Irina Begeldinova - Interview

HR Expert/HR Brand developer

In this interview we talk with HRD of the company "Cenomi Retail" Irina Begeldinova.
She and I discuss key milestones in her professional growth. Irina singles out three people who had the greatest influence on her development. We also look at a memorable event held by Irina in a corporate environment. The interview also mentions Irina's current priorities and the projects she is currently working on. Irina has to deal with a variety of tasks, including constant learning and development. An important part of our conversation is a discussion of the most current projects in the field of consulting and HR that are being implemented in the Cenomi Retail company. Finally, we look at what advice and caution Irina would give to herself as an HR novice, based on her experience and knowledge.

Timur Yadgarov and Zauresh Kumarbekova

About the expert

Irina Begeldinova began her HR career in 2006. She started out as a training specialist. In 2006, Irina Begeldinova was invited to Beeline to join the training and development group. Before that, since 2002, she worked in sales and service in telecommunications companies. At that moment, Beeline had only one training specialist and there was no corporate university. And so she became the second specialist to join. From that moment her career in HR began, it was a powerful school for 6 years, which gave her a confident professional background, and most importantly, she gained confidence that she would grow and develop further in this direction.

- Question about those meetings, events, people who became decisive in your professional growth, if you were to name, well, the three most significant people who influenced your growth as a professional?

- The first person is Helena Titova, she was then the HR director at Beeline. And this is really the person who motivated me, infected me with this HR topic, so to speak. Despite all that Lena was very much like that, well, at that time, at least, she was a strict leader, but at the same time she gave such powerful motivation and support, and care, and everything from all sides, so to speak. So, and this is just this person, by the way, we still communicate, she recently came to Kazakhstan, we met, that is, just imagine, 16 years have passed, and we still keep in touch, communicate. The second person, I won’t say that this person probably directly influenced my career, but this is one of the people whom I admire in general in professional work and in HR, I constantly read, watch blogs, and this is Tahir Yusupovich Bazarov. I’m with him, he was invited, that is, we were one of the first people who invited him to trainings in Kazakhstan, back in those years, 15 years ago. And then, when I watched him conduct trainings for managers, that is, I was the organizer then, and we did trainings for our management team, top managers. And that’s how it is, and still is. It happens that you get inspired, and then your opinion somehow changes, you reconsider your values. Over all these years, I have not changed my opinion about this man, I still read and admire. By the way, he recently wrote a book, also “Corporate Happiness,” and I want to read it all, I just can’t get around to it, but I saw the announcements, watched it, followed it all, a wonderful person. Guli is his daughter, we also collaborated with her, wonderful people. This is such a standard, so to speak, which I not only look up to, but if they told me, give me an example of who could really be a standard for you in professional activity, I would name this person. Here. But thirdly, it’s hard for me to name just one person; I would probably name the whole company. I am always grateful to this company. This is Yum! Brands, Yum International, with the KFC brand, Pizza Hut. I’m here in Kazakhstan, well, actually, I collaborated with this company for three years, even a little more, and I collaborated with them in Kazakhstan, and then they asked me to participate in a project in Uzbekistan. This is how, by the way, my career in Uzbekistan also began. And this company gave me very powerful skills, starting from responsibility and planning. And it was in this company that I learned who an HR business partner is in the full sense of the word, because everything there is focused on business, you work only with business, and then in my head, but not only then, but also the work of HR in the full sense of the word, so to speak, was already strengthened in the full sense of the word, when you are useful to the business. Well, I would mention the whole company, because there were a lot of great colleagues there who gave a lot of knowledge, support and skills, and so on.

- Next question, Irina, what about some event in corporate life? This is your story, which you organized and which you still remember?

- Well, but I also worked at Mary Kay, I worked there for a short time, but I had such an experience, such an interesting, unique company. And you know, the people there work very uniquely, well, in the good sense of the word, there are people who work for 5 years or more. There are and were people who worked there for 10 years, well, that is, for quite a large part of this it was still, well, more than 5 years ago, even more than 8 years ago, I don’t remember what year I worked. I think 8 or 9 years ago. When I left Beeline, I was called to Mary Kay, it was 2000. But wait 10 or 12 years, well, it doesn’t matter, in general, somewhere around these years, and accordingly, there were quite a few like that. You know, people with very critical thinking, picky, so unique, unique management. That’s the culture, it was different from Beeline’s and, accordingly, I held events there, and once I held such an event. It was called family, family corporate team building. We did this for the whole company. Plus why family? Because it was possible to invite other family members, and accordingly, here it was necessary to guess what everyone’s desire was. That is, on the one hand, these are corporate formats, team building, and it is also necessary that the family and children are not bored, and accordingly, I organized this grandiose event there for 2000 people, if so, together with the family and so on. Yes, because we called people who worked and there were a lot of them in the warehouses. Well, and accordingly, such a powerful event. Then I received feedback from people who had worked for 10 years or more that this was the best event the company had had in 10 years. Well, that is, for me then it was a very strong recognition and a very cool experience that, despite different, so to speak, tastes, yes, picky criteria, you can, well, make sure that everything is perfect. And so, Well, this was one of the events, yes, which I organized yet, not being a manager, and for me, of course, it was cool and cool. I remember this.

- What is on your agenda today? On the To-do list, what would you like to continue learning now?

- In fact, if you look at the number of my certificates or external trainings, there are very few of them. There are just critically few of them, because I have always studied. Well, firstly, you organize all this training, and you also attend trainings somewhere, study, watch and, well, throughout your life you communicate with people who, well, are really 2 heads and 3 heads taller than you, and I am always well. So it was, it so happened that it turned out that I didn’t even need any external training. Yes, because you are always studying and communicating with these people. Well, lately I’ve actually started to think about it too. There may be something else about the fact that there may be some kind of international certification. I have a good friend Luke Jones, his name is, he worked for 20 years at Lantau International, then he left there. Now he works as the head of work there with the management staff in Ramshtat, India called him, and we still communicate, and I once told him, when he comes to Kazakhstan or somewhere else, he has generally traveled all over the world, and I tell him, here’s Luke, I want some kind of international certification. And he told me, why did he ask you this? I say the usual question, well, you know, suddenly I’m leaving somewhere, I don’t know, to Europe, or so you say, Ramshtat left, yes, he says Ira, you know, he says the last thing he will ask you and who will ask you for a certificate, he says first, they will talk to you, they will ask about your experience, they will understand who you are, yeah, what do you know, what can you do, then he will ask about the certificate, of course, that’s cool, that’s cool when you put it out somewhere else in Link, that you have a certificate, but he says, think carefully about whether you really need it, well, and that’s what I’m still thinking about, yes, that is, I really need it, or it’s just a piece of paper for me, or. Well, but when I do this, I don’t just sit and think, I consult with colleagues who have undergone this training. I ask, I say, how useful was this to you? They say it’s useful when you get a job, where you go to work and those people who pay attention to certificates, let’s say, if it’s already some kind of top position, it’s some kind of international company, of course, but when you start working, it’s rarely useful, because especially these international certificates are very specific, they don’t quite fit the mentality of our countries, our business countries. If we are talking about Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and even the CIS. That’s why, well, I say, okay, everything is clear, that is. Well, if we really talk about what I want, not so that someone will choose me, but what I want myself, then I am very impressed by training associated with, well, probably some new technologies, yes, because now I was faced with organizing events, I was faced with the fact that now everything is digital, everyone speaks this language, and you know, I felt like some kind of I don’t know ancient person, because I just didn’t need it before. That is, my colleagues at the corporation did this. Let’s say there’s a marketing department there, someone else, all the IT people there did all this. That is, I was doing my own thing, and now I’m busy with this project.

- Irina, tell me, but the company you work with, consult with, with whom you communicate now, for them the most relevant projects now are in what area?

- But look, if we are talking about HR, then this is all about brand development. Well, now everyone is talking about it. Of course, they don’t talk about this today, and they did yesterday, yes, but no, many people talk about it, but many don’t know how to do it, where to start, how to measure it, and what is it anyway? That is, people are chaotic. I was talking to HR and HR are chaotically doing some projects, but there is no system, and this seems to be the biggest problem. That is, everyone wants to quickly and immediately create some kind of project with a cool wow effect. But this is painstaking work, yes, starting from I don’t know the recruiter’s call, and for someone it also affects the HR brand and ending with what people say about us when they leave the company, this is very painstaking work, and it should be this cycle of the system, yes, completed by an endless one, yes, so to speak, no one wants to do this to the end. Even large companies that create a brand there, in any case, you also talk to them and inside, well, there is an opinion. Let's say that some employees differ from the fact that, let's say, we see it from the outside, but from the outside everything looks very beautiful, a beautiful picture, everyone is like wow, everything is great. That is, we still have to work and work with this, it seems to me that there are no turquoise organizations there, we are still very far from this, and therefore, this is the trend. And then everything related to digitalization, the IT sphere, and so on is also very relevant, because... I recently talked to some marketers, right? And one girl came from London, and she worked for us in Kazakhstan. Previously, Proctor as Marketing Director. Her name is Nilufar, and accordingly, she was talking about trends and you know, she said the biggest trend in marketing and the tool through which they are pumping the most and where marketers give 90% of their budget, well, at least there in foreign companies it is TikTok. Well, everyone is so damn TikTok, what are we talking about? And we’re just sitting there, what are we talking about? And here I am, I’m talking about the fact that these are trends, yes, that is, now everything gives the whole, so to speak, rhythm, yes, the whole march is set by these trends, if you are not in the trend, you are still sitting there, somewhere incomprehensibly in the distance, you are already late and that’s it and you are already running there for the last bus, that’s why these trends from now on they dictate everything, that’s why all people want to be in trend, to understand how to generally keep up, yes, with this carriage. But the biggest problem is that even if they know these trends, they don’t know how, what to do with them, what to do, yes, within the framework of this trend, and this is very important for us, let’s say my colleagues, for example, from Uzbekistan, they ask us to make sure that we speak the same language to them, they say, now a lot of different Russian companies come in and tell everything very beautifully. But they say we don't know how to apply it. We don't, we don't understand how this will affect our strategy and our current situation in the company. And that’s why when you say, well, that is, you say, yes, we should be in trend, but you explain it all to a person so much and understand the realities of life, what he says, yes, this suits me. Well, that is, probably, there is some kind of golden mean, because when you come and say, oh, we are trending, we are all so wonderful, cool. And people say, well, yes, it’s cool, but I don’t need it now. And it’s possible to find those tools that will suit people in the realities of their company. Well, this is very relevant. Now I don’t know what to call it. Probably some kind of training or direction. Well, that is, this is probably a balance between realities. And indeed, well, there are trends that dictate all their market rules to us. And so help managers in their paradigm and guide them so that their brains don’t explode if they are told let’s change everything there. Well, at the same time, so that it is relevant for the cycle in which the company’s growth is currently located.

- The last question, Irina, if you met yourself as a novice HR professional, what would you advise yourself, what would you warn yourself about?

- I would definitely warn you that the law of the counter-offer, it really works in terms of the fact that do not agree to a counter-offer. This is such an interesting, cool thing, but we are always lured somewhere, transferred, returned back for something else, and sometimes we make some other decisions based on emotions, and if you have already decided to leave, let’s say from the company, and thought about it for a long time, and then they made a counter-offer to you, you decided to return.
This is the biggest mistake. Well, at least when you already occupy a fairly high position, nothing just happens. And so I would give myself this advice first, because I had such an experience, and it was very, very burning, so to speak, but it was a great experience, thanks to this I also grew personally, yes, so to speak, but I could have done without it.
Well, this is probably the biggest piece of advice, but in general, really do everything, well, probably, really do it on time and don’t waste time on some projects or work in which you have already lost interest. This is approximately how it is now, that is, even though I worked for this company for a short time, I understand that this will not give me any new experience. That is, now you just know, there is such a financial safety net and I started working on this project at the same time, without fear that something would not work out for me or that I would lose something and so on. That is, I started and that’s it, and you can do this at any period of your life. Well, that is, there before. Whether you have matured or not, you will understand in the process, because until you start, you will not understand whether you are ready or not. And well, probably, yes, these are some interesting things, you can start doing them earlier. They are not afraid, because maybe, if only. But I didn’t play it safe there, maybe I would have started doing this project earlier, yeah, maybe, but, on the other hand, as they say, everything has its time. Maybe we should start now, who knows.

The first person is Helena Titova, she was then the HR director at Beeline. And this is really the person who motivated me, infected me with this HR topic, so to speak. Despite all that Lena was very much like that, well, at that time, at least, she was a strict leader, but at the same time she gave such powerful motivation and support, and care, and everything from all sides, so to speak. So, and this is just this person, by the way, we still communicate, she recently came to Kazakhstan, we met, that is, just imagine, 16 years have passed, and we still keep in touch, communicate. The second person, I won’t say that this person probably directly influenced my career, but this is one of the people whom I admire in general in professional work and in HR, I constantly read, watch blogs, and this is Tahir Yusupovich Bazarov. I’m with him, he was invited, that is, we were one of the first people who invited him to trainings in Kazakhstan, back in those years, 15 years ago. And then, when I watched him conduct trainings for managers, that is, I was the organizer then, and we did trainings for our management team, top managers. And that’s how it is, and still is. It happens that you get inspired, and then your opinion somehow changes, you reconsider your values. Over all these years, I have not changed my opinion about this man, I still read and admire. By the way, he recently wrote a book, also “Corporate Happiness,” and I want to read it all, I just can’t get around to it, but I saw the announcements, watched it, followed it all, a wonderful person. Guli is his daughter, we also collaborated with her, wonderful people. This is such a standard, so to speak, which I not only look up to, but if they told me, give me an example of who could really be a standard for you in professional activity, I would name this person. Here. But thirdly, it’s hard for me to name just one person; I would probably name the whole company. I am always grateful to this company. This is Yum! Brands, Yum International, with the KFC brand, Pizza Hut. I’m here in Kazakhstan, well, actually, I collaborated with this company for three years, even a little more, and I collaborated with them in Kazakhstan, and then they asked me to participate in a project in Uzbekistan. This is how, by the way, my career in Uzbekistan also began. And this company gave me very powerful skills, starting from responsibility and planning. And it was in this company that I learned who an HR business partner is in the full sense of the word, because everything there is focused on business, you work only with business, and then in my head, but not only then, but also the work of HR in the full sense of the word, so to speak, was already strengthened in the full sense of the word, when you are useful to the business. Well, I would mention the whole company, because there were a lot of great colleagues there who gave a lot of knowledge, support and skills, and so on.

Well, but I also worked at Mary Kay, I worked there for a short time, but I had such an experience, such an interesting, unique company. And you know, the people there work very uniquely, well, in the good sense of the word, there are people who work for 5 years or more. There are and were people who worked there for 10 years, well, that is, for quite a large part of this it was still, well, more than 5 years ago, even more than 8 years ago, I don’t remember what year I worked. I think 8 or 9 years ago. When I left Beeline, I was called to Mary Kay, it was 2000. But wait 10 or 12 years, well, it doesn’t matter, in general, somewhere around these years, and accordingly, there were quite a few like that. You know, people with very critical thinking, picky, so unique, unique management. That’s the culture, it was different from Beeline’s and, accordingly, I held events there, and once I held such an event. It was called family, family corporate team building. We did this for the whole company. Plus why family? Because it was possible to invite other family members, and accordingly, here it was necessary to guess what everyone’s desire was. That is, on the one hand, these are corporate formats, team building, and it is also necessary that the family and children are not bored, and accordingly, I organized this grandiose event there for 2000 people, if so, together with the family and so on. Yes, because we called people who worked and there were a lot of them in the warehouses. Well, and accordingly, such a powerful event. Then I received feedback from people who had worked for 10 years or more that this was the best event the company had had in 10 years. Well, that is, for me then it was a very strong recognition and a very cool experience that, despite different, so to speak, tastes, yes, picky criteria, you can, well, make sure that everything is perfect. And so, Well, this was one of the events, yes, which I organized yet, not being a manager, and for me, of course, it was cool and cool. I remember this.

In fact, if you look at the number of my certificates or external trainings, there are very few of them. There are just critically few of them, because I have always studied. Well, firstly, you organize all this training, and you also attend trainings somewhere, study, watch and, well, throughout your life you communicate with people who, well, are really 2 heads and 3 heads taller than you, and I am always well. So it was, it so happened that it turned out that I didn’t even need any external training. Yes, because you are always studying and communicating with these people. Well, lately I’ve actually started to think about it too. There may be something else about the fact that there may be some kind of international certification. I have a good friend Luke Jones, his name is, he worked for 20 years at Lantau International, then he left there. Now he works as the head of work there with the management staff in Ramshtat, India called him, and we still communicate, and I once told him, when he comes to Kazakhstan or somewhere else, he has generally traveled all over the world, and I tell him, here’s Luke, I want some kind of international certification. And he told me, why did he ask you this? I say the usual question, well, you know, suddenly I’m leaving somewhere, I don’t know, to Europe, or so you say, Ramshtat left, yes, he says Ira, you know, he says the last thing he will ask you and who will ask you for a certificate, he says first, they will talk to you, they will ask about your experience, they will understand who you are, yeah, what do you know, what can you do, then he will ask about the certificate, of course, that’s cool, that’s cool when you put it out somewhere else in Link, that you have a certificate, but he says, think carefully about whether you really need it, well, and that’s what I’m still thinking about, yes, that is, I really need it, or it’s just a piece of paper for me, or. Well, but when I do this, I don’t just sit and think, I consult with colleagues who have undergone this training. I ask, I say, how useful was this to you? They say it’s useful when you get a job, where you go to work and those people who pay attention to certificates, let’s say, if it’s already some kind of top position, it’s some kind of international company, of course, but when you start working, it’s rarely useful, because especially these international certificates are very specific, they don’t quite fit the mentality of our countries, our business countries. If we are talking about Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and even the CIS. That’s why, well, I say, okay, everything is clear, that is. Well, if we really talk about what I want, not so that someone will choose me, but what I want myself, then I am very impressed by training associated with, well, probably some new technologies, yes, because now I was faced with organizing events, I was faced with the fact that now everything is digital, everyone speaks this language, and you know, I felt like some kind of I don’t know ancient person, because I just didn’t need it before. That is, my colleagues at the corporation did this. Let’s say there’s a marketing department there, someone else, all the IT people there did all this. That is, I was doing my own thing, and now I’m busy with this project.

But look, if we are talking about HR, then this is all about brand development. Well, now everyone is talking about it. Of course, they don’t talk about this today, and they did yesterday, yes, but no, many people talk about it, but many don’t know how to do it, where to start, how to measure it, and what is it anyway? That is, people are chaotic. I was talking to HR and HR are chaotically doing some projects, but there is no system, and this seems to be the biggest problem. That is, everyone wants to quickly and immediately create some kind of project with a cool wow effect. But this is painstaking work, yes, starting from I don’t know the recruiter’s call, and for someone it also affects the HR brand and ending with what people say about us when they leave the company, this is very painstaking work, and it should be this cycle of the system, yes, completed by an endless one, yes, so to speak, no one wants to do this to the end. Even large companies that create a brand there, in any case, you also talk to them and inside, well, there is an opinion. Let's say that some employees differ from the fact that, let's say, we see it from the outside, but from the outside everything looks very beautiful, a beautiful picture, everyone is like wow, everything is great. That is, we still have to work and work with this, it seems to me that there are no turquoise organizations there, we are still very far from this, and therefore, this is the trend. And then everything related to digitalization, the IT sphere, and so on is also very relevant, because... I recently talked to some marketers, right? And one girl came from London, and she worked for us in Kazakhstan. Previously, Proctor as Marketing Director. Her name is Nilufar, and accordingly, she was talking about trends and you know, she said the biggest trend in marketing and the tool through which they are pumping the most and where marketers give 90% of their budget, well, at least there in foreign companies it is TikTok. Well, everyone is so damn TikTok, what are we talking about? And we’re just sitting there, what are we talking about? And here I am, I’m talking about the fact that these are trends, yes, that is, now everything gives the whole, so to speak, rhythm, yes, the whole march is set by these trends, if you are not in the trend, you are still sitting there, somewhere incomprehensibly in the distance, you are already late and that’s it and you are already running there for the last bus, that’s why these trends from now on they dictate everything, that’s why all people want to be in trend, to understand how to generally keep up, yes, with this carriage. But the biggest problem is that even if they know these trends, they don’t know how, what to do with them, what to do, yes, within the framework of this trend, and this is very important for us, let’s say my colleagues, for example, from Uzbekistan, they ask us to make sure that we speak the same language to them, they say, now a lot of different Russian companies come in and tell everything very beautifully. But they say we don't know how to apply it. We don't, we don't understand how this will affect our strategy and our current situation in the company. And that’s why when you say, well, that is, you say, yes, we should be in trend, but you explain it all to a person so much and understand the realities of life, what he says, yes, this suits me. Well, that is, probably, there is some kind of golden mean, because when you come and say, oh, we are trending, we are all so wonderful, cool. And people say, well, yes, it’s cool, but I don’t need it now. And it’s possible to find those tools that will suit people in the realities of their company. Well, this is very relevant. Now I don’t know what to call it. Probably some kind of training or direction. Well, that is, this is probably a balance between realities. And indeed, well, there are trends that dictate all their market rules to us. And so help managers in their paradigm and guide them so that their brains don’t explode if they are told let’s change everything there. Well, at the same time, so that it is relevant for the cycle in which the company’s growth is currently located.

But I would definitely warn you that the law of the counter-offer, it really works in terms of the fact that do not agree to a counter-offer. This is such an interesting, cool thing, but we are always lured somewhere, transferred, returned back for something else, and sometimes we make some other decisions based on emotions, and if you have already decided to leave, let’s say from the company, and thought about it for a long time, and then they made a counter-offer to you, you decided to return.
This is the biggest mistake. Well, at least when you already occupy a fairly high position, nothing just happens. And so I would give myself this advice first, because I had such an experience, and it was very, very burning, so to speak, but it was a great experience, thanks to this I also grew personally, yes, so to speak, but I could have done without it.
Well, this is probably the biggest piece of advice, but in general, really do everything, well, probably, really do it on time and don’t waste time on some projects or work in which you have already lost interest. This is approximately how it is now, that is, even though I worked for this company for a short time, I understand that this will not give me any new experience. That is, now you just know, there is such a financial safety net and I started working on this project at the same time, without fear that something would not work out for me or that I would lose something and so on. That is, I started and that’s it, and you can do this at any period of your life. Well, that is, there before. Whether you have matured or not, you will understand in the process, because until you start, you will not understand whether you are ready or not. And well, probably, yes, these are some interesting things, you can start doing them earlier. They are not afraid, because maybe, if only. But I didn’t play it safe there, maybe I would have started doing this project earlier, yeah, maybe, but, on the other hand, as they say, everything has its time. Maybe we should start now, who knows.

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