News

MEET SAM... Director of REED in Brno

My name is Samuel, I am 31 years old and I live in Brno since 2010 where I work as a Director for REED. I come from a city called Limoges in France and you should know that to be "sent to Limoges" (être limogé) In French language means to be "fired". Thus, I left home as soon as I could to get my first work experience in the beautiful city of Queretaro in Mexico. There, I worked for a small firm ran by a Belgian expat that produced wooden products ("cubrecanto") that protect the edge of pieces of furniture. I didn't know anything about this industry or even that these products existed before and I didn't speak Spanish at the time so I had to learn fast. It was a great experience to work for a SME taking part in a wide range of sales and marketing activities. I also got to discover some parts of Mexico as it's a really big and amazing country with mostly good people, quite different from the idea many people have of it.

I returned to Europe in 2006 to finish my studies and spent a year in Plzen, CZ where I completed my degree in Business. This year spent in Plzen gave me the opportunity to discover the Czech culture more in depth, meet my future wife and travel around Central Europe.
After graduating I decided to move to Dublin in Ireland. I just booked a one way ticket, 2 nights in a hostel (the hostel I chose was a terrible place to sleep in but it was a former recording studio where U2 had recorded some of their albums so I still have great memories of it) and in a week time, I had found a job and flat and a new life started for me! I worked in contact centres for large firms such as Symantec and Allianz and I loved it. These roles taught me a lot in terms of how to deal with people from different backgrounds and unexpected situations. It was really interesting for me to see how multinationals work in terms of processes and operations and the company cultures there were very different to what I experienced in Mexico. I really liked my job at Allianz Worldwide Care since I was responsible for helping expats living around the world with their medical Insurance's needs (from answering basic questions on their insurance coverage to dispatching a helicopter in the middle of the night to Africa so we could evacuate someone who had an accident. Being slow managing such processes could result in someone losing their life so multitasking, accountability and customer orientation were a must). In addition, my clients were really interesting people ranging from Sports and Music superstars to Top Execs of some of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations in the world.
However after 2 years and a half of rain, my future wife and I decided to leave the "emerald island" to travel to Asia. Our trip was originally planned for 3 months and we started in Singapore and then went to Indonesia and Malaysia. At this point, we figured out 2 things: how cheap South East Asia was and that we had no good reason for stopping this experience after 3 months only so we extended our trip to make it a full year and went on travelling to Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, India and Sri-Lanka. It was a life changing experience and I learnt a lot there both on the world and myself.
Upon return, to Europe we decided to settle in Czech Republic and I found a job as Recruitment Consultant for an Irish recruitment agency based in Brno. I had no experience in recruitment but I convinced the local manager that I would manage and she gave me a chance. I was probably the only non-Czech speaking recruiter in Brno working for a recruitment agency and I really enjoyed the fact that this job allowed me to meet many new people and help them get a new job. I worked hard to give the best service I could to my candidates and clients and they helped me in return to grow within the company. On December 7th 2013, I was celebrating my birthday and on the same day I received an offer to build a branch for REED in Brno and my wife told me that I would become a dad. I dived in and gave my best and since then, I have the privilege to manage REED's local operations with a fantastic team and great clients. I am extremely proud of the fact we managed within such a short time to build a successful branch and be considered as the best agency on the market by our clients.
When I am not working or reading about recruitment, I try to be the best husband and dad possible, attempt to dust my guitar and write new songs to record a folk album, run with my dog at the local park and search for new countries to explore during the cold Czech winter.
Feel free to reach me if you need help with your career or recruitment operations
Samuel
+420 601 393 838
samuel.leduc@reedglobal.com