Many people associate summer with carefree warm evenings, trips, the beach, the sea and the bar next to it. For us, summer is all that, but it's also the busiest time of the year. During this season we worked on almost the entire Black Sea coast and over 900 people stayed in the flats managed by Flat Manager between Golden Sands and Arapya; thousands stayed at our sites in Sofia, Plovdiv and Bucharest.
We've also made progress on many of our projects, which you'll be hearing about in the coming weeks and months. But before we start inundating you with marketing posts, let's share something more personal. If we know each other this post will not surprise you, we hope it will make you smile; if we don't know each other and you come across us for the first time, we owe you a brief explanation.
The team is the engine of our success, and the trust of customers and partners is our most valuable asset. That is why, in a natural way, over the last almost 3 years, instead of a corporate identity, we have built something that is more like a family. We can't do business as a family or advertise our business with team photos, but we can remove the veil of contractual relationships and the mask of advertisements...from time to time to get to know you. We are the FM Dream Team, we enjoy it!
During the summer, new positive people joined the team, full of energy and ready for the FM challenge. You will see them very soon. We also organized send-offs that were emotional but not sad, on the contrary! One of the dispatches even coincided with the birthday of the great Nadezhda N., who is at the heart of everything FM. We are grateful and wish her, Nadeto P. and Nico the best of luck and look forward to seeing them back home after the exciting adventures ahead!
Part of the FM family of the sea! 🙂
Another person we are temporarily parting ways with is Rayner Jie Ying Lim, or simply Ray. He is 22 years old, from Singapore, studying business management at one of the most prestigious universities in the world - the British Warwick Business School. Ray completed his compulsory summer internship at Flat Manager thanks to the AIESEC programme. At the end of his internship, he shared his impressions of the months spent with us. With his permission, we share his words with you, unedited.
Experience at Flat Manager
Rayner Lim
Coming to Flat Manager was a blessing in disguise, after all, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for in the beginning, and the position was something accepted last minute. Still, I came with an open mind, and I'm glad that I accepted this role.
For my 1st year internship, all I wanted was to try out something different with a company that has a good company culture. Thankfully, the Flat Manager went above and beyond that. The company's office was located in an apartment ground floor spanning two offices, a meeting room, and a pantry area; all designed by the staff of Flat Manager.
The primary role as a Summer Intern was to research and analyze cities for Flat Manager to expand out into but let's be honest; you be bored to death just doing that 24/7 for nine weeks straight. Luckily, I did much more than that.
The first week was just like any other company - an orientation to understand how Flat Manager functions and works. I was rotated throughout the different departments, such as sales, operations, and communications.
From there on, I started on the main objective of my internship – researching and analyzing potential franchisees that Flat Manager could expand into. The initial deck comprised of 160 cities which was later expanded to approximately 200 cities.
Coming from an accounting diploma and a finance specialization in my second year at University, I was also included in two main projects that ran concurrently with the primary role of my internship. The first project that I did was the analysis of the promotions that were currently running to increase our revenue and occupancy rate. The next project was to update the KPI (the year 2019) for Flat Manager and making a procedure for future reference.
Of course, Flat Manager is not all just work. I believe the motto 'Work hard, play harder' fits the company entirely. During my internship, our company had a 3D2N retreat at Camp Gradina and Sozopol. If you think that we all had to take the grueling overnight 8-hour train ride (just like my friends from AIESEC did), thankfully we didn't.
To put the retreat into one word, it was terrific. For three days, all we did as a company was enjoy the sunny beach during the day, listening to the waves at night and most importantly, drinks. This is not to say if you don't drink alcohol, you can't have fun though, several colleagues didn't have any alcohol and just had as much fun as the ones that did. It was one of the best summer experiences that will stay with me for a lifetime.
At the end of the internship, I managed to finish all of the projects, and Flat Manager had a target of five cities to expand into, with an additional five for future expansion. Looking back, the skills that I was able to acquire within these nine weeks were helpful and valuable to my future endeavours. Working at Flat Manager isn't just like working at any other company; it's like working with a family that is flexible, supportive and understanding.
Till then, bye bye.
See you soon, Nade N, Nade P, Niko & Ray! <3
