{"id":28781,"date":"2020-06-22T12:42:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T10:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/?p=28781"},"modified":"2022-01-27T13:21:43","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T11:21:43","slug":"eu-alumnus-mathieu-serres-ibm-program-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumnus-mathieu-serres-ibm-program-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Alumnus Mathieu Serres, IBM Program Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">EU alumnus&nbsp;Mathieu&nbsp;Serres&nbsp;is originally from&nbsp;Carcassonne&nbsp;in&nbsp;the South of France. Following a recent promotion,&nbsp;he now lives&nbsp;in Morocco&nbsp;and works&nbsp;with <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/uk-en\" target=\"_blank\">IBM<\/a> as a Program Manager.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mathieu&nbsp;saw&nbsp;his career take off&nbsp;after completing his MBA at EU Business School. He has worked at IBM offices in Bucharest,&nbsp;Paris&nbsp;and Geneva, steadily acquiring greater responsibility. He credits his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/en\/Programs\/MBA\/mba-programs.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">MBA at EU Business School<\/a> for his initial employment at IBM,&nbsp;as well as for his&nbsp;considerable&nbsp;career&nbsp;progression.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A&nbsp;driven person&nbsp;with&nbsp;ambitious career goals,&nbsp;Mathieu has&nbsp;also&nbsp;been teaching himself to play the piano and speaks three&nbsp;languages:&nbsp;French, Romanian and English. Aside from&nbsp;career-associated relocations, he&nbsp;has also lived in Germany and India.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mathieu told us about his&nbsp;work at IBM, his&nbsp;experience at EU Business School and how his MBA&nbsp;is helping&nbsp;his career dreams come true.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Can you tell us about your career journey, following your MBA?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After my MBA I moved to Romania to work with a friend there, but I was not happy in&nbsp;the&nbsp;job&nbsp;and&nbsp;applied to&nbsp;work at&nbsp;IBM.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My first&nbsp;position&nbsp;at IBM was in&nbsp;Bucharest&nbsp;as a Project Management Officer&nbsp;(PMO), an entry level&nbsp;support and administration&nbsp;role. In the second year&nbsp;I was put on a project working alongside six others, still with the same title but with more responsibility. The project manager was often absent so&nbsp;I had the&nbsp;chance to show what I&nbsp;could do.&nbsp;It&nbsp;can be really challenging in big organizations to find an opportunity to show what you\u2019re capable of,&nbsp;so I was&nbsp;lucky. I&nbsp;got experience working&nbsp;directly with the client and on financial forecasts, which I&nbsp;then sent&nbsp;to the project CFO in Paris.&nbsp;The client really liked my&nbsp;work,&nbsp;so I was given greater responsibility.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After two years&nbsp;at&nbsp;IBM Romania, I wanted to leave the country&nbsp;but&nbsp;not&nbsp;IBM. I felt like two&nbsp;years&nbsp;was not enough and I could&nbsp;gain more experience,&nbsp;because when you\u2019re in such a big&nbsp;organization&nbsp;it takes a lot of time just to&nbsp;understand&nbsp;how everything works.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I applied&nbsp;to IBM offices all over the&nbsp;world;&nbsp;Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, and they took me in Poland, in the small city of Wroclaw.&nbsp;But&nbsp;just as&nbsp;I was about to sign the contract, my manager in Paris, the finance manager, said she wanted me to come to Paris to do the financial forecasts for bigger projects. I signed my contract with IBM Paris officially&nbsp;as&nbsp;a&nbsp;project manager, but in fact doing more financial forecast tasks&nbsp;and working on big projects that meant I had visibility to people high up in IBM management.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After a year, having found and trained someone to replace me, I moved&nbsp;over&nbsp;to&nbsp;the delivery side of the&nbsp;business, which involved regular travel to IBM Morocco.&nbsp;And after a year and a half in the role,&nbsp;managing a team of 35 people&nbsp;including project managers,&nbsp;testers&nbsp;and analysts, I decided I wanted to move again. The project director I worked with in Paris was moving to&nbsp;Switzerland&nbsp;and said if I went there too, there would be a job for me.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was exciting to be involved from the start of an important&nbsp;new project.&nbsp;In Geneva I was responsible for setting up the project management tools and processes for a new contract that involved outsourcing the IT system for a new client, a private bank.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recently I moved again, back to the IBM offices in Casablanca. Having come so far in my career, it\u2019s&nbsp;exciting&nbsp;to know that after my next promotion I&nbsp;could&nbsp;be reporting directly to the Country Manager.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>How&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>do you approach project management?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At IBM,&nbsp;when&nbsp;a&nbsp;project manager receives a project it\u2019s already been sold by&nbsp;someone in&nbsp;sales to the client. That means&nbsp;there is a contract, sometimes 200 pages long,&nbsp;containing all&nbsp;the details the&nbsp;project manager&nbsp;needs.&nbsp;If you\u2019re lucky,&nbsp;you start on a project before it&nbsp;begins so there\u2019s time to go through the details and confirm anything that\u2019s unclear with the commercial team, to make sure you are familiar with exactly what the client wants.&nbsp;And this is very important&nbsp;so that you can&nbsp;set expectations with the client of how the project will run, and what&nbsp;you&nbsp;each need to do to make&nbsp;it&nbsp;happen.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What essential qualities&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>do you need to be a good<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;a project manager?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, you need to be a good listener. This will enable you&nbsp;to effectively cope with the number of emails you receive, the number of meetings, to understand what the client needs and&nbsp;listen to&nbsp;ideas from your team.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You also need to be organized so that when you\u2019re working on a big projects with lots of different parts and delivery dates,&nbsp;you\u2019re not stressed but&nbsp;able to&nbsp;create&nbsp;and follow&nbsp;a clear plan to make sure it all gets delivered.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What is the hardest project you have worked on in your career so far?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Paris, the project I worked on involved managing a&nbsp;technical IT team and I do not have any hard IT skills or training. When members of my team would come to me with a problem, I had to ask someone else for help.&nbsp;There were specialists at IBM who supported me&nbsp;on these tricky technical aspects of the project,&nbsp;but&nbsp;I did not feel comfortable. When there was a conflict between the client and someone in my team I couldn\u2019t help because I couldn\u2019t check the code myself.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What was the most fun you<\/strong><strong>\u2019<\/strong><strong>ve had working on a project?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The most fun I\u2019ve had on a project was during&nbsp;my second year at IBM when I was the PMO on a project&nbsp;in Bucharest.&nbsp;We had&nbsp;a project in Paris to deliver and we didn\u2019t have the skills required within IBM, so we hired six people who could do the work but none of them spoke French. In two&nbsp;weeks\u2019&nbsp;time&nbsp;we had to go to Paris to speak with the client, in French.&nbsp;So,&nbsp;they had classes&nbsp;for four hours a day plus an hour with me practicing conversation, going very fast so that they could get used to it.&nbsp;That was very fun and then&nbsp;all seven of us&nbsp;went&nbsp;to&nbsp;Paris for two weeks,&nbsp;came back&nbsp;to Romania for&nbsp;two weeks&nbsp;and&nbsp;then&nbsp;went back again&nbsp;for&nbsp;two weeks&nbsp;to&nbsp;France.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mathieu-Serres-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28786\" width=\"756\" height=\"502\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you take seven people&nbsp;who&nbsp;don\u2019t know each other, who&nbsp;just started&nbsp;at&nbsp;the same company at the same time and put them together in a hotel in France, you have a team.&nbsp;It&nbsp;was the best team building we could have&nbsp;had; the team&nbsp;worked&nbsp;fluently&nbsp;because&nbsp;we&nbsp;knew each other so well.&nbsp;It was a very, very good time,&nbsp;and&nbsp;we\u2019re still friends and going to each other\u2019s weddings!&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What traits do you look for when choosing members of your team?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I look for someone who is&nbsp;smart,&nbsp;a&nbsp;fast learner and&nbsp;who is&nbsp;not afraid of going out of their comfort zone;&nbsp;someone flexible.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What was your favorite thing about studying at EU?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The&nbsp;guest speakers. Before I was at EU I was at university and&nbsp;the learning&nbsp;was only theoretical, but at EU,&nbsp;the teachers&nbsp;worked&nbsp;for big companies or were&nbsp;entrepreneurs;&nbsp;you could see that they were very experienced.&nbsp;So that was great, but the guest speakers were something else.&nbsp;You&nbsp;got to hear&nbsp;all&nbsp;about&nbsp;their job&nbsp;and&nbsp;the&nbsp;industry, which as a student who&nbsp;is unsure&nbsp;what&nbsp;career&nbsp;direction&nbsp;they want to go in was&nbsp;really amazing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What advice would you give to students who want to start a career in project management&nbsp;or work for a big multinational like IBM?<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Don\u2019t be afraid to move. I had more opportunities because I started outside of my home country. If you are Spanish working in Spain, or German working in Germany, you&nbsp;have to&nbsp;find&nbsp;something else&nbsp;to differentiate yourself.&nbsp;If you are French in the UK and there are some jobs where you need to speak French or you&nbsp;need to&nbsp;know the&nbsp;culture, you have&nbsp;an advantage.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;travel, look somewhere else, at least&nbsp;at&nbsp;the beginning. If you want to go back to your home country I understand,&nbsp;but if you can spend one or two years abroad, not only to study but to work,&nbsp;that will definitely bring you a lot. I think&nbsp;it\u2019s&nbsp;really&nbsp;important.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Accelerate Your Career&nbsp;With&nbsp;an MBA at EU Business School<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If, like Mathieu,&nbsp;you are&nbsp;considering&nbsp;taking&nbsp;an <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/why-study-mba\/\" target=\"_blank\">MBA to boost your career<\/a> opportunities, EU Business School has a course for you. We offer 11 specialisms from International Business to&nbsp;Global Banking &amp; Finance, taught by&nbsp;an outstanding faculty of business leaders and entrepreneurs.&nbsp;&nbsp;Our experiential approach means you will graduate with a firm foundation of knowledge and theory, as well as insights and ideas from the cutting edge.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/en\/Programs\/MBA\/mba-programs.html?utm_campaign=blog-menu&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=banner&amp;utm_mode=30\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/mba_750x125-1.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28470\" width=\"1118\" height=\"186\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Header image source: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/vax-o-matic\/8470559457\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">IBM logo<\/a>&#8221; by &#8220;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/vax-o-matic\/\" target=\"_blank\">Patrick Finnegan<\/a>&#8221; is licensed under&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CC BY 4.0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EU alumnus&nbsp;Mathieu&nbsp;Serres&nbsp;is originally from&nbsp;Carcassonne&nbsp;in&nbsp;the South of France. Following a recent promotion,&nbsp;he now lives&nbsp;in Morocco&nbsp;and works&nbsp;with IBM as a Program Manager.&nbsp;&nbsp; Mathieu&nbsp;saw&nbsp;his career take off&nbsp;after completing his MBA at EU Business School. He has worked at IBM offices in Bucharest,&nbsp;Paris&nbsp;and Geneva, steadily acquiring greater responsibility. He credits his MBA at EU Business School for his initial employment at IBM,&nbsp;as well as for his&nbsp;considerable&nbsp;career&nbsp;progression.&nbsp;&nbsp; A&nbsp;driven person&nbsp;with&nbsp;ambitious career goals,&nbsp;Mathieu has&nbsp;also&nbsp;been teaching himself to play the piano and speaks three&nbsp;languages:&nbsp;French, Romanian and English. Aside from&nbsp;career-associated relocations, he&nbsp;has also lived in Germany and India.&nbsp;&nbsp; Mathieu told us about his&nbsp;work at IBM, his&nbsp;experience at EU Business [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[636],"tags":[1707,654,731],"class_list":["post-28781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-business-advice","tag-alumni-eu","tag-mba","post--single"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\r\n<title>EU Alumnus Mathieu Serres, IBM Program Manager | EU Business School<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mathieu told us about his work at IBM, his experience at EU Business School and how his MBA is helping his career dreams come true.\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumnus-mathieu-serres-ibm-program-manager\/\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"EU Business School\" \/>\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.euruni.edu\\\/blog\\\/eu-alumnus-mathieu-serres-ibm-program-manager\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"EU Blog\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.euruni.edu\\\/blog\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"EU Community\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.euruni.edu\\\/blog\\\/category\\\/eu-business-school-community\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"EU Business School\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.euruni.edu\\\/blog\\\/category\\\/eu-business-school-community\\\/alumni\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":4,\"name\":\"EU Alumnus Mathieu Serres, IBM Program Manager\"}]}]}<\/script>\r\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"EU Alumnus Mathieu Serres, IBM Program Manager | EU Business School","description":"Mathieu told us about his work at IBM, his experience at EU Business School and how his MBA is helping his career dreams come true.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumnus-mathieu-serres-ibm-program-manager\/","author":"EU Business School","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/eu-alumnus-mathieu-serres-ibm-program-manager\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"EU Blog","item":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"EU Community","item":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/category\/eu-business-school-community\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"EU Business School","item":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/category\/eu-business-school-community\/alumni\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"EU Alumnus Mathieu Serres, IBM Program Manager"}]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28781"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34610,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28781\/revisions\/34610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euruni.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}