Product manager, Responsible Gaming, IMS
An Unexpected Opportunity:
In the end of 2021, I, like millions of people around the world review their year and set new goals for themselves. Otherwise, known as new year’s promises. This time mine included an idea I had toyed around with a long time, and contacted my Business Analysis professor at the University – would you need any practitioners to help teach in the spring semester?
To my surprise, I got a menu to choose from on how to participate ranging from giving a guest lecture to starting in the Doctoral program.
After some consideration, I landed in the middle and accepted a teaching assistant position at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Computer Science. My tasks included preparing and conducting seminars, guiding the course project group work and grading said papers at the end of the semester.
To my own surprise, I continued my contract for the next semester… and then another 3 semesters, coming to a total of 2 years of teaching young Business Analysts.
Key Takeaways
Of course, after a while I rearranged my duties to a more manageable level (reading 16 15-page papers during one night will make one reevaluate their commitment), but the seminars remained.
Here are some unexpected and expected benefits I gained during these years:
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Building a new recruitment channel for Playtech: I built a recruiting funnel for Analyst roles for Playtech. Seminars are most interesting when they are about something the seminar conductor is passionate about. I am passionate about my work in Playtech, so naturally, some of the seminars had case studies from Responsible gaming domain. This apparently made an impression on quite a few students over time. I have lost count on how many of my students I now call my colleagues.
- The power of collective action: To get out of having to talk at every seminar myself, I started inviting Playtech colleagues as guests, introducing the various roles that perform different parts of business analysis. One semester I really got into cold e-mailing and managed to invite several cool product people from Estonian tech companies to the seminars. I think this was even more awesome experience for me that for the students.
Receiving 5 peer reviews in Leapsome? Try receiving 60+ reviews by students! Fortunately they were pretty happy with me – just not the ones who had obviously cheated on their assignments.
Call to action: Exploring an unusual and rewarding pathway to professional development!
Looking for a challenge – teaching certainly is one, but it is also rewarding. I encourage every professional to try it out at a smaller or slightly bigger scale at some point. It will refresh your own understanding of the basics and broaden your horizons.
