Three Tesco Technology leaders on the careers they never saw coming

Ask three people in technology how they got there and you'll rarely hear the same story twice. Over the past few months, three leaders at Tesco Technology have each written about how they found their way in, and the routes could hardly be more different. Read together, their stories make the same case: what makes someone good at a job in tech is rarely what shows up on a CV.

Start with Alisha Chambers. On one of her first jobs in recruitment, she was handed a vacancy nobody else would touch, a penetration tester, supposedly impossible to fill. She didn't know what the role was either, until a candidate on a screening call explained how he'd once broken into a company through its printer. Nine years on, she's Head of Security Engagement and Culture at Tesco, and she wrote about the journey to mark Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Nobody planned this

Alisha's isn't the only unlikely route. Aji Bawo moved to the UK from The Gambia in her early twenties and took a job on a Tesco checkout while she studied computer science. After graduating she joined Tesco Technology as an engineer, and she's now Head of Product for Store Colleague Experience, leading the teams behind the technology used across thousands of Tesco stores.

Mikya Rozner didn't set out to work in technology at all. By her own admission, she might not have applied if her first role had been labelled too obviously as "tech". She joined BT's graduate scheme and only twigged she was in a tech job once she'd started. Seven years at Tesco Technology later, she's a Senior Product Manager in Tesco Labs.

Alisha got to security in two steps. She spent eleven months as a cyber recruiter inside Tesco's security team, getting as close to the work as she could, then asked to second into an awareness role. The hiring manager said no, laughed, and told her to apply for the permanent job instead. She did, and got it.

None of them set out to do the job they do now.

The part you can learn

What should reassure anyone weighing a similar move is that none of them arrived knowing how to do the job. Mikya's advice is a 75/25 split: put most of your energy into what you're already good at, and spend the rest getting better at what will help you grow. Her other habit is to treat anything she can't do as something she can't do yet.

The switch was brutal at first for Alisha. For her first few months in security she'd go home and call her mum, convinced she'd made a terrible mistake. It started to click around month three to six, and what made the difference was being given room to get things wrong, by leaders who trusted her and colleagues who made time to explain. It shapes how she hires now. Bring the right instincts for people and behaviour, she says, and "I can teach you the tech."

More than one kind of mind

The three stories meet on one argument: technology gets better when the people building it don't all think the same way. Aji's piece on why inclusive teams build better technology is also about leadership. She spent years imitating the louder, harder style she thought authority required, until a mentor at Tesco helped her see that people already listened when she spoke. Her teams build better technology, she argues, when more people feel able to contribute as themselves. Alisha reaches the same conclusion from the security side. She builds her team out of deliberately different backgrounds, because working out why people behave the way they do online takes more than one kind of mind. Some of the best threat-spotting at Tesco, she points out, comes from store colleagues who sensed something was wrong before any system flagged it.

All three are also women who, at one point or another, were underestimated or unsure they belonged. Aji was once told she didn't look or sound like a leader. Alisha says she's always rather liked being underestimated. Their pieces make the same case: the kind of person who does well in technology is far broader than the stereotype allows.

There's a common setting, too. All three grew into their current roles at Tesco, in teams that gave them room before they had it all worked out. None of that shows up on a CV. It's the part that made the difference.

If you've ever looked at a job in technology and decided you weren't technical enough, these three would tell you to look again. As both Alisha and Mikya put it, there's probably more room for you than you think.

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