The origins: Susan grew up and studied Computing in Malaysia. Once she graduated, she forayed into the world of recruitment by joining an executive search firm as a support consultant.

After 2 years, she took a sabbatical to come to the UK to pursue a master degree at Portsmouth University. Her intent to return to Malaysia upon graduating was dwarfed when Susan was invited for a job interview and a week later accepted an offer as first-line technical support for evolve™ recruitment software at FCP Internet.

17 years later, evolve™ is no more, but Susan still works for the same company (now Ikiru People) where she has held a variety of positions and worked on multiple products such as GatedTalent and now Talentis Executive Search CRM.

CURRENT RESPONSIBILITIES

 – Product manager for Talentis

• Building relationships with clients – providing support, gathering information and feedback, understanding requirements
• Collaborating with colleagues in training, support, and sales to understand user needs
• Working with stakeholders and solutions groups to review, plan and negotiate a product roadmap
• Carrying our proof of concept
• Writing up feature requests
• Managing and prioritising the product backlog
• Collaborating with UI/UX, development team, and internal and external stakeholders from planning through to the development cycle to ensure Talentis delivers the product objectives within the given timescales
• Talentis product testing

 – Technical Support for GatedTalent

• Onboarding of GatedTalent Executive Search clients (FileFinder/GatedTalent integrations)
• Providing support to Executives who are GatedTalent members and Executive Recruiter clients

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT SUSAN

Susan has kept ferrets for 17 years and currently has 14 of her own. She often helps with fostering rescued ferrets and spends most summer weekends volunteering with the ferret club running ferret racing events, raising money for ferret rescues, and promoting ferret welfare at county fairs. When not volunteering, you would find Susan traveling up and down the country competing at ferret shows.

Another hobby is drawing pet portraits. Covid-19 lockdown created a perfect opportunity for Susan to follow her life-long dream of drawing. She picked up a pencil, learned to draw from scratch, and hasn’t stopped since.

Susan also loves taxidermy. Together with a couple of work colleagues, she attended an introductory taxidermy course, where they stuffed a squirrel and a weasel. This is not for everybody, but it was a lot of fun and wasn’t gory at all.

SUSAN’S FAVOURITE THINGS

Besides ferrets, Susan is a foodie who will travel far to sample good grub. She is also not ashamed to admit that she still loves Westlife after 20 years of supporting them!