Michal Gabris

How did you pick your career? Did you know all along?

I ended up working in IT for the company Dell. When i was in high school i wasn't interested in IT at all. The change came during my university years. I was planing on doing PhD in Artificial Intelligence because i loved Matrix ;-) That movie got me thinking about the possible outcomes of technologies, where will mankind be lets say in 50 or 100 years. At the end i didn't apply to the PhD program but ended up working in IT company (DELL) instead. How that came to be is that at the end of my studies i was contemplating 2 possible paths, IT or career in tourism business (instead of PhD in AI a was thinking about it that i will start study Chinese like my cousin did). What made me interested in IT and what still does is that its practical and useful for our daily lives. After 11 years in IT i don't regret my choice. All the cool stuff our customers are doing with our products its just very inspiring. IT is very multicultural, thats what i like and not very rigid. We are pretty informal company as most IT companies are. Its mostly fun to be at work. Good luck

When you were a student, did you do anything outside of school to build skills or get knowledge that has helped your career?

Hi there yes i was working during my university years in my country and abroad during summer vacation periods. Work during your studies is useful, one learns stuff and earns money as well ;-)

In layperson terms, what do you actually do at work?

I'm Online Business Manager at Dell for German market in Global Segment = Biggest Dell customers like Volkswagen, BMW, Bayer... Together with a colleague we are responsible for online business with this customers (some 900 accounts altogether). She is external (visits them on site) and i am internal (speak with them via phone). We have some 40 internal sales makers + 40 external sales makers who we work with closely and try to move new customers online + keep the already online customers ordering more online. Our target is to outperform offline business in growth. How one does it is by analyzing sales makers portfolios, looking for potential new customers and room for improvement with old ones. We have multiple tools at our disposal, local pages + global pages + B2B connections that are the platforms we use for online ordering.