Ready for a career change?

The opportunities provided by the market economy led to the emergence of a new category of professionals: those bold enough to make major career changes. They moved to a completely different field from their previous activity, taking their chances. Some succeeded and now they benefit from acknowledgement in the business community.

*Luminita Davidescu is a former engineer who turned to human resources. After graduation, she used to work as a journalist, but her desire to work with people was stronger: now she co-ordinates the entire human resources activity of Henkel Romania.

As she liked exact sciences, she went to the Hydro-Technical Faculty within Bucharest-based Construction Institute. She graduated in 1993, but she had already headed toward something else during her senior year. She joined Rompres news agency and worked there for six months.

She left for a weekly supplement published by Romania Libera daily, where she worked as a translator for about one year. She attended lots of fairs and exhibitions during that period, she collaborated with the magazines published for the fairs and she started to enjoy the business atmosphere.

This was how she decided to change direction and enter an international company. She became employed with the human resources department within DHL, where she worked for two years.

At the beginning of 1997, she became training co-ordinator within Mobil Rom’s technical department, immediately after the GSM companies were launched on the market.

She moved to the Customer Service Department of the same company and on the same position, but she felt her career was no longer moving forward.

This was when she found that a big company was looking for someone to work in the human resources department. She accepted their offer and became the head of Henkel Romania Human Resources Department in 1999.

*As a teenager, Doru Lionachescu, head of the domestic companies department within Citibank Romania, wanted to become a journalist. But his mother, a down to earth woman who knew that only political activism was taught at the journalism faculty back then, advised him to graduate a “serious faculty” first and then do what he wanted.

However, while he was a student at the Electronics and Telecommunications Faculty, he had the opportunity to practice journalism for students. He graduated in 1988 and came back home, at Curtea de Arges, where he worked as an engineer with Electroarges. He was able to return to journalism in 1990, when Tineretul Liber newspaper was founded.

The next career step was made about one year later, when he took the challenge launched by Swiss Group Ringier. Together with Valentin Negoita, he set up Capital weekly magazine. But in 1993, he read an ad issued by ASEBUSS regarding an MBA programme provided together with the University of Washington, Seattle, which was a premiere in Romania.

As he got the highest GMAT score, he was an eligible candidate for a scholarship and the MBA was a turning point in his career.