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The decision that changed the course of my life
I was a semester away from graduating and being thrown into the corporate world when I chanced upon the GII program. I jumped at the opportunity and landed myself in a marketing internship with a Silicon Valley backed startup, Workstream. Who knew that this was the turning point for me in my career?

While interning at Silicon Valley, I had the opportunity to meet with many inspirational individuals. I used Linkedin and connected with professionals in the marketing scene as well as the company’s target audience, even meeting up with them physically. Being on the ground and having conversations with your clients and your customers are super important in order for you to build a product that isn’t just about what your vision is, but something that people want and will pay for.

At the end of my academic semester, I was offered a position and decided to join the Workstream team as a full-time remote marketer based out of Singapore
 

A day in the life of a Workstreamer
Workstream is a fully-remote team. I am one who enjoys planning my day out ahead. I started my full-time role thinking that I could spend some time in the gym every morning, whip out some lunch to bring out and settle down in SMU’s co-working space by 9am. Truth is, none of my plans pulled through.

Instead, I often start my day waking up just in time for a cup of tea to kickstart morning meetings with the team in San Francisco. Thereafter, jumping into a warm bath just to wake myself up and hop on the bus to SMU to start my day. Being in a time zone that is almost the complete opposite of the core team simply means that we function like a tag team. Many times, I wake up getting bombarded by emails and messages on Slack.

I tend to prioritize the tasks that were assigned by the US team so that I can make use of the minimal amount of overlap time we have to have back and forth discussions. After clearing the task my (now asleep) team have passed to me, I can finally get around to my day to day responsibilities which includes searching for PR / thought-leadership opportunities on HARO, fixing infrastructure bugs on our website, planning our content calendar for our blog, conducting mini interviews with reputable influencers in US, SEO auditing and optimization, creating new website pages etc.

Being in a remote team allows me to take quality breaks when I can – this basically means I get to have as many ice cream and snacks run in a day as long as I get what has to be done before the core team wakes up. This gives me the flexibility of working during my most productive hours instead of forcing myself to sit through a food coma without getting anything accomplished.

On the other hand, remote working requires a ton of discipline and mental strength to pull through the loneliness of working alone (but thankfully I have a small group of constants who I work with from SMU’s co-working space). Remote working also means that you’re not necessarily off the clock at 6pm just like everyone else. Sometimes we have meetings at night to cater to the different time zones.

I have to say that I am thankful for finding a job that I love, find meaning in, while having the flexibility to be working at my most productive hours.

Written by Desirene Neo (right in main photo)