Meet Nico — Learning and Training Specialist

Hi Nico, thank you that you took the time for our meet the team interview today!

Sure, very excited to answer your questions!

Perfect, so let’s get started right a way! Nico, would you be so kind and quickly introduce yourself? Who are you? And what do you do at edyoucated?

Yes, I’m Nico and I work as a learning and training strategist at edyoucated. That means I take care of all of our wonderful customers that are in need of some upskilling. We support our customers not “just” through our platform, but also through trainings, workshops, and any other type of blended learning. Together with our learning engineers, I’m responsible for designing these blended trainings. Together with our sales and marketing team, I also organise everything around product placement on the market as well as connecting interested participants!

Apart from work, I try to spend as much time reading as I possibly can. If I just stay in the business and politics bubble, I sometimes feel like I get a little crazy! That’s why I prefer to read a lot of fiction. I also love to do sports, I go to the gym, play basketball, and golf. And I always try to play the piano every once in a while, which is rather an old passion of mine. To be honest with you, most of the time, I do not find any time to do that anymore, though. Unfortunately!

Thanks so much for the introduction, Nico! Maybe to step a little deeper into that: What really makes you special?

I think that would be my academic background. I am actually a neuroscientist and psychologist by training. I mean, we do have a lot of psychologists at edyoucated, that doesn’t really differentiate me. But I’ve spent a very big part of my life researching the human brain. And I think my academic experiences as a researcher really help me now in adapting to new situations and being flexible. During my time as a researcher, it was very common to not really know what you will end up with at the end of the day. There was always a new problem and you constantly found yourself in the situation of not knowing what to do and having to figure out how to proceed. I think those experiences are a great resource for everything I’m doing or trying to do at edyoucated - even though they weren’t related to any business topics at all!

That definitely does sound very interesting! So what do you think, which role does edyoucated play in your career?

For me, edyoucated really was the first step out of the research area into the world of business. Coming from the academic world, starting in business always appears to be a bit scary at first. You’re not familiar with it, you don’t know the “rules of the game” and you’re just missing what people with different backgrounds learn right from the beginning in internships, etc. edyoucated was the perfect place for me to make this leap. Everyone really showed me right from the beginning that every single employee is crucial for the company’s success. For me, this created some kind of very positive pressure with a responsibility you don’t just get everywhere. This helped me to develop myself and expand my network very quickly. Joining edyoucated just was the ideal step to prepare me for all kinds of current and future challenges!

That is very inspiring! Maybe you can also let us know, what makes working at edyoucated so special for you?

First of all, that’s definitely the atmosphere! We are all aware that none of us is already “done” learning or developing. Everyone constantly thrives for learning new things and getting better at whatever they do. Everyone asks a lot of questions. We are a very curious team and I think that is very very important when living in a start-up world. I believe everyone makes mistakes in that stage, that’s just part of the process. But you also have to be able to learn from your mistakes and consider these experiences for your next project. And I think that’s actually not as natural as it may seem. Here at edyoucated, I really love that I can just admit I made a mistake. And what’s considered actually important is how we continue based on previous mistakes. We don’t get stuck in the past regretting our errors for too long. That I think is really special about working at edyoucated!

In addition to that, working at edyoucated feels very familiar, although we’re a remote company. You really know a lot of your colleagues and the company culture is just very open and nice, although we’re not all in the same place. I really love that!

Very glad to hear all of that! Since we are an edtech company and spend a lot of our time on all kinds of learning-related questions, I want to dive a little deeper into that: What are your personal learning habits?

First of all, with learning, everything that becomes a habit is generally good. Otherwise, it doesn’t really work. Learning just based on being in the mood for it, will not really be successful in the long run. I, personally, usually start my day with half an hour of learning something, doing something new, or reading something. For making my learning a habit, I just use the usual tricks, calendar entries, connecting learning to other habits, etc. I learned from Marius, one of our co-founders, that he always tries to connect positive habits like learning or going for a walk with his morning coffee. Meaning, he is only allowed to drink his coffee when he has already learned something or gone for a walk. Those kinds of hacks are very useful to stay in a learning mode and actually practice lifelong learning.

These hacks sound extremely helpful for getting to good learning habits! Thank you! What would you then say, did you already learn while working at edyoucated? During your daily learning sessions or just in everyday work life?

Since I don’t have my background in business, the biggest learning is definitely on how a business works and how it’s scaled. Everything circling around commercial activities like marketing or sales feels a little bit like an easter egg for me! I therefore definitely learned a lot about commercial topics.

Secondly, the role of data in modern organisations is quite fascinating. The data I used to work with during my research activities was quite different in nature, so I learned a lot about the different type of data use cases in business settings, and also about how much all kinds of data skills are really needed in the workplace!

Wow, that sounds like a really insightful time you had at edyoucated so far! I have one more question for you that’s a little more personal: What’s your secret passion or your secret hobby?

Hmm… So it’s not really a secret but I tend to not talk about it too much as it’s often associated with quite a few stereotypes. But I really love to play golf! I would guess every person with any kind of unusual hobby knows the problem. You always have to answer the same questions and listen to the same comments when telling someone about it, so I tend to just keep it a secret. I personally think the common stereotypes of golfers are not always true. ;)

Perfect, then we will just take golfing as a very neutral hobby of yours ;) Thank you so much for the interview, Nico! That’s actually already it with the questions!

You are very welcome! Really enjoyed it!
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