF bachelor's programme and successfully combines her studies with managing the customer experience projects at Alfa-Bank. Kristina’s semester-long experience as an exchange student at the University of Bologna had given her unique practice of intercultural communication. In this interview, Kristina shares about why she chose to work in banking, how product managers can benefit from their knowledge of finance, and what makes going on exchange a useful experience.
Finding your place in the world of finance
ICEF has had a great influence on me as a future specialist. It wasn’t long after I became its student that I started to see my direction. As a school student, I had but a vague idea of where I wanted to be professionally – I had no idea what finance people or economists did, nor how to enter the profession. At ICEF, students enjoy the opportunity to do internships and learn more about the industry and possible career options already in their first year. Moreover, ICEF’s core curriculum and range of electives are designed in a way that leads you to understand your strengths and weaknesses rather early. You build your reservoir of knowledge and begin to understand where to move. That was exactly my experience: I was able to discern my best career trajectory already in my first year.
Banking seemed an interesting career even before I entered the programme. Banking was to me an unexposed, intriguing domain that has penetrated into everybody’s daily life – we all use bank cards, we are surrounded by credit card ads, and what connects us to this finance universe is banks. I was curious to know how banking worked. After all, it ‘mysterious’ inner workings have a direct effect on all of us.
At ICEF, when my journey into the realms of finance just began, I discovered there was a connecting link between digital and human worlds
Banks are first and foremost users of the banking products. They create them through a combination of model building and innovations that need to be accumulated in sufficient quantity before they can be molded into a mass product. Once you get full understanding of the chain of actions leading to a particular result within financial system, you get the understanding of how mass products emerge and you start to see where in this chain you can contribute as a professional. This understanding had given me some extra motivation.
Combining work and study
My first experience of working in a bank was in my second year of study, when I joined Otkritie as an intern. Since then, I have been able to set my routine so that I could combine study with job. Many students think it’s difficult, almost impossible. Studying at ICEF is not easy, true, and the standards and study load are high. But, the ability to combine both is, I think, basically a matter of self-discipline and preparedness to live in constant state of lack of time.
The benefit of starting an internship or permanent job while studying is that it puts an end to the question, “Will it worth my effort?” You just go and do it
As a working student, you may find your workplace requiring the skills you haven’t learned yet. I was lucky in this respect because my job tasks, while being purely hands-on, basically complemented the academic competencies I gained at ICEF. When that’s the case, try to make the most of your curriculum by doing courses that you think will boost the skills you’re lacking. ICEF’s programme is quite flexible. Students can build their own learning pathways by taking, alongside their core courses, the electives that will give them skills required in their workplace.
Why product management can be attractive to financial experts
I currently work at Alfa-Bank. I’m in retail and in charge of customer experience projects, specializing on digital channels and anti-fraud protection. It’s a very non-trivial job. About half of my tasks involve research where I first need to identify the cause of a client’s problem and then source possible solutions. The other part of my tasks deals with implementation of the solutions found, which involves interacting with developer teams and marketing department. It’s full cycle product development. When analyzing a function for utility value, I’m trying to see through the eyes of the client.
My bent for product analysis started to shape at Otkritie, where I interned as an analyst. I enjoyed searching for the answers by “breaking to pieces” all existing information for better interpretation. But with pure data analytics, the scope for the implementation of solutions is limited. Banking analysts can’t witness the direct effect of their work, unlike banking product managers. In product track, you use same data and same metrics, but you also use the tools allowing you to really influence your bank’s performance, reputation and customer loyalty.
What skills effective product management requires
Many of the skills I’m using in my job came from my experience. Observing my senior colleagues, it wasn’t hard to tell that the most inspiring of product leaders are multi-skilled people. They are good data managers and analysts – the skills essential to successful start. They are knowledgeable about finance – a prerequisite for any job in banking, in my case product management. And, they understand their customers’ needs and know the market for their products.
The products I am implementing deal directly with banking and finance services, so the training I received at ICEF has proved very useful.
Also, because product management involves communication with many different teams, all highly effective product managers have strong leadership skills. I used to think they were leaders by nature and had this gene of creativity that had turned them into leaders when they were kids. But in reality, communication skills are no different from other skills and can be cultivated and improved through proper communication.
The thing I’ve always liked about ICEF is that apart from learning, it exposes you to people from different backgrounds and thus makes you a better communicator
Good interpersonal communication skills are key to success in any job. Success is largely the product of how well you get along with people. Soft skills are as important in product management as hard skills. A good product manager knows how to manage data, build teamwork, set clear goals and empower. They never stop improving their leadership skills.
Why going on exchange is beneficial
I spent one semester at the University of Bologna and am very happy to have had this opportunity. I’d always wanted to go on exchange. The fact is, when we stay in our habitual environments for too long, we find it difficult to break away from our habitual ways of thinking. We are stuck in our old vision and may overlook alternatives. It always seemed to me that all new, good things get born out of collision of opinions and revealing comparisons in thinking. For me, studying abroad has been a way to experience a new environment and see how it delivers learning, what makes up students’ lives, and how cultural settings alter outlook on life. I was driven by curiosity and desire to explore new ways of thinking, learning and communication. I compared with my previous experience, thinking, “What useful things would I adopt from my previous and current experience to benefit my learning path, if I were to build one?”
There were several reasons why I chose the University of Bologna. One was its set of courses that matched my track at ICEF – mathematics and economics. There were not so many schools among HSE’s partners with programmes that combined both, so my choice soon narrowed to one. Besides, I had long wanted to see Italy and experience its training system – after the amazing feedback from my friends who study there, I wanted to experience it all first-hand.
Taking courses in completely different subject areas has been a curious experience. No two programmes are alike. My programme in Bologna offered hands-on, technical courses I was totally knew to. A wide range of electives is available at ICEF, too. The greater their number, the greater the benefits for students, for there’s always the opportunity to learn something new.
But, my most exciting experience was that of cross-cultural communication. When you meeting new teachers, students, people from around the world, your perception of the world expands. I wasn’t a tourist who came for just one week to enjoy idyll postcard landscape, I was a full-fledged member of the local community. Experiencing a new culture is key to becoming a versatile personality, it teaches to think globally, giving us a more complete picture of the world and the ability to build intercultural relationships. When you get all this when you’re a student, you make better progress as a person and professional.
