Marin Marinov, Chief Sales & Services Officer at Do IT Wise: We want people to thrive at work and come to work with joy

To learn more about Do IT Wise and the job opportunities it offers, we spoke to Marin Marinov, Chief Sales & Services Officer at the company. He is an executive with 20+ years of experience in the IT and consulting services industry. Coming out of a computer science and software engineering background, where he was influential in establishing several teams delivering innovative software solutions, he transited to building highly performant sales, professional services, and consulting businesses. Before joining Do IT Wise, he spent 10 years in HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he last lead HPE Software consulting business across 27 countries in EMEA, his team helping numerous enterprises transition the way they operate. Marin’s mission in Do IT Wise is to help the business and the team scale, creating one of the leading digital transformation professional services ServiceNow partners in the world. He enjoys helping business and people discover their potential and grow beyond what they thought was possible.

You joined Do IT Wise more than 3 years ago. What were your first impressions at the company? How has the company changed in the past 3 years since you joined?

Joining Do IT Wise, I found a relatively small team, roughly 30 people, young people: very dynamic, very motivated, very much technology-oriented, they were mainly coming from a computer science and programming background and they were very much vested into helping our customers with the technology we integrate. I was coming from Hewlett Packard with 10 years of experience in consulting, so my mission was really to help the company grow beyond this size and scale rapidly. We brought many experienced people who had more of a business focus and acumen as well as IT but in transformational consulting, helping IT companies go around their business strategy. We started creating a mixture of very different cultures and very different levels of experience from different angles which was and still is a very interesting process. Three years later, I hope that all of the people who are at the company are enjoying the opportunity to learn. I would say for us it is a constant learning experience, we work with a lot of different customers, helping them change the way they work. This is the core of our business. Now the company is three times the original size, works in a completely different market than the beginning and I think it is opening a lot of opportunities for each of the team members to grow and I hope we were able to create this environment. This is the main goal and this is still the mission.

What is it like to work at Do IT Wise? What does your typical workday look like?

First, I would say that the atmosphere at Do IT Wise is very friendly and informal and we are trying to keep it like this. While we are of course putting a little bit more structure which is natural when the company grows, we are trying to keep this spirit of friendship where you can come to everyone in a totally informal way, ask for help, suggest ideas.

My typical workday probably differs a bit from the other people’s typical workdays because my goal is to help all the teams scale. It is a combination of strategical activities around business planning, around strategic sales, etc. down to being available to the different groups to support them on their daily lives. It is very dynamic, starts in the morning, ends in the evening, and especially last year, it is a zoom talk to zoom talk, back to back, mainly communicating with either the external stakeholders – the partners and the customers – or the internal teams. It is mainly communication for me. But I am a bit of an exception to the rest. The typical day of an employee at Do IT Wise would be that they would start with a daily with a team they work with on customer engagement, so they would have 15 to 30 minutes to sync up on daily activities. And then, they would be involved either with implementation activities or workshops with customers or jump on learning opportunities they are executing on their pathway.

What do you enjoy the most about working at Do IT Wise?

The biggest personal enjoyment I have is that I am helping both the company and our customers and our own teammates to grow beyond what they think is possible. I enjoy balancing the situation so we can put the teams, the company but also the customers a bit out of their comfort zones -- still in a healthy space -- where they can achieve more. And really, the opportunity to communicate with motivated people who are ready to take on some challenges, ready to take on the extra step. We work with top accounts across Europe, typically the leaders in their verticals. It is not an easy task for a Bulgarian company with 100 people to position and to compete with the big consulting companies. We take pride each time they chose us and our vision. And we are proud of ourselves when we can bring a positive change for them in the way they work daily. And with doing this, we help our own people grow. This is what really brings fulfillment to my day.  

What should the AUBG students expect after they become part of the company? What are the career growth opportunities?

To answer this, I need to tell you a bit more about what we are doing. We are a mixture of business and technology oriented people, and our mission is to help our customers transform the way they work. What is happening now in the world is the digital transformation, a lot of businesses are investing more and more in IT which was accelerated with the pandemics, enabling the remote workspace and automating business processes. In this journey, these companies need partners who can help them with the technology to transform the landscape but also partners who can understand the business they have and help them optimize it.

In our company we have diverse roles but mainly we have people who are focused on helping transform the business processes of a customer, meaning their understanding, the process, the organization, the way it is being executed, which is classical consulting transformational job like the job the big ones – Accenture, Deloitte and the others -- are doing. Then that we have people who are automating and implementing these processes on top of ServiceNow technology, one of the leading platforms worldwide.

What we search for, and why we focused on the American University in Bulgaria is because we believe that you guys have students that are not only interested in technology but you are also providing a lot of business context. We are searching for people who want to experience what it is to work for a big company, they are curious to understand different industries. For example, for a few months you might be working with us with one of the biggest automotive companies, the next few months with one of the biggest banks in Europe. So when a person like this comes, he or she will be going to Enablement which is both on the consultant side of the story and the technology. The Enablement is a combination of remote trainings – some of them are with instructors, some of them are video-based, there are lab exercises where they can train initially in a secure environment. Then you start being assigned to projects, we call it “shadowing” as lots of other companies do, where you are working behind some of the more senior people, you are not initially exposed to the customer, and you see how things are being done in real life. As a next step you start taking your own tasks and activities with customers, and grow further in your role. Depending on whether you are more technology-keen on consultant-keen, if you prefer to stay in the background or are more interested in customer-facing roles, we have different positions in the company that would be the right fit for you.

What advice would you give to the AUBG students on successfully preparing for a job interview at Do IT Wise? What kind of people are you looking for to join your team?

What I would advise them – and I do not want it to sound clichéd – but be yourself. In all our interviews we are asking the candidates what makes them happy, what they want to do, what they want to achieve, and these are sincere questions. We really want to build a group of people that really are thriving at work and come with joy to work and they see a future in what they are doing with the company. The best way to achieve this is really, to be yourself, to be very open about what you know and what you don’t know, what you want to focus on, even what you are wondering about. In this stage of your life it is normal to not really know what you really want and for you to want to explore. The best thing you can do is be open – it also help you to reflect on where you want to go. We will be happy to consult you even if during the interview we understand that we are not the right fit for each other. Come positive, come open, and let’s have a discussion. You don’t need to do anything upfront to prepare. Of course, it helps to follow the best practices – check the company, check the profile of the company, check what they are doing. But this is just for you to feel where you might be heading to.