Meltwater employees are derived from a broad range of academic disciplines, including business administration, economics, cultural studies, journalism, law and even theology. In Germany this is very unusual, as it is common only to look for a job that relates to your education, just like it is standard for companies to only offer jobs to candidates with relevant educational backgrounds.

I studied Art History and after my master’s degree, I completed a PhD financed by a scholarship from the German Research Foundation. This educational focus reduced job opportunities rather than widened them. The only possible jobs I could find were within the cultural sector or at universities. Although I studied the arts, for family reasons I did not want to follow this academic career path – I wanted to make a change and start working in business. However, the possibilities to do so at the time seemed very limited in Germany.

What Meltwater offered me was further professional development, like a second education, and an opportunity to build the background that I was now interested in pursuing. The entry level Sales Consultant position is a training ground to build a foundation of business understanding and skills. I received a kind of crash course about the most important contexts of economic principles, including the answers to questions like: which internal structures do departments and subsidiaries of the biggest German companies have? What does a proper sales process look like - which aspects stimulate the negotiation process and which ones hinder the process? What is the…

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I’m going to do something incredibly original here, and open with a Winston Churchill quote. The late Nobel Laureate once said: “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” This assertion resonates with the deepest part of my being, especially my business being. I’ve been working in the business world for the past seven years since I finished college, and I’ve had my fair share of successes and failures. Up until last year, I would say there was a little more weight on the side of success. However, over the last year, failure has tipped the scales. Can going from failure to failure really be defined as success?

My Meltwater career started off with a bang. I started as a Sales Consultant in our newly formed Meltwater Chicago office and came to work in that first month really pumped up. I worked hard and made more calls than anyone in the office. However, in my first month, as I watched my colleagues close deals and ring that legendary Meltwater bell, I sold nothing. I closed zero deals and added no clients to the portfolio.

Failure?

One thing that’s not a failure is Chicago cuisine. Chicagoans know how to eat: deep-dish pizza, Italian beef and the Chicago style hot dog. But I digress.

In my second month I learned from my failure. I learned to ask clients the tough questions and to hold them and myself to a rigid schedule. And you know what? It worked. I was one of…

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