As I mentioned on my introduction page I have been living for over 6 years in Ireland, where I learned most of my technical skills and my way of work.

In France we often hear our leaders saying that they want a technical or professional  « immigration » but are we ready? Are we setup for that?

Let me tell you how I ended-up in Dublin in 2004.

At that time I was working for the French petrol company as a freelance technical support analyst , most of the IT people there were outsiders and at some stage, Total’s leaders decided that it would be more efficient to have only one service provider instead of hundreds of freelancers.

Therefore they placed a takeover-bid on the market and  the joint-venture company HP/CPL won the tender. Where HP is mostly the hardware manufacturer and CPL the human resource provider.

For infrastructure reasons HP was not able to host Total’s IT in France, it was too extensive and thick, this is why HP proposed to relocate the hardware and IT support in a country where they already had solid infrastructure, Ireland.

Also Total leaders insisted on having « known » people as IT support leaders to keep as much as possible the same management shape as the one we had in Paris.

This is exactly when I started fitting in the picture.

After a while the support manager of Total France asked me if I would be interested in going in Ireland for a while, to start-up the IT-support there, and become the manager, of course the other alternative would have been this.

So I accepted !!

Besides the forecasting of having an international experience, my few years working in France got a reserved feeling in regards to my career advancement since I had no college degrees nor university diplomas, therefore I knew that apart from experience I will not be offered an exiting job.

I received the HP contract and signed it, the taking off was planed just a few weeks after, no time to realize that I was not only leaving my family house for the first time, but also going for another country 2000 kms away……..but there you go.

After landing and collecting my luggage I saw a chauffeur waiting to drive me to one of the HP houses as this was part the « relocating package ».

Every time HP employs someone from outside Ireland, they provide him with a little pied-a-terre for a negotiable period, in my case it was 3 months.

I went on my first « HP » day the 6th of September 2004, went to the HR to get my badge and few papers confirming that I was an HP employee.

I had an induction tour of the premises and then I was introduced to my future team, most of the people were French speakers, some non-natives Germans, Irish…

I stayed in HP for another 2 years then someone from the IBM HR contacted me to let me know that they had opened opportunities.

I accepted a position of level 3 technical support analyst, this was a roll-back in regars to my HP position but to be fully honest I never really got into management stuff, from my point of view it was way to many long meetings for small reasons…and I was only 25, I wasn’t ready for that.

I resigned from HP and a month later I got to IBM Enterprise Content Management international team.

This is what the team looked like, as soon as I arrived I got sent in training in IBM Training center in Los Angeles

There every morning I was going there to learn all the necessary technical skills to do my future job, the trainings there were very entertaining,

As a matter of fact Americans are very good in entertaining people and passing knowledge. On week end I was going around to try and visit. what could be seen.

Of course I tried to spot famous things or famous houses, I did try to see Britney Spears but no luck, so I fall back on Brad Pitt but he wasn’t there either. As a last shot I tried to see Celine Dion but obviously she wasn’t playing Tennis that day. As I was desperate I did the only thing to do when desperate, I went shopping.

Been there, done that I stayed with IBM till 2010, as that stage I was conscious that I’ve done everything I was looking for in Ireland, so I started looking for a new opportunity. Around that time several of my IBM customers were asking me if someday I would be coming back to France to look for a job, cause they had opportunity.

I thought about that for a while and I’ve decided that my time had come to leave the country, I picked-up the Aviva opportunity and I started packing-up to move back my stuff, this is when it gets exiting.

I arrived in my parents house with my truck of useless-things and I’ve started thinking of where I want to live, likely close to Aviva in the Haut de Seine. Since my parents are living far away I’ve started checking-on the flat for rent oppotunities.

Réalisation : cohésion d’entreprise

Loisirs : la photographie et les voyages

Compétences techniques