At some point, I hit a routine… again. I felt like I could do more, but I couldn’t quite see the path forward. Around me, I kept noticing big corporations expanding their footprint in Romania – huge names, the kind you read about in the headlines. Yet there I was, stuck in the same loop, unsure what was next for me.
Then came a simple invite: a beer with my former manager from the German bank. I thought nothing of it, just a casual catch-up. But it turned out to be so much more.
That evening, between sips of beer and stories, he offered me the chance to help him build a big tech center for a Big Four company in Romania. Honestly, I didn’t even know they were doing tech. In my mind, they were all about accounting, audit, maybe some consulting. I thought “tech” there meant installing Windows updates and patching servers. Boy, was I wrong.
I accepted the offer. And this moment opened my eyes to something fundamental: networking matters. You don’t always move forward because of a CV, an interview or a job posting. Sometimes it’s about the people you’ve worked with, the trust you’ve built and the conversations that happen when you least expect them.
Leadership, I’ve learned, isn’t just about what you know or what you do. It’s about the relationships you nurture along the way.