A 27-Year Old General Manager at National IT Company. Why Not?

A 2010 Engineering Informatics graduate Yusuf Fadli is another proof that a significant number of ITHB graduates are able to grow fast to be key leaders where they are employed.

Immediately after graduation, Fadli was recruited as a Junior Consultant by P.T. Anabatic Technologies, Jakarta, where he met Hendri Salim (2008 Industrial Engineering graduate), his senior at ITHB. “As is the tradition among ITHB students and graduates, Hendri always gave me advice and criticism as a senior to his junior.” The courses Fadli took at ITHB had prepared him to master such world-class information system and technology applications as SAP, Oracle, and Cisco, which now help him meet the requirements of his job.

Two years after his first job, Fadli joined P.T. Equine Global (a leading IT company in Indonesia, part of Equine Technologies Group with over 700 employees) as an SAP Consultant. By the third year of his career, Fadli had made such an excellent impression that he was promoted as a Project Manager. Not long after, he was promoted again as SAP division manager. Fadli feels very grateful for what he has achieved at a very young age. As a manager, he is no longer required to do technical work. His current position now demands more managerial and leadership skills from him. Fadli made another remarkable achievement when he was awarded the Star of Excellence Award in 2015.

Of course his achievements did not end there. Fadli’s greatest career leap so far happened in his fifth year, when he qualified as a candidate for the General Manager (GM) position. Fadli felt that he was not yet ready for he was then still sharpening his leadership and managerial skills. Yet, against all odds, Fadli, as the youngest among the four candidates, was elected as SAP General Manager with 50 consultants working under his leadership.

Fadli is now in a position where he must quickly adapt with new responsibilities. On several occasions, Fadli had already been assigned to business missions to negotiate with SAP representatives in Germany, Singapore, and other Asia-Pacific countries regarding SAP Indonesia’s contribution and collaboration at the global level. Fadli and his team must now be ready to serve customers from all around the globe, including Belgium, Spain, and Korea. “One of the biggest problems I have is to appear more mature than I am now at 27. I often meet company owners to whom I might look like their grandson. They always say “You are so young” to me.”

As a special guest who was to give a testimony before the 1,300 people who attended ITHB 2016 Graduation Ceremony, Fadli admitted that his engagement in various activities at ITHB campus is now paying off. It was through those activities he learned how to communicate, speak in public, and deal with different kinds of people. He enjoyed ITHB’s productive and inspirational atmosphere. He also congratulated ITHB for having lecturers who would always be more than happy to share their real world experiences and engage themselves in lively discussions with their students outside classes. “An excellent learning process at an excellent higher education institution will always have positive, measurable impacts on its graduates.”

R.M. Yusuf Fadli

2010 Engineering Informatics Graduate

General Manager PT Equine Global, Jakarta