Laura Resegotti is a young, hard-working Product Manager at FIRE S.p.A., Messina. She graduated with a Master’s degree in international business from London South Bank University and started her journey with FIRE S.p.A. in 2016.
Here is a brief rundown of my interview with her.
Laura started working for Fire S.p.A. in March 2016, initially supporting a Product Manager who would soon be going on maternity leave. Like most new starters, Laura didn’t have any experience in credit collection but her Product Manager colleague helped her to acquire all the necessary skills to cover the role in her absence. Apart from the fundamentals of credit collection, Laura started learning how to deal with the different players involved in the collection process – probably the most important aspect of the role. She soon realized that it was all a matter balancing the different relationships and her experience has taught her that this is the most difficult part of the job. Nonetheless, she enjoys her role because of the new challenges she faces every day and the opportunities to devise new strategies and to shape the existing ones to be more effective. Laura imbibed all the suggestions and recommendations she was given and gave them her personal stamp; she is now working as a Product Manager, considers each day as a new day and enjoys her work. Fire S.p.A. has proven to be a great workplace for her, with a very supportive environment for developing young talent ̶ cooperative colleagues and senior staff willing to guide those coming up behind them. Laura believes that this widespread cooperation and sharing of knowledge is the foundation of a successful company like Fire S.p.A.
Furthermore, it is a very friendly organization which welcomes diversity of every kind – its many foreign employees are fully integrated into the company. A buddy is allocated to new arrivals for a smooth assimilation. The management also places great emphasis on bringing more diversity into teams and new views and approaches into the organization. Creating a deep sense of belonging is hard, but Fire S.p.A. has achieved this goal by sharing ongoing projects with all the staff and by recognizing a team’s results and work well done.
- What are the future career prospects for MBA graduates in your company and in which department in particular?
An MBA graduate can easily find their own vocation here thanks to the variety of departments. Obviously, it depends on the individual’s area of specialization. Marketing specialists can easily work in the Sales and Marketing Office; this means acquiring new clients through the promotion of the company around the country and abroad. Business analysts or strategists can cooperate with the Business Support Office, which is a newly-built team whose main responsibility is to give support to the credit collection process with reports and data. International business specialists can support all the activities involved in the company’s new international projects.
In my opinion, Fire S.p.A. is an ideal company to work at for new graduates, because it fosters a spirit of initiative and a proactive attitude. Furthermore, I have discovered that it always takes new ideas and projects into consideration.
- What will be the trends and developments in the field of product management and in the overall area of ‘consulting & debt management’ in the future?
The increasing number of competitors in the market and the decreasing quality of credit to be collected has led to the product managers having an ever more strategic role in the credit collection process. This role will acquire more and more importance and will focus only on the strategies to be adopted to collect credits efficiently.
Non-Performing Loans are, of course, the future of debt management. Fire S.p.A. will have to face the hard competition of the structured NPL servicers, which are often giants listed on the stock exchange. Nonetheless, Fire S.p.A. is on the right track ̶ in fact, the company can activate diversified debt recovery strategies, extrajudicial and legal, respecting Unirec regulations using its due diligence and portfolio evaluation expertise. We are very focused on lean management of the processes and also on employing the new concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning so as to outperform others in this industry.
- How important do you think it is for young professionals to place importance on their personal life, apart from their professional life?
I believe that having a healthy and satisfying personal life is recommendable for everyone, whether young professional or top management. I always blamed myself for not having enough time for family and hobbies but then I hardly did anything to improve my time management. I am convinced that spending more time on extracurricular activities would improve the quality of my work here. I have heard that Fire S.p.A. is considering starting some meditation courses ̶ maybe this will be my first step towards a healthy working day. A sedentary and uninspired working life can be hazardous to an employee’s health. Implementing and promoting health and wellness is not just an investment in the employees, it benefits the employers as well. Utilizing a workplace wellness program inhibits absenteeism and presenteeism while promoting productivity and retention.
A strong focus is to be given to friends and family at a young age and thankfully, our organization is very flexible and helpful in this regard. We have a playschool-cum-daycare center for the toddlers so that the women can focus on work without having to worry about their children, which is a true blessing. The day care provides a safe, progressive and fun environment for the kids and gives mothers the comfort that while they are at work, their kids are in good hands. Also, the working hours are quite flexible for those who need it, so you have pretty much everything here that you could ask for.
