Rashmi Bharathan: Connecting is important. [Auditor]
Rashmi Bharathan: Hi, uh, my name is Rashmi. I work for Wintrust. I'm an internal auditor.
Rashmi Bharathan: Uh, from my childhood, I, I always want to be a good leader and to support the community wherever I am and especially I want to focus on students, uh, their path and career. So I just want to give more focus on the student side. After I moved from India to US. So that is what my understanding that so many kids doesn't know what bachelor degree they are taking and it's not connected relevant to their work. So I just want to be very clear from the high school like how you need to select your path and get into the right path where you want to be.
Rashmi Bharathan: So I started my career in, uh, help like a service desk. So I started on a call center where I was like attending 50 calls per day. So that's how my journey started and, uh, that really helps me to improve my communication. I would say, and then I get into the IT industry, and then I started my journey in a retail, uh, company, and then from there I moved to, um, pharmaceutical company, which is AstraZeneca, so there I worked for five and a half years, so that's where my cyber security career started, and then I get into the audit, and So I got an opportunity to work on implementing the NIST within the AstraZeneca organization and from there, my journey start, I moved to U.S. and then I was so much interested on the audit role because when I was working on my NIST, uh, implementing the NIST project, so it was more kind of audit. So basically my background is from the process, uh service management, I would say. So i'm very uh good in and out about the infrastructure operations. So that's where my audit career started from the infra.
Rashmi Bharathan: Then I moved to U.S. and here I came to know like, Oh my God, how I contact people, how to start with, so that's where LinkedIn helped me a lot to get started with my connections. So I thought, okay, I don't have authorized to work in U.S., but still I'm so happy to connect with people. So that's where I started connecting people in LinkedIn from my school days. I was seeing my friends, college friends and my colleagues. So that's where I started my since I completed my Caesar certification then I was part of a SACA member. So I was part of multiple community group where I was really want, that's the place I started my journey, doing a volunteering. So I started doing volunteering and slowly I started building the network and from there, I got a chance to know about ISSA, which is a security association and then from there, my complete journey was like, uh, I would say like, awesome and I'm so happy that I'm, I work for Wintrust as such a beautiful company, very comfortable company. I would say like work life balance company. So it really helped me to get into my right career path.
Rashmi Bharathan: So I would say so I really gone through the pain like being heidel in us for two years just doing volunteering and I really want to give that journey path to the students how the volunteering is very important in your career because GPA is important but GPA is not going to support you to get your internship or job apart from that you should know your committee community members and tract with them because networking is, uh, a powerful tool in my journey. I would say that through that right now, I got my separate, um, visa where I can work here. So I spend equal amount of time to segregate, like I have to do this time. I need to focus on, uh, this volunteering. So by each, uh, non-profitable organization. So I utilize that four hours doing my volunteering work and complete all the work assigned to me on time. So during the work time, I just focus on the work and how to improve, how to get into the next position. So that's my focus when I doing my work.
Rashmi Bharathan: You have to maintain yourself to play all this around, right? So, so that is one of the thing I do. So I keep my day engaged throughout the day until till 8. 30 in the night. The first thing is like, uh, I always say good morning to everybody in my team. Even I don't get a response, that's fine. But I always start with a good morning with a smiley with all my team members. I would say the good morning helps me to connect to different people very easily and so whenever even I don't know them, I just I just say good morning But the when you keep on saying when the consistency when you keep on doing that you get that result back if I need something I just call the name and then say can you please help me with that? So that kind of uh, so I'm so comfortable that comfortable I'm creating by doing this. And that really helps me a lot wherever I do. So, and I, I always maintain the network. It's not about saying hi, connect them and LinkedIn, that's it. No, I never do that. I maintain them. I call them and I tell them that if I'm going to have another events, would you like to join? So I always a kind of maintaining my network till now, whoever I know very well.
Rashmi Bharathan: So one thing I always like to tell people, like people are moved from different countries, different place. They always say that I don't know what to do. I'm not sure what to do. So it's all about the personal interest, what you want to be. So in my journey, I want to be a good leader that is my future goal, but I keep doing that, what I can do. So I started my LinkedIn profile with 10 friends when I moved to us and now it's like more than there are so many people, but I select people who really, I like, it's not just connecting with people. It's all about, you should know your connections. That is more important. So I would say that networking and volunteering is really going to help you to grow in your career. So that is more important, these two are more important than GPA to get, uh, to have a good, better life.