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Meet Liliana Caruceriu, our Operations Director for Ness’ Romania, Iasi center. Liliana has been a fundamental part of Ness for over sixteen years, in this time she has held many different roles allowing her to fully understand each part of our business.
Q: Tell us a little bit about your role and what you do at Ness.
A: I have been with Ness since 2005, since joining the company I have had the pleasure of working with many different departments. Recently, I was promoted to Operations Director of Romania in Iasi. In this position, I coordinate all purchasing, travel, and facilities of this center. I work very closely with all the other departments from both Iasi and Timisoara including Finance, Marketing, HR, Recruitment, and Delivery.
Q: How do you take your coffee?
A: I LOVE coffee! Sugar is a must, however, I don’t take it with milk. I think that “Coffee” should be my middle name because of how much I drink. My husband usually prepares the first coffee in the morning; he knows exactly how much sugar to add & the appropriate temperature I enjoy it at. This small gesture means the world to me, I think it is his way of showing me that he (still) loves me.
On weekends, I always drink my coffee in bed…it is my favorite half-hour of the morning because of how peaceful it is.
Q: What’s on your to-do list?
A: The health and happiness of my family is always my top priority. This also includes the education of my two children. I have an 11-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son.
On my short-term to-do list, I hope to book a weekend in the mountains, for a nice get-away with my husband – we will soon be celebrating 12 years of marriage; so, some negotiations are needed with my mother-in-law, to take care of the kids 🙂
On a professional level, there are many items on my list. The well-being of my team members is always of the utmost importance to me, without them we would be lost. They are doing a great job, each of them is a professional in their role and I’m happy to learn from each of them every day. We trust each other and are a very well-rounded team and I strongly believe this is the reason why we have such good results – “Teamwork makes common people achieve uncommon results”.
There are also always the more common tasks like the pending reworks and optimizations in our building in Iasi and some contract renewals.
Q: What’s the next place on your travel list and why?
As I have just mentioned, the next place to travel is in the mountains – a short vacation.
Then, the next one will be with the kids, for sure. We would like to visit Cyprus as I heard their beaches are absolutely amazing, they have tasty traditional dishes, and you have the opportunity to travel to the past with their historical monuments.
Q: What’s the best career advice you’ve ever heard?
It might sound strange, but I found a piece of good advice in the book I’ve read recently: Momo, by Michael Ende. It’s a book from the list of mandatory readings from my daughter’s school – I often read such books, as I’m curious to see what the youth are studying nowadays. Michael Ende talks of taking tasks one step at a time in order to not become overwhelmed and to achieve a better outcome.
One paragraph states the following:
“Sometimes, when you’ve a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you’ll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you’re out of breath and have to stop–and still the street stretches away in front of you. That’s not the way to do it.
You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.
That way you enjoy your work, which is important because then you make a good job of it. And that’s how it ought to be.
And all at once, before you know it, you find you’ve swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. What’s more, you aren’t out of breath. That’s important, too…”
Q: What’s one word you would use to describe Ness and why?
A: For this question, I’m going to cheat a little and reference a conversation I recently had with my colleague Mona. Our conclusion was that Ness’ slogan should also be “You Can Do IT!”.
We are often faced with huge challenges, that can be hard to wrap our heads around and tend to leave us in a poor mental state. But since we have the pleasure of working with such amazing teams, and colleagues, there is no room for an “I can’t do this” mentality. Yes, we can!
Q: How would your 10-year-old self react to what you do now?
A: I think she would say” OMG, woman! Really?”
When I was a child, I was convinced that I would become a stewardess! I loved everything about planes and traveling. I thought I would be speaking in English, French and, German on numerous flights around the world.
Q: How did you get started in the industry?
A: With an interview with a beautiful lady, Narcisa Mocanu, Sales & Marketing Manager in Ness Romania at that time. I was young, shy, and very scared at the time but luckily I successfully passed the interview and I joined Ness in August 2005, as a secretary.
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