Jani's story | Careers

Jani started working for bp as a student and now, two years later he is the leader of two teams, managing 10 people.

When Jani applied for a position at bp in 2018, he was a bioengineering student in the city of Szeged.

Due to my studies, I didn’t think about building a career in the shared service industry, but a friend of mine was working for bp at the time and kept on telling me about how good the company was.

She convinced him to apply, and eventually he started out as a business support representative for the invoicing department of the Marine industry. Since then he had a rather exciting and eventful career journey.

From business support representative to team lead

In his entry level position, as a business support representative in the invoicing team, he had to learn how to generate, send and correct invoices.

In this team, we are essentially correcting and generating invoices. Performing these activities, we are supporting the marine business, which is about delivering lubricants for sea carrier and transporting companies. We are working together with sales colleagues, the order management team, fulfilment, finance and even with tax advisors in some regions.

After spending half a year in this team, he became the lead business support representative, whose responsibility is to coordinate the operative side of the work, handle escalations and support the team lead, who is their direct superior. A few months into his promotion, the position of the team lead suddenly became vacant. Jani applied for it and got selected, so he became a team lead at the age of 23.

People management is a life-long learning

When asked about the route to his success, Jani says, that there is no „secret recipe”.

My situation was very special. For me to become a team lead at such a young age, many stars aligned. We can say, I was at the right place at the right time; I was motivated and participated in plenty of projects where I could learn a lot – these circumstances enabled me to bring out the best of myself with hard work.

Jani emphasized that bp has an environment where one can develop themselves, try themselves out in many areas and receive the support needed for it, as well as resources to relevant educational materials. Of course, being a team lead at such a young age has its challenges.

People management is a life-long learning, it cannot really be taught. You need skills and motivation but also life experience. It is also challenging from confidence point of view. It’s a constant question to myself whether I’m doing a good job, but luckily I always get developmental feedback from my managers and my peers.

As the leader of invoicing, he has been working together closely with the fulfillment team. By now, he became their team lead as well. This means that the number of people under his management expanded.

Now as a leader of a team of 10, besides making sure the operations are running smoothly, I also have to put more focus on the performance management of individuals, and to keep up with the necessary administrative tasks. The role of a team lead is very complex, the essence of it is that the type of management should be aligned with the dynamics of the team.

If you would like to join bp as well, take a look at our open positions here and apply to the one that suits you the best!