Being a Digital Mom

[DesireeCH]

Mrinal Nayak, Digital and Employer Brand Lead for APJ, shares her story about being a working mother at HPE.

All of us are or have been there – we have a career that is important, and we choose to pursue it; most of us need two incomes to support the lifestyle we have chosen, or to save for our child’s education and retirement. Same goes for me… I am a working mother and have taken on a whole set of responsibilities, that sometimes seems to overwhelm me and makes me feel guilty. Throughout my career, I had numerous situations when I could have given up working: leaving my daughter with a runny nose at day care; not being able to attend a celebration in school, working all day and then finishing a long pending presentation at home. It was sometimes a never-ending story.

Mrinal and her husband - PramodBut what is a “Working mother magic”? Is keeping it together just an illusion? Not for me, thankfully!

I have an 8 year old daughter. When she was born, I left my career in training to be a stay-at-home mom. I really had no aspirations to go back to work, because I was very fulfilled in this role. From a family standpoint, everyone has been very supportive, especially my husband. Luckily for me, it became quite easy, as my parents in law moved in with us. I knew then that it was time to get back to what I enjoyed doing. When I was getting interviewed, I offered everything under the sun: recruitment, social media management, special event planning, strategic planning, training, etc., because I literally had no idea where I would end up.

I wanted it to take shape by trial and error. I wanted to see what worked, and what didn’t. Most importantly, I wanted to see what I really enjoyed. 6 years down the line, I am now doing what I am passionate about. My day begins and ends with social media, implementing our employer brand, creating social media posts about our company, monitoring how candidates are perceiving our brand. Mrinal and her daughter - MalvikaIn this role, I didn’t necessarily need to market myself, because I was fortunate to have the opportunity come to me. I also made sure to say “yes” to just about every challenge that came my way up to then.

Surviving the first 3 months as a Digital Media Lead and reflecting back on the last quarter in this role, I realized I have learnt a few valuable lessons. I feel as I have grown so much, and built and solved what would normally fit in a multi-decade career across companies. There is a constant challenge to think bigger and bigger, to invent your way to something above and beyond your imagination, to change the game in every respect, and to do so at an incredible breakneck pace in a quest to make history on behalf of the company around the globe.

The secret ingredient of my success at HPE is the incredible people and the team I work with. Blame is non-existent when inevitable failures and misses occur, but celebrating success as a team is the norm here!

Right now, my life has got just a lot more exciting and fun. I love setting goals and achieving them. I am super passionate about what I do. So many people I work with are doing such amazing things in HPE, and to be able to help them get their message out there, fills me with joy. I also love to show women my age how very capable we are of learning new technologies. It can sometimes be so intimidating and it is my mission to strip away the fear and simplify it as much as possible. I suppose you can say that going down this path has added a whole new purpose to my life.

There are no mandatory tests and no licenses required in order to be a working mom. An important part of implementing this social identity and maintaining it, is looking and acting the part.

My motto always remains…. Don’t wait for things to be perfect. Just start!

If you’d like to become part of our HPE team, you can search and apply for an available job opportunity on our HPE Careers website: www.hpe.com/careers.

Mrinal at the officeMrinalini Nayakjoined Hewlett Packard 6 years ago and has held various roles in India Talent Acquisition Team, along with managing volume hiring as a Manager and program office lead for India Talent Acquisition. As a Management Representative, Mrinalini has led the India Talent Acquisition Team to be the only ISO 9001 – 2008 certified team and managed large, multifaceted projects, along with multiple HR initiatives focused on recruiter development programs, strategic alignment and integration of both global and regional activities with other organizational functions. Mrinalini holds a Masters in Business Administration in Human Resources & Marketing from ICFAI Business School, with DOEACC ’A’ level certification in India. Mrinalini is currently the APJ Digital media and employer brand lead in Global Talent Acquisition at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and she is based in Bangalore, India.