Marketing Manager role for Hanif at Touch and Go – Malaysia

Hanif started his studies in 2019, just a few months before the Covid pandemic struck. He says it was a challenging time for everyone, but he was able to finish his MA Marketing online and finally submit his dissertation from Malaysia.

However, whilst it was a challenge during Covid, it was also an opportunity as many businesses had to shift to online payments. Today, Hanif works for a company in Malaysia called Touch and Go, which is the number one e-wallet company in Malaysia. “I’m handling small medium enterprises. The cashless society, it’s pretty much new in Malaysia. It is exciting to be leading on this.” Hanif is currently working as a marketing manager and hopes to one day become chief marketing officer.

Student experience

After his Bachelors, Hanif worked for a few years, but his great wish was to come to the UK and do a Masters. He chose Gloucestershire as his place to study in the UK because it provides easy access to London, but also offers a peaceful environment. He says about the student experience: “I am a mature student. It was very difficult for me at the beginning to adapt to the new environment, because I quit my job as a social media manager, and I went to the UK to study. For the first three months it was difficult to shift from the working environment to being a student again. The transition is not as smooth.”

Chaplaincy team

Hanif was missing his country, parents, the food, and the weather. This type of ‘culture shock’ is very common. What helped Hanif was the University Sanctuary Space, a welcoming space on each campus for students and staff of all faiths and spiritualities, and their chaplaincy team.

When he felt lonely and disheartened, he sought advice from the chaplaincy team. The advice he received stayed with him even today: “One of the Chaplains told me that firstly I should find anyone that has even small similarities and try to spend more time with them. And second, if you don’t feel good about yourself, you give something, it can be something small like a biscuit. It will make you feel good. And then the third one is to join sports activities and spend time together.”

The course

Hanif enjoyed his course and found the lecturers very supportive. He particularly enjoyed the fact that on his course there were students from across the UK and world. “We all have different perspectives, and we need to be sensitive to this as well. This is very important for marketing. It is all about our critical thinking.”

Advice

Hanif offers advice to future students “Invest in education because education is very important. That’s where you can progress if you want to be successful.” However, he is also aware of the financial difficulties for students coming from Malaysia: “It’s not cheap. Especially because our currency is much weaker to the pound.” With this in mind, he applied for International Scholarship offered by University of Gloucestershire for students with excellent academic and work achievements. Hanif was awarded the scholarship, which meant he could use some of the money for travelling.

Travelling

Travelling is Hanif’s passion, and he wanted to use his time studying in the UK to explore the UK and Europe. “Gloucestershire is so beautiful. We rented a car and went to Bristol, we went to Stonehenge, to Cardiff, to Oxford. I also managed to travel to a few European countries. Prague was beautiful.”