Episode 129

Irina Ioana Brudaru on Leading the Modern Job Market with Optimism and Strategy

TIM: We are live on the Objective Hiring Show today. We're joined by Irina. Irina, thank you so much for joining us. It's really great to have you here. You're coming to us live from Berlin. Is that right? A

IRINA: A little outside Berlin,

TIM: a little bit outside Berlin. And you've got your birds in the background there. They're adding a bit of value, I think.

IRINA: Yes, I mean, they, they definitely enjoy living on the land and looking outside at the birds. They're like policing everything outside.

TIM: And apart from the birds, tell us a little bit about yourself just so our audience can start to understand who they're listening to today.

IRINA: So I'm Irina. I was originally born in Romania, but I came to Germany half of my life ago. And I am very passionate about computer science. I come from a family of nerds. It was not possible to avoid the career. But I consider myself very lucky at the same time, because I got to be exposed to concepts of AI way before they were cool, so to say. Already, yeah, already 20 years ago. Because my dad was a professor. My mom was a database analyst. So I also learned some chops from her in high school. And my career has two, you know, two red threads. One is data. I'm a data generalist. At least that's what I consider myself. I also have knowledge in marketing due to having spent six years at Google, and yeah, I've been an analyst. I can wear many hats, also data engineering and data science, and I currently am head of data science at Semrush. Yeah, I have more than 15 years of experience. The other red thread is also data but has to do with coaching and mentoring. For more than 10 years, I've been coaching, mentoring, and volunteering for all sorts of organizations and probably had students from age 12 to 50. Regardless of gender or location. And this year I took a break because I'm doing, I'm developing curriculums. And this is kind of a side project; it takes longer. So that's what I do every three years or so. Yeah, I'm very excited about the work that I do. I'm a relentless optimist, I like to say, and I like to keep my eyes and ears open on the job market in order to understand what trends are happening, what is happening, and where it is going. For example, Berlin has transformed very much in the last 15 years, if not more. It's crowded. There are not enough jobs, and so on and so forth. Yeah,

TIM: And a relentless optimist. What? What? What does that mean? I'd love to hear more about that.

IRINA: Mom. It's not that we are; it's not that I'm like an American, happy, go-lucky, or something. It means that I really believe that we can build cool things. We can build cool people, objects that there is joy in learning and discovery in getting to know other people and their perspectives, but like a curiosity for the world, I guess.

TIM: And that must really help you then in the coaching and mentoring side of things because that enthusiasm and optimism must be infectious to your mentees.

IRINA: I'm the personal cheerleader of every student I have, absolutely. So I probably sometimes, if I have somebody who's more insecure and I have them on WhatsApp as well, will send them a message before the interview. Like, you got this, you got this, you have it.

TIM: You should be a recruiter. Oh, my God. You'd make a bomb.

IRINA: Yes or no. I'm not sure which one is more lucrative, like data science, the data field, or recruitment. I don't know. It depends on how much you want to work.

TIM: And you mentioned in passing that some you'd mentored were like children as well, like as young as 12 years old. And so tell me more.

IRINA: Yeah, that was, that was very interesting, and also I realized that that is hard. Working with children, soon to be teenagers, is very hard. I was in the U.S., and we had, like, a literacy, computer literacy volunteer project. And I got a kid to discover different things, so I introduced him to Blockly, this programming language with cats and loops that is more visual. But the disappointment was that he was not doing his homework. He was more interested in asking for my number. Yeah, pretty sassy kid, I know.

TIM: Asking for your number in that sense, you mean,

IRINA: In that sense, yes. And I was like, Wow, okay. Let me talk to you about code of conduct in the future. He was 12 or 13. Yeah,

TIM: I'm almost weirdly impressed in some way. I don't know. I'm not sure I would have had the balls if I was 12 to do

IRINA: I just pretended I didn't hear. I don't know. I don't care. No, it's just

TIM: Yeah.

IRINA: But I mean, when I was in university in my master's I also did an au pair in the summer, so I also have some experience with kids and all of these xperiences. Yes, it makes you more tolerant, more patient, and more understanding. It's a muscle basically that you exercise patience and try to put yourself in the other person's shoes.

TIM: Yes. And speaking of other people's shoes, so what about them for people who are looking to switch up and get into this exciting field of data and AI? It's what anyone hears about, so I can imagine how, for outsiders, it seems a little bit cool and exciting. Is there any particular misconception that people might have if they're trying to get into the field in terms of what it would take to be successful in a data role?

IRINA: Yes. So in Germany, there are a lot of boot camps as businesses or sponsored by the government if you're unemployed, and that's like a 12-week intense program, eight hours a day, with homework. And yes, you can exit this type of boot camp with a data scientist or ML engineer degree or a data engineering degree, not a data analyst degree. So there may be one or two that have in the last two to three years also created the track of data analyst. And that is harder to create because a data analyst needs soft skills, and those are not teachable in a bootcamp. So that is one thing that it misses. Another thing is that if you learn from a class,. All of these modelings and practices—this is not how the real world works on one thing. So, you do not—you don't write code and make beautiful models. You adapt to the business and try to serve the business. Maybe the third preconception, which is the saddest one, is that finishing a bootcamp like that does not guarantee you get a job. And that, that is because simply you will still be a junior, even if you know all of this advanced statistics and coding. And what is mostly valuable for a data person is the business knowledge. Not the tech, of course; that is a foundation. But to properly function as a cogwheel with the business and help them and not need another layer of translation. That's practice and gut feeling and whatnot. I prefer doing it; for example, I still recommend people if you have the time if you're for example, on a long maternity leave or you don't have a isa. But your partner has to take advantage of these things and do them because time is rare; however, to get a job, you need to get projects. You need to have a portfolio to stand out from just the juniors. And that portfolio should not be copy-pasted from Kaggle but maybe try to solve things from the companies or from the same business area as the companies you want to apply to. There are also a lot of hackathons. For example, in Germany, I went to a hackathon by Correlate and Citizens for Europe, Citizens for Good, and it's also paid. So if you go there as a mentor, they also pay you, and you solve real-world problems because the mentors are seniors in the industry and the doers in this hackathon are the juniors. So they learn how to actually work on an analytical problem. by the advice of the professionals. And that's different than in a bootcamp. Also, people who teach in a bootcamp don't have the industry experience. They're professional teachers as well. Yeah.

TIM: That was often my perception with university qualifications: there was a weird disconnect where most of the people doing the teaching, this is a generalization, but certainly in Australia, had, in some cases, literally no industry experience at all. And so it's only natural then that there'd be this weird disconnect between what the students were learning and what was actually in demand in the industry. I think, especially in something that's as fast-moving as data, where universities are a little bit slow to update their curricula. So that's where you get a bit of that disconnect, I think.

IRINA: Yes, absolutely. I call it the ivory tower of the PhD. So for a fun fact, I did start a PhD, but I stopped it because I felt that I would reach the age of 30 when I graduated and I would not have industry experience. And if my decision is to go to industry, then why would I wait until age 30? That is such a huge gap of not working years. So I resigned and went to Berlin and became a data analyst. And it was very—it was a risk because this was like 2019, after the crisis. It was not easy, but yeah, it's doable. Just take the reins of your career and just

TIM: And you mentioned your father had a PhD; is that right?

IRINA: Yes, he actually did. He was so sad that I didn't have one. He was so sour with me.

TIM: I was going to ask that, but there you go.

IRINA: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He, he, it took him at least a year to get over that. Yes. But I was like, I made the right decision. I mean, I got to work on four continents and on everything from startups to consultancy and corporate research. You know, Google and all, so I would say it's a pretty rounded career. I don't; I have no regrets.

TIM: And you mentioned you yourself are involved in creating some curricula for bootcamps; is that right?

IRINA: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm currently a volunteer with an NGO in Luxembourg. It's called WeSTEM.org, women only, creating content and classes for women. So they have a BI academy, which is more basic data analysis and data engineering or analytics engineering. They have a robotics program that started, I think, a few weeks ago, and that's for kids. Girls, I think. And we are doing data science for fintech because, being in Luxembourg, we need to think about our sponsors and also our target audience and who could benefit from it. So that's why there's fintech, insurtech, and data science. It's an iteration of something I've done in the past, but at this time, because we have more funds, we can also, well, my idea is to also bring some confidence trainers, speaking trainers, public data storytelling, slide creation, so communication, everything that has to do with a job but isn't technical. That is very helpful. So yeah. I'm very happy about that. I'm very proud of that because this was what I would have always wanted to see in a bootcamp. From the students I've seen.

TIM: And why is it then that? Traditionally, boot camps have glossed over the softer skills or business acumen side of things. Is it just very hard to standardize that in a bootcamp? Is that why?

IRINA: I think so. I think it's hard, and I think it's hard to find the teachers who do that. So, for example, for storytelling with data, there are not many experts on LinkedIn that I see that offer these services. There are tons of books on it, but nobody has time to read three books that are, I don't know, one stacked over each other. They're really good, but it's an art in itself, every single topic from it. So I would say lack of teachers, and also the boot camps are businesses at the end of the day, and they do not have any skin in the game whether the candidate gets the job. It's not guaranteed. So they teach the hard skills because the technical skills are the easiest to cover, teach, and practice. You might even, yeah, understand, might not, but you still do them. While the softer part is, it's harder to learn and requires a lot of uncomfortableness from people who might be very introverted. I mean, I remember I was; we had a training at Max Planck where I did my master's and our program leader or program manager gave us lessons in presentations on tough technical topics, our master's thesis, and our PhD thesis. And those can be very dry, but she would teach us how to do the slides, how to do an executive summary, how to catch, how to start with the conclusion, and then with the details. And she would also record us. We would have liked a timer in the back of the room, and then we would have watched together how many oohs I had done in the speech. Where did I keep my hands? Was I fiddling? Was I balancing and dancing? All of these things. And it's good training. Google also had something similar. And then there are, in the communication class, frameworks for apologies, frameworks for accountability, and frameworks for communication of all sorts, and they're so solid on conflict management, for example, which is natural. I have a solution idea for this, and you have another, and we'll argue which one is the best. But we have to do it with my statements, not with your solution of shit.

TIM: Ha!

IRINA: that you presented the solution might not be appropriate for ours, what we're looking for.

TIM: Uhhhhhh. Yes, although this is a perfect segue into something I wanted to ask you about, which was because you've worked across quite a variety of different cultures—Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands—where the communication style is going to be quite different. So maybe in some environments you've worked in, maybe it was a bit more acceptable to go, you know what, your plan is shit. Mine is better. We're going to do mine. Whereas some, you need a bit more, a little bit more tact in some other environments.

IRINA: Oh, you, you put a dot on the I. I have two answers for this. Also, my relentless positivity was something that I was criticized a little bit for in the German environment at work. Like, you are too American. You're too And this was before I lived in the U.S. And I was like, damn it. Like, somebody's emotional makeup matters so much at work. But the cultural differences in communications are solid. So there's a book I always recommend to people who are curious by Erin Meyer. It's called The Culture Map. You can also do a test to see where you are, if you're still in your old culture of birth, or do you communicate a mix of the new culture and the old culture? And also seeing how I always say that the data maturity of businesses in Germany is lower than in the Netherlands and the United States. And this is cultural, for me, in my opinion. Because if you work with the Dutch, the Dutch have a bias for action. So they're going to say, Your solution is shit; we can do better; let's go. And that's okay; it's not offensive; nobody gets upset; they just… Let's do better so that we can make more money. The American culture is indirect, so I have to say there was a time when I received feedback, but it was over a coffee, and I didn't realize it was feedback. Because it's wrapped so nicely, and it's like, I have a suggestion: maybe if you would like to do it this way, but it's not compulsory; it's just an idea that it's too much fluff, just

TIM: Yes. The proverbial shit sandwich, they call that, don't they?

IRINA: No, the shit sandwich is a good-bad good, which also doesn't work. That's feedback; it's a feedback framework. But this was too convoluted, like just, you know, this. I think the different cultures have gotten to the point where they're like this, where they are a direct line. And yeah, the American is not a direct line. The Dutch and the Germans are the direct line. And it's also very important to understand the culture in which you work in terms of how decisions are made. Are they hierarchical? Are they a flat hierarchy? Is a decision an agreement done by the group or done top-down or bottom-up? All of these things basically. Play a role in how successful you are at work to present, to influence, and to convince people of your solutions.

TIM: I'm wondering if you found yourself then getting into these different environments and realizing, Oh, I have to adapt to this, or if maybe your natural self was like, This is the way I am. It doesn't really matter what the environment is. I'm going to be myself for better or for worse.

IRINA: It doesn't; bringing your whole self to work is not advised. It's not advised. Okay. I think I saw some articles online about why it has to do with psychological safety and, I don't know, do not be vulnerable towards assholes at work. But I got into Erin Meyer and reading the book because I was living in the Netherlands, and I thought, I'm, I'm direct and friendly. How bad can it be? But in Erin Meyer's book, it says, Do not emulate the directness of the culture. Which adopted you because you might have a social punishment for emulating it because you're not from there. Then I was like, oh man, this was like the answer I was searching for. Because I didn't understand why some things didn't vibe very well, as I said, in the German workplace, I was told that my energy is too American. I was like, okay, I'll go to the U.S. No problem. I think, though, it's not something that matters. I mean, it matters for the person who said it. If I were the manager of my old self, I would say that didn't matter. I'm happy to have somebody who's relatively optimistic at

TIM: Yes. Yes. And this ties me to another point that I've thought about quite a lot recently. And it's almost like an obsession I think over the past 10 years in talent acquisition to talk about cultural fit and the idea of hiring for culture, just fair enough. But then I also did a lot of traveling at the end of last year. I went to. Germany, Holland, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand are very drastically different places from each other and from Australia. And I realized as I was going to these different places that, suddenly, you notice the cultural differences. And so, for example, in Bangkok, when you go and buy something like a coffee, you don't just get the coffee and walk out. There's a little extra second pause where there's like a nice, almost little bow and a smile and everything. It's like very Zen and relaxed. And to just grab your coffee and walk away. It would be rude, I think. Likewise, when I was in Germany, I noticed that you go to a cafe, and it's like an assumption that you return your coffee cup after you've used it. Whereas in Australia, that doesn't happen. And so these are like little things that you cotton on to after a while, or even after a couple of days, you notice. So the point I'm trying to make is do we maybe not give candidates enough credit? For being able to adapt to the culture they're coming into. Even if we notice in the interview, they seem like a little bit different from the norm. Can people not just adapt? Is it how much?

IRINA: Of course. I, I mean, when I, when I hear adapt for culture, my interpretation is make sure somebody's not a walking red flag in the interviews and, you know, do a background check. But if somebody is more shy and we are in an extrovert type of work environment,. I would probably tell the candidate, If we make that offer, you know, we're going to talk with you often so that we know you're feeling comfortable and you feel your ideas are heard. I mean, the more diverse, and I know the United States now has a problem with diversity, but the more diverse the work is. It's statistically proven and research-proven that the companies make more money. In the long term, sure, it's not in a year, but allow different ideas to come into the melting pot, and you can get different approaches to different solutions. Of course, people, culture, and the HR departments should be very careful that the culture is not toxic or do what they can to enable it to be positive. But yeah, when I hear hire for culture, I think of beer pong and beers at 5 p.m. and people who come at 11 in the office and stay until 7 or something.

TIM: I know even in Australia, for example, so Atlassian, probably the biggest tech company here. Last time I got to know a few people that work there, the culture might have changed, but certainly recently they would have their cultural interview be the final interview. So you go through 234 rounds of technical interviews by the time he gets to the final round. It's a great person. They can definitely do the job. We want to hire them. But even at that final round where they do the cultural check, half of all the candidates get rejected, half for just I don't know, a half-hour conversation where you basically, it's like a behavioral interview where you're meant to demonstrate some of the values. That are on the website come preprepared with some examples. And if you don't have those, you're out, which, to me, I think is a bit crazy because there must be so many great candidates

IRINA: You should have that interview. Yes. And you wasted a lot of time. You wasted the candidate's time and you wasted internal engineering teams. So if it's a technical interview, you wasted technical time, right? which is very valuable. I would move the interview to the beginning. For the culture fit. I mean, in the interviews that I led as a hiring manager, I teamed up with human resources to have, like, unbeknownst to the candidate, a little bit of a cultural interview. Of course, next to the, you know, when is your availability, what are your salary expectations, and so on, we explain how the company is, what the values are, how I work, how they work, and basically leave it open if you're still interested. This is what we can offer, whether you want to proceed or not. In the Netherlands, actually, I've seen a lot of psychological tests or intelligence tests, which I don't know how I feel about. I mean, I did them because it was part of the culture, but I, I don't think it's the psychological IQ tests. I don't think they're necessary because the IQ can also be proven later. And IQ is nothing without emotional quotient, which is, I don't know, how many pillars of emotional knowledge. You can't have a—you can be a genius, but you can be a genius that does not know how to communicate. So it's not useful. But I did have a very different type of, like, survey sort of personality test for the current job that I have. And I was a bit surprised because it's a German company, but it's apparently this is the policy globally. And it was more; the test was more for creativity, which is very important because we're creating new stuff in product, and something that I was very surprised by but also had a giggle out of it. Like Irina, I am very honest. This is what comes first. And it's like, this person would benefit from being less direct from time to time. Yeah,

TIM: The

IRINA: Yeah, it was like testing some leadership. Basically, the leadership test with the quadrants, like red, green, blue, and yellow, red is for leadership, and blue is for analytics. The yellow is influencing and the red, Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.

TIM: And so You can't. What did you come out as in the colors?

IRINA: Yeah. Like, I have leadership jobs, and I have creativity and am very direct, honest, and not dishonest. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. Something like that. I thought it was funny. It was a better one than the ones I had before.

TIM: Did they use that, I'm interested, as a screening tool, or was it just giving them extra information? Could you have answered that in a way such that

IRINA: It wasn't a tool. Ah, probably if I would have answered like I break things. I don't know. I'm dishonest. I don't have leadership jobs.

TIM: Yeah, maybe then, yeah.

IRINA: I think so. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure if all—if I'm sure I'm sure that most of the candidates also had a similar test since it's global, 4,000 people.

TIM: We've mentioned just a moment ago that, yeah, there's some kind of pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion happening in America, which is weird, but whatever, it's out there. Most companies, I think, still would have that as their policy. They want to have a more diverse workforce because, as you say, it's been shown to make companies more profitable in the long run. But I feel like the hiring processes and the way companies go about actually hiring aren't really getting rid of the biases that are preventing them from hiring the best people or the most diverse workforce. So I feel like there's a bit of a disconnect there. Are all biases bad? Is there such a thing as a good bias? If we bias our process to hiring the smartest people, that doesn't seem like the worst idea. Bias towards hiring the most applicable person—that's okay. What are your thoughts on the way biases impact hiring?

IRINA: I mean, many people look for people like themselves, which is a classic thing you learn when you're doing hiring interviews. So always make sure that you have a pretty diverse hiring squad. So that the interviews are done by male, female, tech, non-tech, product, and data. Because otherwise, if it's just one person or one team in charge of the hiring and with HR supporting, then yes, you will end up hiring clones. And there are, I mean, I can give an example. We had a candidate; she was so sweet. She was really good. However, she broke down crying in the interview when I asked her why she left her previous job. And it was because she was sexually harassed. And I'm a woman, and I'm sure it was easy for her to open up in front of me. Otherwise, for the men, this wouldn't have happened. And so I made a note to the hiring squad, like, Hey, be careful. She's a bit traumatized, so formulate questions well, and, you know, don't, you know, don't make fun of what has happened, so, and she's on the market because of it. And she passed; she was the top top in our cohort, actually, from the group of candidates we were hiring and had a final interview with a PM. And I didn't know, but that PM gives one star to everyone in hiring interviews. So this person had like four points that were his policy. So I was like, And you can't; if you undo it, then you need to go through the HR process. Why would you undo it? And what happened? And I was like, we actually had to drop the candidate because of this. And his reaction was like, And you can't find another candidate? No. It's actually not that easy to find a good one. And the only reason he gave us was that he gave her a star. It's because he found her very shy. Yes, she's shy. Of course, she's coming out of a very traumatic experience. But if I were the hiring manager and decided, I would say, I'm sorry, you are out, and she would get to be interviewed by someone else. But I just could not do it in the framework. So yeah, there are biases. I learned them. And when, I mean, probably in this case, what I could have done better is discuss with the talent acquisition team if these people that I've chosen for the panel are good. And should I know anything? Are they like giving One star to all women? Or, you know, things

TIM: It's just so I understood correctly: so this interview's policy is he gives one star to every candidate no matter how poorly they do. What's the point of that? Sounds pretty stupid.

IRINA: I know. I was like, Just don't ever include this guy ever again in interviews ever again. Because, like, there's a lot of work to interview people, you know? It's not

TIM: What was his motivation? Was he just annoyed, and he didn't want to have to interview, so he was like deliberately

IRINA: He found her.

TIM: or something.

IRINA: He found her annoyingly shy. That's all. And the more he was, like, trying to break into her space and get answers, the more she would put back and push back. So that's why you need emotional intelligence to understand who's in front of you, how to talk to them, and how to get the value out of the candidate because they do have it.

TIM: That reminds me of something I've been asking a few people recently, which is about interviewer skills, because this is not something that's—maybe there's some interview training that sometimes happens in companies, maybe bigger companies; maybe you've had something like that in Google—but yeah, what makes a good interviewer? Like, what should a good interviewer be doing versus maybe someone

IRINA: Mean, you're

TIM: Doing interviews for the first time?

IRINA: Yeah. I mean, depending on the company, you have frameworks, and you have to cover certain areas that maybe you test; you have one or two technical questions; and you have role-related knowledge communication with stakeholders. So, I'm sorry, I, I, my thought jumped before I asked. Can you reframe the question? Sorry.

TIM: Maybe a reframe would be, You're a very experienced interviewer now; you've interviewed a lot of candidates over your time. Maybe if you compare, if you can remember like your first interview you did as an interviewer versus your skills now, maybe what's the difference? How have you grown? What do you know now that you didn't know whenever you did your first interview?

IRINA: I tested only technical skills in the beginning. In my twenties. Because that was the easiest and didn't think of it, I myself was not aware of other areas. So this is what I interviewed on. But then again, there would be startups with fewer than 20 people. So it's a different style. And what I have learned is that after, for example, getting the training at Google, you have a framework where you grade the candidate and you have some questions that you still need; you need to have answers. for. But everything else is flexible. And so the skill that makes you successful in extracting answers to these questions for the candidate is your own emotional intelligence. Like, do you see the person is shy? Try to talk to them. Try to encourage them. Maybe they're very close to an answer for a question and say, like, It's getting hot. Come on, you're close. If they are terrified, I ask them to start with a positive story of their impact in the beginning. Because they, what's it called? The icebreaker. It's an icebreaker for them. They get back into their energy. Something that I do and I do not know anyone else who does it is if I see that some of the projects or things that they have explained to me will make sense in the next interview, I will tell them I'll give them feedback on the spot. Remember this case because if you detail more about it in the next interview, it will be very valuable for our business. So, you know, go home and Practice that. Yeah, I mean, they're not lying. They're just better prepared if you want to. The questions will still be the same. Something else that I do, and I also don't know if other people do it, is when I reject a candidate or I accept them and they have a really bad resume, but I can see the value in it. It's just that the person doesn't have resume writing skills. I will tell them. It was very hard to find the information, and I, I, I, I can see the information in your resume because I'm in the field, but for HR it would have been a rejection because it's not transparent to them that you fit the role. So, you know, look online, or if I rejected them, I would tell them, Come for free for a mentoring session, and I can show you how to write it. I'm not charging for that. So, yeah, just trying to make them feel comfortable.

TIM: Yes, someone I was speaking to recently mentioned that they thought that maybe a hidden benefit of remote hiring was that. The candidates are in the comfort zone; they're at home, maybe in their bedroom or in their home office, and the difference between that and going into an office, where, as he described, sometimes interview rooms almost feel clinical, like it's almost like you're going to the doctor, who likes going to the doctor, has that kind of generic artwork, and sometimes you have those interview rooms where it's all transparent, so people walking past could see that you're in an interview, like a fishbowl kind of feel. And so that's probably not helping the candidates feel relaxed and at home, is it?

IRINA: Or no, like, I remember my Google in-person interview. I had to travel to Munich on the same day as the interview and fly out. And you get there sweaty and hungry because you took a 5 a.m. flight. You need to change your clothes; you need to refresh. You need to make sure you're fueled. And then you go to the reception, and it's almost like going to the police. Like, you have to stay there. You're not allowed to move anywhere else. And then you're being led by someone, and you're not allowed to go anywhere else. Except with yeah, I had a security tail attached. Yeah, that makes one very, very nervous. And I would say, yes, remote work allowed people who are more introverted or have anxiety issues to just feel at home. I'm also a little bit—I, I also have some anxiety sometimes. I know that I don't seem like it, but I do. And actually Working from home or interviewing from home is great.

TIM: Yeah, it's one of those hidden biases that you wouldn't really think about unless you're really meditating over it. But the difference between interviewing in person versus interviewing remotely must make a big difference. I know; I remember seeing some research during that kind of COVID period where there were a lot of lockdowns and a lot of working from home. It was suddenly no disadvantage to being disabled, for example, in getting a job, like suddenly you're on the same playing field as everyone else. And so there are all those little hidden things that you wouldn't necessarily think about unless you were that person or unless you were going out of your way to really investigate it. But I guess this is where talent teams have to really think about all these things.

IRINA: I mean, for example, when I was in the U.S., I had a scooter versus car accident, and I was on a medical leave for four months, which is really long for Google standards in the U.S., especially. So they didn't like that I couldn't commute anymore to the campus every day because the vibrations of the bus would basically cause pain. Do not get on scooters, please. It's a public service announcement. Don't get on scooters if you are overweight. 27. And yeah, they wanted to manage me out because I wouldn't be able to commute anymore from San Francisco to Mountain View. And that's painful. Like, my brain is still fine. Yes. I have pain, but I could still work. I had about five years of chronic pain. Then I moved to Europe because I know in Europe, your employment rights are a bit more solid. As in, not to say. Anybody can fire you because you had an accident. And but there as well, I was working 80 percent in one specific company, and my boss was mobbing me to resign because I was not working at 100%. If there was a remote policy, I would have worked at 100%. Just that walking to the office was very painful and not being able to, I don't know, sit on one of those yoga balls, for example. It's also, you know, it's not possible in an office to have all your chairs and all your setups and whatnot. So yeah, that's a huge advantage, and it would have saved so much pain, emotional pain.

TIM: Yes. Yes. And there are just so many of those, so many of those things in hiring where candidates get advantaged or disadvantaged one way or another. A story I've shared a few times on the show is lighthearted but paints a picture. So I remember years ago, I was looking for product analysts in a company I work for and. We had at our company, we're in an indoor soccer tournament at our local university near where we worked. And we were always just one player short of winning the tournament. We just lost the grand final five semesters in a row. And so I was always on the lookout for a good new player. And I remember seeing these resumes, reading these resumes. They have a hobby section. Of the resume, and I got to this one candidate, and it said he was Brazilian, and in Brazil, he'd been a semiprofessional footballer. And so as soon as I saw this resume, I stood up and said to my colleagues,. Oh, look at this guy, Guilherme, or whatever his name was; let's get him in; he got an interview. For a product analyst role, because at least partly because he was a semi-professional footballer, which is so unfair because the other 599 resumes didn't have that, but what did that have to do with him doing user behavior analytics and A/B testing? Absolutely nothing. And so there's just so much of that that goes on in hiring, isn't there?

IRINA: Yes. And also networking. I mean, this is kind of—we're, we're, we're closing in on that part and how important it is, but I wanted to tell you another story also on hiring. I interviewed a potential data engineer. And because he was sitting at home, I only saw this part. And apparently he was in a wheelchair. I didn't notice. I didn't notice he had any disability, and also he had some; something else, I think he was not seeing everything, so he had a sort of interpreter on the, on a secondary screen. The interview was great! It was no problem; we would have hired him; he had the knowledge. The problem is that he couldn't commute from Hamburg to Berlin, so we had to say no to a potentially very good remote worker. Thank God that times are being more modern at the moment. So, bias, networking, and hiring. So in Berlin, I'll give some statistics about Berlin. It has had the highest unemployment rate in the last 10 years. And also due to a lot of immigrants there, and I'm also one, it's very hard to find a job and also find an apartment. So what I advise people, and especially since COVID, is to network, network, network. Because people will remember that you do a certain job and will come to you when the role opens. And this is the value of the network. In my current role, for example, I reached out to my boss that I knew from 14 years ago, and I basically put myself on the market. I know that things are coming up where I'm working now, and I would like to be ahead of the curve and apply. Not actively, but I'm checking things out. And this is how I got the current job. It was never made public. In the previous role as well, I mentioned online that I was laid off. It was about to lay off. And I was like, Holy shit, I need, I need, I need another job. And somebody saw my profile and recommended it to my ex-boss. So it was again a role that was not open. It was just that they needed a data scientist. They just didn't, yeah, they didn't get their pipeline together. So This is why I'm saying it's so important to know other people who recommend you to keep relations good with bosses that you hope to work with in the future. Not all of them are that good. Some of them are not, or people you don't work with again. But nevertheless, keep in contact with the good ones.

TIM: Yeah. Don't burn the bridges. Certainly, if you don't have to, of course, yeah, if you've had an absolute nutcase as a boss, which I'm sure all of us have at some point, no need to keep in contact with them, but with the good ones, keep in contact, and that's a great lesson. Because if 14 years ago you said you had that boss, like, that's a solid investment in time.

IRINA: Yeah, I mean he brought me to the SEO marketing world, and this is like, I know when my career took a like a, a brandification or ramification, and started, I started accumulating knowledge in the marketing area, and this is how I got out of Google. They wanted somebody who has knowledge in more than just coding and whatnot.

TIM: I remember interviewing. Someone on this podcast, Matt Roberts, basically said when he thought about it, he hadn't really applied for a job in a decade because the last, I think, two or three positions he'd gotten were all through his networks, one way or another. And what he also remarked on was he found it funny in a way that as he'd gotten more senior in his roles, the hiring processes had become shorter and simpler, with one of his roles basically being he had a coffee with someone at McDonald's. And then someone who'd already worked with him before or one of their contacts would work with him. And that was the job offer right there, despite the fact that it gets more seed; he gets more money, but then the hiring process is simpler. In some cases, have you also found that?

IRINA: Absolutely. And I'm actually, I'm not a fan of technical interviews or writing code. I'm a fan of discussing concepts and seeing creativity, seeing drive, seeing the energy, and seeing the curiosity. Of course, as you grow more senior, then yes, the more you go into management, your interviews are going to be less technical and more strategic in hiring people with leadership skills, communication skills, and all of these can be done through a coffee call, and then you see how the other person is. Yeah, but I still have—I mean, for this, for this, for the previous role, it was a very simple interview process. It was more like, as you mentioned, but for the current, I actually had like a whole strategy to set up and present, which was fun.

TIM: And for people who are maybe they feel a reluctance to network, or maybe they're like crippling introverts, or they don't see the point of it, any advice you'd have for people who would put themselves in those categories?

IRINA: Yes, because I did not enjoy it either. I would say I was very shy. People don't know; people back from Romania remember me. I was very shy. I could not even have an argument with. Not even a loved one without crying. And when I got to my masters, I was like, I hate networking, I hate meetups, I hate all of this stuff! I can't! Why do I, a techie, not do this? I shouldn't be doing this. But then I realized I was somehow incomplete, if that makes sense, and I wanted to work on this part, and I went to dancing classes. I went and did sports. And I loved dancing, so I did salsa and tango. And the thing is that the brain and the body, the mind and the body, are connected. And if you're confident in your own body, you're also confident in how you present yourself in words to people. It's also research-proven that children who practice sports in their childhood become more self-confident in themselves in life. So it's a very good development. So this is what I tell people. If you are shy, try improv. Improv is great, maybe as a last step. But try dancing. Try getting outside of your comfort zone. There is a great book by Voss. I forgot his first name. Never split the difference.

TIM: Oh, Christopher Voss. Yep.

IRINA: Yes, the FBI guy. And he says there that you should see every single interaction, where applicable, as a sales pitch, as you could get something. Or the other person; it could be William Lynn. So he says, talk to your coffee barista and ask if they have a punch card for getting your coffees. You go to the shoe seller; they can also make a discount potentially. So ask for it. And the worst answer you get is a no. Go to Douglas or Sephora if you'd like to have samples. They always have the policy to give samples. Don't be shy; ask, grab them. So once you did these, these were exercises that were recommended in the book. So once I think you do that, you also, it becomes easier to go and interact with people because you normalize it. You, you get a, you desensitize to it, to the shyness or

TIM: Yes. That's a great tip. And I was buying a book on Amazon yesterday, and I scrolled past that book, which had, I think, 46,000 reviews, and it was rated 4.9 for a reason, I'm sure. So I'll have to grab me a copy of that one as well.

IRINA: I mean, Google teaches it as a negotiation; it's a negotiation bible.

TIM: Yeah. He's an interesting character. I've seen him on a few podcasts. to, has a masterclass, masterclass.com. He's also teaching like maybe visual; if you're a visual learner, maybe that one, yes. I'll check that out. I feel like I've watched a few of the videos when he brought that out, because it was probably four or five. years ago when Masterclass came out. Yeah. I'm sure I did actually. Yeah. That's right because he's the one; he talks about mirroring. and

IRINA: Yes. Yes.

TIM: Remember that bit.

IRINA: And mirroring, we do some; I think we sometimes do it completely unaware. So, I don't know; last week we had a very large meeting, and I was looking at the positions of the people and how they placed their hands on the table. And the boss was doing something, and two of the people at the table, I don't know, they were not aware. They also changed their hands like this. Mirroring, basically.

TIM: I always noticed that I'm always in this position in a meeting, and then suddenly the other three people are as well. That's funny. But only men, though. I don't know. Maybe

IRINA: Yes.

TIM: That poses as much. It's very masculine. Maybe.

IRINA: And it's vulnerable for us.

TIM: Okay.

IRINA: It's men's men. I mean, it has a term. It's called men's spreading. Don't. You know, cut off this piece. If you also do it, I mean, if you do the leg, it's fully men's.

TIM: Okay.

IRINA: No, it's definitely a power pose. It's a good one.

TIM: Irina, if you could ask our next guests any question about hiring, what would you ask them?

IRINA: How do they tackle the insane number of? Applications these days because I feel like the job market is a little bit broken. So what do they do better to break it, to get in it? Because I see very talented people struggling a lot. Juniors who are kept in internships for one to two years. People whose development stopped because there are not enough roles at that seniority. And I noticed it as well for my own career, which I have to think about. Do I want to go into the data direction? Because. I think data should be more and more embedded into the business and not into tech and a lot of theory about it. But yeah, what if there will not be enough heads of data roles? So it will be somehow incorporated with AI and whatnot. I need to be prepared. It

TIM: A great question that I will level at our next guests sometime, probably later this week, and I'll let you know what they said. It's been a great chat today, Irina. We've covered an awful lot of ground. We've heard some chirps from your birds in the background as well. So we've had the full array. Thank you so much for joining us on the show.

IRINA: It was a pleasure. Thank you. My birds, I mean, they're happy. They're optimistic, just like me.