Talent spotlight: Our BD manager's journey with HR

With 14 years of experience leading teams, our new Business Development Manager is no stranger to the intricacies and challenges of HR. Shahira Zailani shares her thoughts on helping companies build more effective teams!

Q1. Tell us more about your professional career leading up to TK.

I started as a program executive in the government sector. I handled backend work supporting 5 managers and directors, while also developing a tight relationship with the company’s printer. Whether it was preparing course materials and certificates, setting up workshops, coordinating catering, or even cleaning up after, I didn’t mind at all. I wanted to do well in every task because I believe that to be a great leader, one must lead by example and not be afraid to get their hands dirty too.

During my performance appraisals, my then-boss pointed out multiple times that I am a people person, can be influential and would be great in sales. I laughed in his face every time saying that sales is not for me as I am an introvert and not a con artist! But eventually, I landed myself a sales role without realizing it. During that interview, I turned my interviewer down, saying that I am not the one she is looking for as I am not sales-trained with no sales background.

I learned that sales works only if you are honest, and can be the best job for introverts as you form meaningful relationships. Buyers come first; it is all about serving and helping others by adding value for them. I always enjoy listening to their pain points, then bridge that gap by helping them to be more successful and effective using my products and services, or referring them to others’ products and services. People often aren’t aware that they need your solutions until they learn about how you can help them!

By 30, I was the top BD Manager in APAC for The Conference Board before I moved on to Servcorp that offered the opportunity of wearing multiple hats as a business leader. On top of sales management, my main roles included office operations management, account management, and customer service management, with full P&L responsibility. My good performance during my probation period landed me a transfer to the most unprofitable location, which was slated to be closed down. I took that as a challenge to turn it around. A few months later, we made our first profit, and a year later, it became the company’s flagship and most profitable location in Singapore, despite the pandemic. My team and I worked very hard, and they also achieved their first bonus under my leadership — that was the most rewarding for me, to see my team members reaping the rewards of their hard work as a team.

Q2. Apart from your professional endeavours, what are your passions?

My makeup artist (MUA) journey started from a humble WSQ course. As a believer in first impressions, I joined that course to learn more about putting your best face forward. Post-course, I was invited to join a competition sponsored by Bourjois, and I won it! I then received invitations to makeup competitions sponsored by the likes of Shu Uemura, YSL, and Chanel. I made it to the finals for those. I had no intention to pursue this as a profession but people started requesting rates and availability, so can I say the MUA life chose me? Haha!

I then hustled over the weekends doing hair and makeup for TV productions, blogshops, fashion shows, weddings and other events. I still have a lot to learn because fashion and makeup trends change very quickly! I need to keep up with times and challenge myself further!

Q3. Why specifically TK, when you had many other offers? How do you hope to benefit potential clients?

Very interesting question! Among others that offered me, TK won me over with their professionalism and transparency, and I was very impressed with my candidate experience with them. I learned about our products and services from different interviewers, and the more I learned about TK and the way their business runs, the more I fell in love with TK. Their purpose and business model perfectly aligned with my ethics, principles and beliefs. Many people said I should have gone for this or that offer, but I believed in TK and was committed to their growth.

I’ve had first-hand experience spending many ungodly hours going through hundreds of CVs, qualifying and interviewing candidates, hiring, managing, running performance reviews, and managing team discipline. We didn’t have a HR Manager or HRMS system so I had to wing that role too, on top of strategizing ways to increase revenue for the business. It is true that talent attraction and retention are some of the top things that keep me awake at night. Most conversations with clients often revolve around their team too — whether they are a founder of a new business, a director of an SME, a department head of a government sector or C-suite executive running billion dollar businesses.

To me, a strong supportive team is key to make the dream work. I can’t complete many things on my own within 24 hours. Even though my previous team achieved their bonuses and seemed successful from the outside despite being a lean team, it can be a struggle in many other areas. Are they happy? How do I motivate them as individuals? Are there non-monetary ways to compensate them?

These questions continuously plagued me during my time there.

How do I keep them engaged? Will they leave for the next offer? Are they happy with their succession planning? Are our priorities aligned to the business’s? I don’t like guessing!

So I joined TK to help more people who face similar challenges — especially fast paced, demanding SMEs and businesses with lean teams — streamline recruitment processes, improve talent pipelines, hire the right people, and retain them with the right motivations and succession planning, at a fraction of the cost. Businesses can benefit from the methodologies of top consulting firms with the support of financial grants available from the government. TK doesn’t just come up with a blueprint for your team and leave you to figure it out and do it yourselves — we will go through the implementation process with you to ensure that you will see the change you have always wanted to achieve, but just didn’t have time to as you were busy growing your business. The TK team is dedicated to work very closely with stakeholders to find the root of the problem, customize a solution to ensure that it fits your business needs. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution, after all. We take time to qualify, and customize solutions to ensure quality of results for each project we partake in.

TK practices what they preach! Zanyu and Eugene are very hardworking. They are also respectful and understanding bosses; I want to give back to them and help more businesses succeed. I’m proud to be in a position where I get to serve my purpose to help businesses bridge the gap in their HR, help them save money where possible and grow TK’s business that’s aligned to my ethics, principles and beliefs. I am excited to realize the many opportunities we have in store!

Book a FREE 30-min diagnostic call with Shahira today!

Let her help you understand

What your organisation or business needs
How you can better train, retain your employees, or build a talent pipeline for team expansion
More information on grants and funding support

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Talent spotlight: Our BD manager’s journey with HR