“I fell in love with Webbing at first sight”
Yael Nagar, Operations Team Lead at Webbing, tells the story of growing her team, explains what matters the most at the interviews along with knowledge and background, and shares the secret of keeping the right work-life balance when you have three kids and manage six people including team members across the ocean.
In search of new goals
Born and raised in Karmiel in the north of Israel, today I reside in Rosh HaAyin with my family. After my military service, I went on a big trip to South America, and then to the US where I met my husband. When I came back to Israel, I studied communication at Yezreel Valley College. But before I started college, I worked at Pelephone as a saleswoman. So, prior to joining Webbing, I had some knowledge and experience in the field of cellular communications.
Upon graduating, I worked in a bank for two years. Then I went to work for a company that was importing different products. But after coming back from my third maternity leave, I felt I wanted a change. It was a very small enterprise, without a lot of options for growth. I decided “Okay, that’s it, now I need to achieve some new goals”. That’s when I saw Webbing’s ad on a job search site. I applied for a representative position and was invited to the first interview.
I fell in love with the company at first sight. I felt it was the place where I wanted to be. And I still feel like this after 5 years.
Webbing is something else
People at Webbing are amazing. Back then there were not many people in the company so it was very easy to get to know everyone, and everyone was extremely nice unlike in other companies. Here I loved everyone. Today we have over 100 employees, and it still feels like you know everyone, that everyone shares a certain vibe. When I interview people, besides their knowledge and background, it is critical for me to hire someone with the same vibe, so it would be easy for them to become part of Webbing.
And I guess it works. I asked my team members why they chose Webbing. And they all said that when they met people inside, something clicked. I can’t even explain it, for you can only understand from the inside how special Webbing is. Whatever your previous experience, Webbing is something else.
I remember my own experience: one of the most important things that convinced me to join Webbing was meeting Yuley, Noam, Yaniv and Barak. I felt they were super professional and there was so much I could learn from them. It is the first time that there are a number of people around me who serve as role models for me.
Our roles keep changing
When I started, there was only one person in operations. After she went on maternity leave, I found myself on my own, and when she came back to work, I was promoted to be the operations team lead. We started to hire more employees, and now I have six people in my team. So, it’s not that the team grew, and I became the manager, but rather the team grew around me, while I was managing, hiring, training and everything.
Many things are different now. The SIMs that we are selling, WebbingCTRL, the small cutie – when I first started, we had regular SIMs without control options. The customers – back then we had mostly Israeli customers and even some B2C ones.
We gained a lot of responsibilities over the years in operations. Some things moved to our team from other departments, for example, all the procurement, the connectivity tests that we do for each new batch of SIM cards, IMSI ranges, APNs, and many other technical things. When we’re talking about how our department has grown, it’s not just the number of people. It’s also the responsibilities, the capabilities, the knowledge that we have, and our roles keep changing.
Since I started here, I don’t think there was one day when I was bored. You always have new customers, new things to learn, to do and to achieve. I feel that I have a lot of challenges. For example, when we started to grow in the US, I needed to hire a team member in the States. I never really thought about how difficult it is to manage someone abroad, far away, in a different time zone. Now that I have such a person in my team, it’s another challenge for me.
I’m an achiever. I think that I’ve always been competing with myself. I always wanted to be the best in everything I do. For me being at Webbing is a new challenge every day, and I love it.
It’s all in your head
I have three kids, three dogs and a husband, so keeping work and life balanced is not easy. One needs to be a Wonder Woman to succeed. But because Webbing is such a special company, they help me with that. So I’m doing my best to be with my kids whenever they need me, manage a team of six people and even work out at the gym in the evening. I want to show my kids that you can be a mother of three and do whatever you want.
Other people say it must be hard. But I learned two things in the army: “It’s all in your head” and “Only the bread crust is hard, but we eat it, too”, and these phrases have been with me ever since.
