One year at a company can pass quickly.

For many employees, the first few months are spent learning their role, understanding how the organisation works and becoming comfortable with their day-to-day responsibilities. By the end of the first year, they are usually expected to perform the same job more confidently and independently than when they started.

But should one year of career growth only mean becoming better at the same tasks?

For Iqbal Nadjmi, our Talent Acquisition Coordinator, the answer is no.

Iqbal recently celebrated his first anniversary at Osome. In just one year, he progressed from having no previous recruitment experience to independently managing roles across different functions and seniority levels. Along the way, he also became the main owner of our career site, took responsibility for hiring analytics and contributed to our Employer Branding and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.

His journey shows how much someone can grow when their curiosity and initiative are met with trust, guidance and opportunities to take ownership.

Starting with the fundamentals

Iqbal joined Osome without a background in recruitment. However, he showed a willingness to learn, take feedback and step into unfamiliar responsibilities.

He was initially hired to support our Talent Acquisition team in recruiting for operational functions, including Bookkeeping, Accounting, Audit, Tax, Corporate Secretary and Compliance.

His early responsibilities included posting job advertisements, reviewing CVs and interviewing candidates for entry-level positions. This gave him the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of recruitment while developing a deeper understanding of the different functions that support Osome’s customers.

He was also entrusted with an important responsibility beyond recruitment coordination: managing our hiring analytics.

Iqbal processes data from the Talent Acquisition team’s hiring activities and works alongside our Chief People Officer to prepare insights for the company’s monthly board meetings. The experience allowed him to build new technical skills while seeing how recruitment data can contribute to broader business conversations and decisions.

We asked Iqbal: "Looking back at your first few months, what was the most challenging part of entering Talent Acquisition without previous recruitment experience, and what helped you overcome it?" And here's what he said:

"The biggest challenge was adapting to how much initiative and proactiveness recruitment requires. You really have to take ownership, if you hit a dead end, you find another way, whether that means changing your sourcing approach, trying a different channel, or rethinking what you’re looking for. It taught me to be persistent in finding not just the best candidate on paper, but someone who can grow and genuinely fit the role. Having supportive peers made that learning curve much easier, and in the end, having a great team around you makes all the difference."

From supporting the process to owning roles

Iqbal filled his first role less than a month after joining Osome.

As he gained experience and built credibility, he gradually moved from supporting individual parts of the recruitment process to managing roles from beginning to end.

His responsibilities also expanded beyond the operational functions he was originally hired to support. Over the course of his first year, he worked on positions across accounting, commercial, marketing and technology, from internships and entry-level opportunities to managerial roles.

This required him to learn about different functions, understand what hiring managers needed and adapt his approach to candidates at different stages of their careers.

More importantly, he was no longer simply completing recruitment tasks. He was beginning to take responsibility for hiring outcomes.

Beyond Recruitment

Iqbal’s interests also extended beyond recruitment. Having been involved in creative projects and initiatives during university, he expressed a strong interest in Employer Branding and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. This opened another path for him to contribute.

One of his first projects was helping us improve Osome’s career site, which had not been meaningfully updated for several years. What began as a supporting task gradually became an area he owned. Iqbal replaced outdated images and information, created new sections and collaborated with our Marketing and People & Culture teams to improve how Osome presents itself to prospective candidates. Through this project, Iqbal helped transform the site into a more accurate and engaging reflection of life at Osome. Today, he is its main owner, regularly maintaining its content and identifying opportunities to improve the candidate experience.

Iqbal is also part of Osome’s Employer Branding and DEI team, where he contributes throughout the process, from brainstorming and ideation to execution. He has supported campaigns and events including Movember 2025, a mental health webinar and activities for our Kuala Lumpur office. He is also part of the Malaysia office social club, helping organise experiences that bring Osomers together outside their everyday responsibilities. These projects require a different set of capabilities from recruitment. They involve creativity, cross-functional collaboration, project management and an understanding of how internal initiatives can shape both the employee experience and Osome’s reputation as an employer.

How did his growth happen so quickly?

For someone who joined without Talent Acquisition experience, Iqbal’s learning curve has been significant.

However, his progress did not happen simply because additional responsibilities became available. It was shaped by how he responded to those opportunities.

He turned ideas into outcomes

Iqbal did not only contribute suggestions during team discussions. When he believed an idea could make a difference, he was willing to take responsibility for moving it forward.

Our refreshed career site and Glassdoor profile are visible examples of that ownership. He helped identify what needed to change, worked with the relevant teams and followed the work through to delivery.

Having ideas is valuable. Building credibility, however, comes from consistently turning those ideas into results.

He made his progress visible

Managing recruitment, analytics and employer-branding projects simultaneously requires organisation.

Iqbal created a tracker to monitor his responsibilities, priorities and progress. He shares it with his manager during their weekly meetings, making it easier to identify completed work, discuss obstacles and agree on what should happen next.

He also has a separate weekly meeting with our Chief People Officer and Talent Acquisition Specialist to discuss project progress and upcoming priorities.

This habit has helped him remain accountable while giving the people supporting him enough visibility to provide timely direction.

He asked for (and received) support

Ownership does not mean working alone or already knowing every answer.

When Iqbal began managing hiring analytics, our FP&A team trained him to develop the spreadsheet skills he needed. When he encountered difficulties in recruitment or project work, his manager and colleagues from the relevant teams were available to guide him.

At Osome, giving someone responsibility does not mean leaving them to figure everything out independently. It means trusting them to lead while continuing to provide feedback, expertise and support when needed.

We asked Iqbal: "Of all the responsibilities you have taken on during your first year, which one has contributed most to your growth, and what did it teach you about yourself?"

"Data and analytics has probably contributed the most to my growth. I started with almost zero Excel background, and while there’s an expectation that AI makes everything easier, I quickly learned that understanding the basics still matters. With no previous senior or existing process to always refer to, I had to experiment, reach out to colleagues to understand how they built their dashboards, and figure things out myself. The same happened when I took ownership of our career site. Having that trust and freedom taught me that I’m capable of learning things from scratch and taking full ownership, even when there isn’t a clear playbook."

So, what can one year working in a scale up company actually do to your career?​​

Iqbal’s experience challenges the assumption that scale-ups offer limited development because their learning paths may be less formal than those of larger companies. In a growing business, development often comes through real responsibilities: leading a new project, collaborating across functions, presenting insights to senior leaders or solving a problem that does not yet have a clear owner.

One year after joining Osome without recruitment experience, Iqbal now manages end-to-end hiring across several functions, owns our career site, supports hiring analytics for senior leadership and contributes to Employer Branding, DEI and employee-engagement initiatives. His journey also shows that growth is a shared responsibility. Employees need to bring curiosity, initiative and ownership, while companies must provide trust, guidance and room to grow.

Iqbal brought the initiative. Osome gave him opportunities to apply it.If you are ready to step beyond your job description and discover where your potential could take you, explore our open roles and start your own journey at Osome.