Gavie Bongon – Virtual Assistant, Recruiter, Customer Service Representative

Hi, I am Gavie Bongon, my friends call me Gav. I graduated back in 2018, I studied Education majoring in Physical Education at Ateneo de Naga University. A little info about me, I love playing sports and music and that’s why I decided to major in it.

After graduating (since I was an irregular student, waiting for graduation), I decided, why not find a job while waiting for the graduation ceremony? That’s where I started my professional career. I decided to apply to a call centre company in our province. Thinking that I just wanted to hone my soft skills. Ironically, I stayed longer than planned. I enjoyed my time with the company for more than 3 years. It was a good experience. I achieved my goal of improving my soft skills. Who wouldn’t be? As an agent, you’ll be talking to customers non-stop. You’ll talk to happy, sad, and crying but most of the time irate customers. It was definitely an experience.

You’re probably thinking, if my goal was to improve my communication skills, a year or so would do, right? And, yes you were right. I chose to stay because of a benefit offered by the company. The mighty HMO benefit. I had to stay since my Dad had a vehicular accident back in Feb 2019 and months after that my Mom started dialysis for her kidney failure. HMO was a big help to our finances. Everything was going well and then Covid-19 hit us hard. Unfortunately, my Mom was called by God to be with him in October 2021 just a few days before my birthday.

After a few months, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and was referred by a friend to an RPO company. That’s where I started my journey as a Talent acquisition specialist. I was introduced to admin tasks. Such as ATS management, email management, attended meetings, minutes of the meetings, and calendar management. Handled job postings through job boards such as Indeed, LinkedIn, and Monster. But while working with this company, I was still thinking of my Mom’s wish before she died. She wanted me to follow in her footsteps since she was a retired public teacher. She pushed me to become one.

Following her wishes, I decided to apply and became a public teacher. It was a face-to-face which is kind of new to me. Since I was used to working in front of a screen and the graveyard shift. It was quite fun to teach kids and impart knowledge to them. But, that’s when I also realised it wasn’t meant for me. Growing up I was a nocturnal kind of person, always awake at night but asleep in the morning. That’s why my previous jobs were perfect for me. So after a few months, I’ve decided to go back into the online world. Into the freelancing world.

I started working in a VA Agency. It allowed me to take a look at the freelancing world. Since I had experience with recruiting they decided to hire me as a recruiter. Procuring quality talents for the client’s businesses. Tasks were pretty much the same, the only new tasks was I had chances to handle reports and meetings. After that, I became a medical recruiter. Looking for potential participants for medical studies.

During the years of my professional journey, I realised the importance of quality time with your loved ones. I am blessed that I have the opportunity to spend more time with them. With the loss of my Mom. I realised that I should invest more time with family and friends. Thus, as a freelancer, I am to improve myself. I aim to delve more into other niches. Go out of my comfort zone. Be knowledgeable of a lot of things and also help others to become the best version of themselves.

For a copy of Gavie’s resume, please click here.