This is my Zipstory: Q&A with Jacob

In this blog Jacob from the ANZ IT team tells his Zipstory, from being permanent IT team member number 1, to his current role leading six Zipsters.

Tell us who you are, what you do at Zip and a little bit more about your Zipstory

I’ve been a Zipster for almost five years, having joined from MYOB when Zip was a very different business. To me it was a new and fresh brand, and a business that was a lot smaller than the places I’d worked previously which included multinationals and mid-level startups.

Interestingly I was the first internal hire in the Zip IT team, one of only 200 Zipsters at the time. I was really keen to see how the business would progress and from a work perspective I saw huge opportunities; a lot of the IT work has previously been outsourced and handled by a third party, and there was scope to improve a lot of our internal processes. I’m pleased to say we’ve since brought everything in-house and our brand as a team that’s grown to six full time Zipsters has really improved.

You’ve been a Zipster for five years now. What has enabled you to accelerate your career fastest during your time here?

I would say my growth to my now current role of Senior Manager, Business IT and Procurement is down to two main things. Firstly, being given the opportunities to lean into new areas and learn new skills on the job has been invaluable. When I first joined, everything was managed externally so from day one I was learning to set up processes around our IT helpdesk through Atlassian. Since then we’ve migrated the company from Microsoft to Google, which was a steep learning curve, and now I’m focused a lot on the procurement side, understanding budgets and targets, and where we can create operational efficiency. To have the trust to learn as we go, while delivering big projects, is something I’ve really thrived on.

The second piece is really having a manager who coaches the best out of me. I feel like rather than being told what to do, I’m guided by his recommendations and then given the autonomy to action the work. Beyond that, I feel like my manager really cares about personal things and my life outside of work, which is also important to me and is helping me grow in other ways.

In your experience, what are some of the opportunities you get working in Technology at Zip that you wouldn’t get working elsewhere?

I think what makes Zip unique is the exposure we get to so many different aspects of the business. That’s important for me because I need that information to do my job most effectively, especially from the procurement side.

So through access to other teams and their leadership groups, and the way we tend to work in a collaborative way at Zip, gives us a better understanding of other parts of the business and their strategies going forward, which in turn helps me understand how I need to budget and the relationships we need to build to progress important work. But it also really helps with the ‘why’; why people need our support, and why certain projects need to be prioritised.

Another thing I’d say separates Zip from other technology businesses that I’ve worked in are the organic career opportunities that Zipsters get. We often see Zipsters in Technology moving to other teams and squads, or working on new domains which they’ve shown an interest in developing. The pace we move at opens up a lot of chances for growth and on the job learning.

You told us your Zipstory best represents the 'Own It' value - why do you say that?

When I joined five years ago, there appeared to be huge scope for improving the experience Zipsters had when dealing with IT. Feedback suggested an opportunity to optimise process and the tools provided to the team.

We've since brought everything in-house, and as I mentioned we’ve re-built and refined a lot of the ways of working from scratch - a lot of that work I’m proud to say I can put my name to alongside some of the fearless Zipsters I’ve partnered with in the IT team. A standout for me would be the process around raising a ticket. We didn’t have a helpdesk when I joined, so building that from the ground up so that Zipsters can now log a ticket seamlessly and get a fast response is something I’m really proud of. I love building and this is the kind of place where whatever your role, you’ll get the chance to ideate and deliver.

In terms of the impact on the business, we look at CSAT scores and for me it’s a real accomplishment to now be getting consistent scores beyond industry standards of 4.8 or 4.9 out of five. We also look at tickets, and thinking back to some of my earlier days at Zip when I was starting to build the team out, it was a great feeling to be able to reduce the volume of tickets by some four to five times. To be honest, it still is and I think as a team we still thrive on the competition of closing out tickets!

What excites you most about writing the next chapter of your career story at Zip?

I feel that this is such an exciting time to work for Zip. The work we’re doing in the IT space continues to get more innovative and we are developing and deploying new technologies regularly - there’s a lot in the pipeline to look forward to around automation, particularly for the experience we can give the team.

We want to create a seamless, consistent experience for Zipsters wherever they are in the world, whether that’s in Sydney, or if they’re travelling to our offices in other global locations - both from a physical access POV but also in the backend. We’re also working closely with our People teams to make sure the onboarding process for new joiners is the best it can be in terms of how we use and process employee information.

With those things in mind I see even greater possibilities for where my career could go from here as a Zipster.