The Meet The Hiring Manager series allows you to get to know the people who grow teams at VMware. You will learn about VMware hiring managers’ career paths and what they look for in candidates during the interview experience. If learnings and interview tips from our hiring managers interest you, we invite you to read on!
This week we want you to meet VMware Senior Director of End-User Computing (EUC), Steve English. Steve has recently undertaken the task of building out VMware’s new Digital Sales Centre in Barcelona, Spain. This is an exciting new venture for VMware as it’s our first site to open in Barcelona. Below you’ll find an excerpt from our recent chat with Steve.
Steve English
Staines, United Kingdom
VMware Careers:Tell us about your career journey to date?
Steve English: It’s been quite a journey so far! Before joining VMware, I worked at Dell and British Airways; I started in finance and then moved into operational and sales leadership roles. I joined VMware eight years ago, and have had a number of different roles and opportunities since then. I started as the Operations Director for Northern Europe, Middle East and Africa (NEMEA), and during that time I had a six-month stint in an interim role running the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) business based out of Johannesburg (by far the longest commute of my career)!
After the SSA role, I moved into the Sales organisation full-time, initially driving the channel business to transition from vSphere to our virtualization management solution. I was then promoted to be the segment leader for the Commercial business across EMEA, and spent a proportion of this time scaling our Inside Sales team in Cork.
In 2016, I was asked to join the EUC business at this time we started the integration of AirWatch into one EUC portfolio and Sales team.
In this time, I have led the NEMEA Commercial team, then the EMEA Commercial team, and have been focused on transforming and integrating our legacy desktop sales and mobile teams into a Unified EUC team. A few months ago, I was asked to take on an additional role as Program Director for the new Digital Sales Centre in Barcelona, which I am very excited about.
VMware Careers:How is VMware different from any other tech company you have worked for?
Steve English:When I first joined VMware I was initially struck by the companies fantastic capacity to be agile. The company has changed significantly in this time as we have grown, but it has maintained an innovative approach. We were a $2bn company when I joined and now we are even bigger than that in EMEA! I have seen a lot of change and some tough times, but by being so focused on delivering world-class software solutions for our customers, the company has re-invented itself and the growth has given me many opportunities for development.
VMware Careers:What has been the biggest lesson you have learned as you have moved upwards in your career?
Steve English:There are two things that I think are critical. Firstly, you never know what options may present themselves. If you are asked to do something that looks like a huge challenge – take it as you will learn plenty. Secondly, find yourself a mentor. This may be someone you have worked for or a connection in or outside the business. Listen to their feedback and be ready to adapt. Being coachable is a skill!
VMware Careers: Your team is growing in a new site and city (Barcelona). Tell us more about this exciting time.
Steve English: We choose Barcelona as our new home for a number of reasons. It’s known as one of the most vibrant and diverse cities in Europe, and it’s a great place to live! It is also developing as a technology hub very fast; a number of other major tech companies are setting up here and it’s not just the big players. It’s also attracting tech start-ups into a number of locations across the city.
We will be located in the @22 district, the innovation district. It’s a former industrial area that has been redeveloped. The city has plans to continue this over the next decade. Our base will be in a brand new WeWork office for the first year while our home in the area is finished.
Today we have plans to hire over 100 people into our sales centre. We will be working across the EMEA region, focused on building and closing business across different areas of the VMware portfolio. We are working hard to ensure that we have the right culture for the Digital Sales Centre to become the home of innovation for our Sales organisation, and that there is the opportunity for people to progress their career in VMware field roles across the EMEA region.
As we build out the DSC we will be creating roles supporting the partner and commercial business, building a new function to drive demand generation across the portfolio, and building new sales teams to drive VeloCloud, now part of VMware, VMware Cloud on AWS and End User Computing. This site will have a key focus on hiring talented graduates from across all EMEA, helping us to build an Academy that will grow and develop our future successful Senior Sales professionals across the region.
VMware Careers:If someone reading this was coming to an interview with you tomorrow, what advice would you share with them?
Steve English: Come to the interview with energy and enthusiasm, a positive attitude goes a long way with me!
Take a look at some of the open positions for the VMware Digital Sales Centre in Barcelona and apply today!
- Cloud Digital Sales Manager
- Digital Sales Business Development Manager NEMEA
- Digital Sales Business Development Manager – SEMEA & CEMEA
- Digital Sales Manager, Education EMEA
- Digital Sales Commercial Associate
- Partner Sales Associate
- Digital Sales Development Rep
To learn more about who we are at VMware visit our career site and social channels below.
https://careers.vmware.com/life-at-vmware
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