Welcome to Hacker Noon Good-Company Interview Series! See all other Interviews here.
HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.
My name is Giacomo and I am a Digital Marketing Manager working in Shanghai since 2016. Why Shanghai? Because after few years working in Italy, I decided to take a big step and go to the other part of the world to learn more about the country, improve my Chinese, and give a twist to my career. Since I moved, I helped companies, especially Chinese ones, to improve their brand presence online.
What's your company called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?
The name is HROne. What we do at HROne is helping foreign companies to manage HR, payroll, and employment in China.
What is the origin story?
The company was born with a mission: helping foreign SMEs to operate in China in an easier and low-risk way. After more than 20 years working in the HR industry, the founder decided that small and medium companies needed to have the same opportunities as big companies.
But the problem that these SMEs have is about how to deal with all the boring tasks that do not help to grow the business, but that they are mandatory for the company to survive. I am talking about HR and payroll. Two aspects that are difficult to manage, especially in a country like China, but if you make mistakes they can ruin your business operations and reputations.
What do you love about your team?
What I love most is their professionalism and expertise in HR and payroll, and their ability to deliver great results even with strict deadlines. The customers constantly thank them because of their knowledge of the policies and their availability when a problem arises.
If you weren’t working at your company, what would you be doing?
I have a passion for teaching, so I would probably use this passion to teach people more about the digital marketing environment and how it can help companies to succeed in this modern world.
At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?
The success is measured by the number of leads that we receive, traffic that we get on the website, and mentions online of our brand.
What’s most exciting about your company traction to date?
We are developing software that will allow companies to easily manage HR and payroll in China and the idea is to sell this software together with our service.
What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?
I think AI is the future. I am excited because this technology can be applied in many different industries and different jobs, but I am also worried about it because we still don’t understand it completely and the idea that some AI could take control of important data and use it for whatever reason, scares me.
What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?
The platform is great to know more about the latest technological trends and the stories are definitely interesting for the audience working with technology (not only from a developer point of view but also from a marketer point of view).
What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?
Start to invest the money that you have to create as soon as possible your financial freedom.
What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?
I like to find ways to improve my body and mind performances and I actually found out that breathing (when done in the correct way) is a powerful action to both relax our mind and improve our blood circulation to activate more our muscles.