Nizami Piriyev

I am a co-founder of Savouir Events Ltd, a company that hosts private events across the UK.

Our primary focus has always been on exclusivity; both in terms of our hand-picked clientele, and the elite venues we choose for hosting our parties.

We have held private events at the most exclusive and private night club venues in the heart of London; such as Tape, Yuki Lounge (Tabu), MNKY HSE and Sumosan Twiga.

This job has taught me the importance of client relations, as I have had to find and maintain high-quality clients. I believe this business has highlighted my people skills, specifically my communicability.

Being an event organiser is a stressful, difficult task - especially since you have to work in an environment where everyone else is having fun, and enjoying themselves, stress-free. As a result of this, my resolve and mental sharpness have been developed immensely. It's a mental game as much as anything else.

Organising events is also a logistically challenging game, because negotiating with venues, suppliers and clients can be difficult. My problem solving skills and adaptability have been tested.

I have also developed design skills and my let my creative side shine through, having created design templates for our business, styling and ordering business cards, developing a logo and general style for the Savouir brand, and promo photo/video for themed events. You can check this out through our Instagram page: instagram.com/savouir.events

I have been running a digital marketplace that offers various entertainment products to clients from different backgrounds and geographical locations, notably Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other post-Soviet-states; currently, we are also developing a website for the Western/European market.

My responsibilities and achievements include:

• Managed basic changes to company website and delegated complex projects to appropriate personnel.
• Managed organic social media growth and activity across all platforms.
• Designed graphic elements for print ads, product literature and social media.
• Developed and managed production of product literature, paid ads and e-newsletters.
• Provided professional marketing guidance and advice to clients.
• Built unique brand experience and drove revenue through curated campaigns.

Speaking more generally, I think the most valuable skill I have developed throughout this project is problem-solving. This is because we have ran into many obstacles, for example, from a technical point of view (providing the entertainment products hasn't always been easy), and also logistically - because it is hard to integrate a digital marketplace in CIS countries. Especially since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we have experienced many obstacles. Key clients in Ukraine have been hard to reach due to destroyed local infrastructure and inconsistencies in their gas/electricity availability; for clients in Russia and some other states, it has been hard to arrange payment and to provide the entertainment packages, because companies like Netflix, Amazon and other major retailers have stopped offering their services in said markets.

• I was hired by a UK-based finance sector start up;
• Translated the script and code for an entire website, as well as important company documents and registration information;
• Led a medium scale translation and transliteration project between the Russian and English languages;

As the manager of said projects, I was in charge of the searching, interview and hiring process of a team of translators and transliteration experts.

These tasks were directly delegated to me from the higher management of the company and then from me to my inferiors, providing me a full taste for the hierarchy of power in a company, as well as teaching valuable skills in delegation of management power.

• I had undergone a summer internship at a London-based tech and financial sector start-up firm;
• I believe to have gained valuable skills - for example, my digital and online literacy improved immensely;
• I also gained valuable insight on how teams (groups) can work utilising online and digital tools and communication, even remotely; to solve different problems and tasks;
• I gained a lot of experience in using apps and software such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office more widely; Working and editing Excel spreadsheets and invoices (these were more general workplace skills, not always tied to my specific role);
• I communicated our company's philosophy and tried my hardest to sell our products to online users using various marketing techniques such as email marketing and web designing, and using technologies such as maximising our firm's SEO output and exploiting keyword search traffic;
• I think these were very useful skills to learn at such a young age and I also believe that they made me more flexible at the workplace because I adapted to using such advanced technologies very quickly, with no previous experience.