Interview: Vincent Olivers

Short introduction about yourself: where are you originally from, in what Milestone office are you working, what is your area of expertise…
My name is Vincent Olivers, I am 26 years old and originally from The Netherlands. My journey with Milestone started during my master’s degree in Copenhagen. Here, I worked as a student assistant and eventually transitioned into a full-time role based out of Melbourne, Australia. My area of expertise is within the field of business intelligence and data analytics, applied on two of the most pivotal departments in companies: sales & finance.

When I graduated for my master’s, I was not yet sure when and where to kickstart my career. What I did know, was that I wanted to travel first and explore a different part of the world: Australia. Since my visa gave me work rights too, my first thought was to check if it would be possible to work for the APAC office in a temporary part-time analyst role. Due to the Milestone connections, I built up previously, this all worked out. Even better, I got offered a full-time Business Analyst position 6 months in. As I really started to like both my personal and work life in Australia, I did not hesitate to take this amazing opportunity. Another 6 months later, I switched to a global role reporting back to the Sales Insights team, which was the same team I was part of during my student assistant period. I am now really satisfied with my job as it allows me to support the APAC region while still making global impact through larger Sales Insights projects

As working for a global team involves a thorough understanding of regional markets, ways of working, and employee needs, my time in APAC has taught me a lot. It confirmed that to find out what is needed by our stakeholders, being physically present in the regions is a massive advantage. More specifically, sharing a relatively small office with salespeople is very helpful for my job as it reduces the barrier to talk to the people where you do all the work for. Furthermore, I gained a lot of cultural knowledge as the APAC region contains a very diverse set of countries and thus people, who all have different ways of working.

I’d strongly recommend a career at Milestone as it offers you huge opportunities for both professional and personal development. Not only due to career development in general and global mobility (as my story suggests), but also because of its people-first culture. This culture creates a supportive environment where employees are not just a number and where their wellbeing is backed by various initiatives. On top of that, employees have a personal training budget which can be used for workshops, courses, etc. to further develop themselves into an area of interest. Another enormous strength is the Milestone product and the company’s mission. As an employee, you really feel you are contributing to making the world see, whether that means protecting assets and people or optimizing business process for greater efficiency. All of this together makes Milestone a great place to work.