From canine blogger to tech unicorn marketer 

Social media is rife with movies and tweets encouraging job hunters to “faux it till you make it”. This implies confidently nod to any job requirement and determine issues out on the fly upon employment. At 24, Benita Riagbayire, a regulation graduate with a resume full of wins—campaigns that boosted app downloads, an award naming her Most Promising Product Marketer—may have bluffed her means by an interview for a advertising operations position at Oyster HR, a world payroll unicorn. The position was managerial and promised a pay cheque that far exceeded her prior 5 years of working with  Nigerian corporations.

Nonetheless, because the interview progressed, Riagbayire realised how starkly completely different the position was from the form of advertising she had executed beforehand. This was a extra technical, behind-the-scenes place, involving every little thing from managing consumer lifecycle workflows to making sure GDPR (Common Information Safety Regulation) compliance and troubleshooting automation instruments. It diverged considerably from the extra front-facing, artistic work she had executed in content material creation and campaigns. She had been taking programs to upskill and knew the correct phrases to make use of to persuade them she was able to hit the bottom operating, however she did the unpopular factor: she selected candour. This paid off. In a shocking twist, the corporate, contemplating her theoretical data and eagerness to study, supplied her a lower-level position that accommodated her must study on the job.

“All my life, I had labored in direction of turning into a world expertise,” Riagbayire, who took the decision from Agbani, a distant village in Enugu the place she was visiting for some time, instructed me. “It’s a cherry on high that the job pays me sufficient cash that I do not need to work a number of jobs to make ends meet.”

Riagbayire’s journey to a seven-figure position at Oyster HR looks like a pure development now, however in 2020, as a 300-level regulation scholar on the College of Lagos, her resume was removed from polished. The pandemic had upended the world, and the ASUU strike closed campuses, leaving college students with uncertainty in regards to the future and numerous time on their palms. 

It was throughout that point that Riagbayire determined to study tech abilities. Although she has gone on to be a marketer in three startups, on the time, she needed to be a programmer and had initially tried her hand at software program engineering and was studying programming languages like Flutter, HTML, and CSS. She’d tried software program engineering as a result of it was touted as a extra profitable profession. The common wage of promoting personnel hovered at ₦200,000 ($131) or much less, whereas software program engineers have been paid considerably extra on the entry stage.

She took up programs on FreeCodeCamp and recruited a buddy as an accountability associate. Quickly, she realised that software program growth was too boring for her, particularly when she noticed the best way her buddy’s eyes lit up when he talked about initiatives and debugging. 

Then got here a unusual alternative: a contract gig writing about canine breeds on WordPress for ₦15,000 ($9.8) a month. It was her first paid foray into digital content material for a enterprise. She’d write about completely different breeds—Lhasas, Shih Tzus, Rottweilers—detailing their options and what potential homeowners ought to look out for earlier than buying. It was modest, however writing the posts and tweaking them for search engine optimisation (search engine optimization) tickled her fancy. “I discovered these fascinating—like when on WordPress, your article turns from purple to yellow to inexperienced. I actually loved all of that,” she mentioned. She dropped coding after 5 months and shifted her focus to digital content material.

Her first tech job, her first layoff

Months after beginning a social media supervisor job at an oil and fuel agency, Riagbayire moved to  Cloudley, a Nigerian cloud engineering startup primarily based in Delaware. Not like her position on the oil and fuel agency,  social media advertising for a tech startup required tailoring one’s messaging to potential consumers who have been largely builders. “The purpose was to draw shoppers for a product costing 1000’s of {dollars},” she defined. She invested in B2B tech advertising programs and likewise tried to study the language of engineers.

Cloudley, nonetheless in pre-launch, was a whirlwind. Riagbayire constructed buzz for options nonetheless in growth, however funding dried up, and the startup folded. “They despatched everybody dwelling,” she recalled. The layoff, although cushioned with discover and pay, was her first style of startup volatility.

 The expertise didn’t deter her from the trade, nonetheless. She landed a social media advertising position at Chekkit, a well being tech startup utilizing blockchain to combat counterfeit prescribed drugs. Not like Cloudley’s scrappy, six-person crew, Chekkit supplied construction—a transparent hierarchy with distinct gross sales, engineering, and advertising groups. “I discovered most of what I do know working at this firm,” Benita mentioned. Underneath a supportive supervisor who accommodated her scholar schedule, she discovered advertising automation, wielding HubSpot to streamline e-mail campaigns and social media scheduling. Six months into her position,  she led a marketing campaign to associate with the College of Ibadan and go to secondary colleges for CSR initiatives. 

She labored carefully with the engineering crew to ensure correct information assortment and arrange a system to nurture new customers past the preliminary obtain. “It’s not sufficient to get individuals to put in the app,” she defined. “With out automation to maintain them engaged, you lose them to churn.” Her efforts paid off, driving a 40% spike in Chekkit app downloads.

A turbulent flip  

Whilst she thrived at Chekkit, Benita remained open to new alternatives.  A digital advertising affiliate position at Figg Africa, a crowdfunding platform, promised a step up. However the actuality was far much less rosy. The crew was smaller than Cloudley’s, piling an avalanche of tasks on her plate. She managed consumer relationships, solid partnerships, and leaned closely on her e-mail advertising abilities, honed by programs and observe. “It was lots,” she mentioned. The corporate tradition, she admitted, was “horrible,” and the pressure finally pushed her to resign. 

What was most ironic about this time, she says, was that in the identical month as her resignation, she was offered with the Most Promising Product Marketer award on the No Code Tech Summit, organised by one in all Nigeria’s main tech communities for non-coding professionals. “It was insane,” she mentioned.

Regardless of her expertise at Fig Africa,  she sharpened her means to construct advertising processes from scratch. However balancing this work as a scholar demanded prioritisation. “There’s no good stability,” she mentioned. “It’s about understanding when faculty or work comes first and managing expectations.”

Amid the depth of 2023, Benita briefly joined TechCabal. Her position concerned amplifying the outlet’s digital presence and managing viewers engagement.

Advertising and marketing at a unicorn tech startup

Now at Oyster HR, a startup valued at over $1 billion, Riagbayire focuses on the technical backend of lifecycle advertising. “Every thing led to this second,” she says of her present position.

Her previous coding expertise, regulation diploma, and moot courtroom expertise in information privateness are as essential as the talents she’s developed in her previous advertising roles. I requested her if she apprehensive that her honesty about her ability stage on the time would value her the chance, however Riagbayire mentioned she wasn’t. Her different abilities made her a priceless asset to any firm. “I additionally assume that folks [for] who use that technique [fake it till you make it], it could not work, relying on how technical the position is,” she added. “My private recommendation is to not lie throughout an interview about your {qualifications} as a result of there’s a excessive likelihood you’ll get caught in a structured surroundings.”

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