Life as a Vodafone grad and running our Youth Connect community in 2024!

I joined the Vodafone Business Discover Graduate Program in September 2022. I did two six-month rotations before I went into my final one-year rotation in Carrier Sales, in Vodafone Business International. This was my favourite rotation as I was able to meet and work with our customers, which I hadn't experienced before. 

I have now offboarded the graduate scheme into my new role in Carrier Sales as a Sales Specialist, which is great news because I love the work, and the team! I have also been the 2024 Chair of Youth Connect, our Global Youth Community at Vodafone, encompassing over 20,000 of our youths across the world. The aims of the community are to empower youth in their career and personal development, connect youth across the world, and to support Global HR with the attraction and retention of Vodafone's present and future talents.

Me and Vodafone so far

My first six-month rotation was as Spirit Lead in HR, responsible for all things culture and engagement. I enjoyed having this as my first rotation because it allowed me to really understand the company from an internal perspective. I got to undertake many creative projects - my favourite was presenting to the CEO of Vodafone Business on our Spirit Plan! 

My next six-month rotation was as a Junior Product Manager in the Automotive Team. I worked on bringing vehicle tracking devices to market which allowed me to learn about product launches in depth.  I then went into my final rotation, which was 12 months, and realised this area was where I wanted to be.

What I'm looking forward to most in my new role is to take on even more responsibility with our customers. I have really enjoyed assisting with customer meetings but what I'd like to work on now is having meetings of my own. I'm excited to learn more and to learn fast in the next couple of months so that I am fully equipped with the knowledge and skills to take on my own customers.

Youth Connect

The Youth Connect community is led by a leadership team who are all youths at different stages of their careers (e.g. recently offboarded a youth program, apprentice, graduate etc). Essentially Youth Connect is #ForYouthByYouth. 

One of our biggest achievements this year was inviting our Vodafone UK Wimbledon ambassadors, Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu, to talk to us about being very successful tennis players. The thought of interviewing famous people was super nerve-wracking at first, but they were both so down to earth! It was really interesting to hear about their challenges, wins and also their hopes and dreams for beyond their tennis careers. I enjoyed pushing myself outside of my comfort zone and learned a lot from it. It was also great to receive positive feedback from them and our youth audience - an all-round success!

We also conducted a great session with our then newly appointed CEO, Margherita, which was virtual so all markets could join. My main goal when becoming Chair was to host her, and take the opportunity to bring her together with our youth, as I had heard her talk about how they were the future of Vodafone. I knew this audience was important to her.

I wanted to create a space where we could learn from her, be inspired and also for her to address us specifically with any key messages she had. As a youth, it can feel difficult to interact with senior leaders, so I wanted to show them that leaders want to talk to us and that it's not so intimidating. I spent a long time filling out a business case to have Margherita as a speaker, and before I knew it her team accepted and we had a date! 

Sharing a stage with our CEO

It was funny because I only actually met Margherita for the first time a few minutes before we went live, so I was very nervous! Fortunately, in those two minutes that we had, she completely put me at ease so that I was confident and ready for the event. It ended up feeling like a chat more than an interview, which is exactly what I wanted. We had lots of questions and audience interaction too, which was amazing.

Margherita placed a lot of emphasis on how we as youth are key to Vodafone's future. She repeated the phrase 'I need you', saying that she needed our help in achieving her goals for Vodafone overall. It was really nice to hear that especially as a newly appointed CEO, she recognised our importance within the company. I also appreciated how she was very transparent and honest about her own challenges navigating the world of work as a young woman. It was refreshing to hear that she also went through similar challenges to us and how she overcame them to get to where she is today. She told us to be bold, embrace challenges as learning opportunities and to always be curious! It was overall a very inspiring session.

Looking ahead at Vodafone

What I’ve been enjoying most about Youth Connect is definitely the people. As Chair, I have wanted to make sure the team is chatty and friendly, not just people who work together on a transactional basis.

Youth Connect is completely voluntary and on the side of your day job, so it was really important to me that people looked forward to our weekly meetings. I worked really hard to bring people together, get to know everyone on a one-to-one basis, and make meetings fun. I really enjoyed seeing people grow individually in confidence, and also together as friends. We were all based across the world but many of us actually met during our holidays in different countries. I was proud to be able to create a team that wanted to reach out to others when they went on holiday.

As for learnings, I have definitely become more confident and bold. I used to be a lot quieter, and I still am, but I have definitely improved on this which is a big step for me! I have also learned a lot about working with different types of people from all over the world, which is a really cool experience to have.

I’m excited about my future here. I am looking forward to attending more industry and customer events, both in the UK and hopefully abroad at one point. I'm also looking forward to taking on extra projects outside of my day job - I want to understand other areas of the department and learn even more new things!