If you think only kids dream of waterparks, you’re wrong. A Romania waterpark job turns out to be a dream for one young woman.
Am un job: Conduc departamentul de IT printre costume de baie în România
Wouldn’t it be great if your job involved visiting water parks in different countries? This was one of the responsibilities that came with a new job for Ioana Cristina Munţiu, 35, who works for a municipal company called Administraţia Domeniului Public SA in Oradea.
The city had just received a €22.6 million loan from the European Investment Bank, the EU bank, to invest in various initiatives. One of these was a thermal waterpark called Nymphaea, which was then given to Ioana’s employer to operate. So Ioana went to other parks in neighbouring countries to research best practices.
“It wasn’t for fun,” she stresses.
You don’t believe her? In every city that they visited, they went to the local waterpark, the zoo and… the cemetery. This surprising agenda is because Administraţia Domeniului Public SA in Oradea manages not only the waterpark, but also the local zoo, the city’s cemetery, and even a shelter for dogs. The company finances all of its activities out of its independent revenues.
Ioana is the IT manager in the municipal company. She oversees the websites for the zoo and the aqua park, the security of the websites, online promotion of the parks, customer support, and even the security system with all the surveillance cameras. She is also responsible for the IT system that allows clients of the waterpark to pay for services or open their lockers with a computer chip in their wristband—a system she saw in many of the other waterparks in Europe.
Romania waterpark job fills the park
She is most proud of creating an online booking system for the park which allows clients to buy their tickets in advance—and not have to worry that once they show up, the park is already full.
“In summer we can fit 2 000 people in, but we were already fully booked through the online system for some of the holidays and for two weeks in August,” she says.
Ioana’s job is one of millions created with the support of the EU bank. If you take the investments signed by the EIB Group in 2017 alone, for example, these are expected to have raised EU GDP by 1.1% and to have created 1.2 million jobs by 2021. Even in 2036, there will still be a 0.7% increase in EU GDP as a result of the EIB's investments from that one single year, as well as 650,000 extra jobs.
The Oradea waterpark provides employment to a lot of young people. It currently employs 131 people, with an average age of just 26, and provides part-time jobs for many students. Ioana, a former stockbroker, found her current job when she heard that the municipal company about to start operating the waterpark has a manager with a “western vision”, looking to hire young people who share this outlook.
“He taught me that management can be done through a positive attitude, smiling, listening and applying rules in a transparent and uniform way,” Ioana says. She considers herself very lucky to be able to work in the team. Having obtained a Master’s degree in management, she’s still learning a lot more.
So is Ioana unhappy that in her missions to all the waterparks in Central Europe she did not get to go down all the exciting white-water raft rides? No, it turns out.
“I’m actually scared of the slides,” she says. One thing she’s definitely not scared of: new challenges.
