Stories > Finding a solution to a problem through entrepreneurship – Nevena’s story

Finding a solution to a problem through entrepreneurship – Nevena’s story

13.12.2020 | Entrepreneurial journey

Nevena Isic started her entrepreneur journey by joining Startup Experience in August 2020, which was one of her final courses at TAMK before she graduated in October 2020. She is now a ready Bachelor of Business Administration in International Business and she is ready to develop her business idea even further.

Contact person

Pauliina Waters

pauliina.waters@milcon.fi

Pauliina has been a marketing intern at HUBS in autumn 2020.

Nevena tells that during her HR studies, she first noticed the problem of how long millennial and Gen Z employees stay in a company when she participated in a business case competition at the University of Florida in February 2019. “The cases we worked on were related to attrition of millennials and gen Z. They get hired, they work for a while and then approximately after 2-3 years, they leave the company. Companies waste a lot of money to train and hire new people.” She noticed that this is a real issue.

She noticed the same problem in Asia during her internship in Summer 2019 in a HR company in Hong Kong. After her internship, she wanted to do more research on the same topic in Europe, particularly in Finland. She decided to write her thesis about the subject, which would help to start her own company. While doing her research, she again noticed how the same problem is happening in Finland too.

Non-exsisting on-boarding for young employees

After more research she noticed that most of the companies hiring don’t have an official on-boarding process for young employees.

“Doing the survey and talking to millennials and gen Z in Finland, I figured out that actually they would appreciate that very much. But the whole on-boarding process in companies is currently very short and brief. It is not long enough to get them engaged and to motivate them to stay longer.”
Nevena Isic

Nevena says that the on-boarding process is only around a month long, some cases even shorter or non-existent. Based on her research, the on-boarding process should be at least nine months long, even one year. She has based her business idea on her findings around the subject.

“I explain in my business plan how the one-year on-boarding process would look like. Of course, it is adjusted according to different companies. There also certain steps that help keep employees engaged while doing their training and giving them an idea how they can progress in their career in the future in the same company. This also motivates the employees to stay in the company for longer.” Nevena explains in more detail.

My business idea goes a lot deeper and it is most suitable for big and middle-sized companies that have an HR department. My role in the on-boarding process is as a consultant and I am there to help.
Nevena Isic

Discussions and support from Startup Experience Pre-incubator

Nevena joined the Startup Experience Pre-incubator programme offered by HUBS (at that time Y-kampus) in August 2020. Theory in the pre-incubator wasn’t completely new for her because of her field of study but she liked the collaboration with the coaches, and she got really good mentor from Unfair. “I had three sessions with my mentor, and I got very good guidelines and very concrete ideas, like how to organize my services to be customer-oriented and other ideas to proceed with my idea” she explains. Nevena has a few things she is going to bring into practice from Startup Experience. She also mentions the great discussions with her peers at the Startup Experience where she got ideas and support for marketing her skills and services.

Eye on the future

Nevena is currently working full-time in marketing where. “I am getting hands-on experience and concrete learnings. Also, some income to invest in my future business. I have a great network and through that, some potential clients that I can contact.” Next step for her is to get her website together and continue developing her business idea even further and improve it along the way. Nevena has a great support network who will help her with different aspects of building her business. Nevena is clearly passionate about her idea and she is definitely ready to start her business.

Connect with Nevena on LinkedIn!