Episode 139

Nataly Shuster on Cultivating Diversity and Overcoming Bias in Modern Workplaces

TIM: We are live on the Objective Hiring Show today. We're joined by Nataly. Thank you so much for joining us.

NATALY: You're welcome. Happy to be here.

TIM: It is absolutely our pleasure. And you're coming to us from Berlin, is that right?

NATALY: Yes, correct.

TIM: And how is Berlin these days? How's it treating you?

NATALY: Spring is here with sunny and good weather. The market is a little bit waking up together with the sunny weather.

TIM: That's good.

NATALY: We are positive, let's say it like that.

TIM: Excellent. I was in Berlin myself in October, the first time I've ever been there. And I have to tell you, the highlight for me was the Donna Kebabs. Oh my God. They are much better than Australian kebabs.

NATALY: Yeah, you a fan? There are plenty of them. Different variation. Vegan, not vegan, with all kinds of them. Yeah.

TIM: Oh, delicious. Yeah. I could have one of those every day. I'd be pretty happy, I reckon.

NATALY: Yeah, I need to restrict myself a little bit with that, you know, like to once a week maybe.

TIM: Yes. Yes. A bit of an indulgence, isn't it? And tell us a bit about yourself. Tell us what you're doing for work and just help the audience understand who they're listening to.

NATALY: So first of all, my name is Nataly Schuster. I'm originally from Israel and have been in a very different environment before. I was a team manager and COO of a professional football club in Israel for the First League. I gained my experience with leadership and handling a project and all kinds of chaotic environments, and then I decided to move into the European space and moved to Berlin eight years ago and joined Dan Berlin. Where I am currently is, and I'm a current senior manager at DONE!Berlin. Berlin is a boutique consultancy that supports startups. Initially we started with only startups, but with the years, we are already 11 years on the market. And we also started to gain our experience with SMBs, SMEs, and enterprises like big corporations within Germany. What we are doing is basically supporting customized services for all that need them. Anything related to HR is focused on the German market. That's our four-day, and our sweet spot, of course. But we are also working in all kinds of European markets and also some in the US and outside of Europe. And what we are really specializing in is the. Client-wise, especially with startups, you really need to understand the founders, the C-level, what they wish, and what they want to see, and that's what we are good at—adjusting ourselves and our approach for them. And help them also; for example, companies outside of Germany coming into Germany to localize the business to give them a little bit of knowledge of the gap between the cultures and the label of, for example. So we are basically offering a unique solution to different kinds of topics that come up in hiring or HR in general. Me specifically, I'm all about talent acquisition and recruiting. Basically, I'm me. My goal and passion are in hypergrowth and scaling companies. That's also what I've been doing in the last years: coming into companies that want to scale for different kinds of reasons. Building, of course, the strategy and structuring all the. Relevant processes that we have and start scaling them. I can tell you that even in tough times, I, me, and my team, of course, who are supporting me with everything, are experiencing some hypergrowth companies and scaling that. We tripled the number of employees within one year, which is in. The difficulties with the current market are very, very impressive. And basically we are doing everything and helping the company to, in the end, come to a point that they can do everything by themselves and they have everything in place, processes, the right people for doing the job, of course, et cetera. So that's in a nutshell what I'm doing and who I am.

TIM: That's such a great introduction and explanation, and where I'd love to. Delve into the fact that you yourself would go into some of these businesses as, like, their first head of talent, and you would build everything up, and then you'd almost, like, make yourself redundant by design. Is that a fair description?

NATALY: Yes. Not, not necessarily. I'm going in as. For day one, the head of talent acquisition, but I'm going in as the senior consultant that knows what needs to be done and developing this with the structure of the company. My biggest client is the one I finished one year ago to scale for two years. It started when they just came to us and said, We need to hire. This amount of people we need spec specialty in blue-collar roles, for example. And then we started to work and develop the process and the structure of the HR team, which in the end led to my leading a team of 15 recruiters. But this came with the need of the company. I'm not the one that will push; I will be the head off when you don't need a head off and you just need someone to get things done.

TIM: And when you've, let's say, completed that assignment, was there anything, any bit, that made it especially difficult to kind of successfully transition out? Anything yet to kind of make sure of?

NATALY: Transitioning out of me. Stepping out of the project, you mean? And yes. To the internal team. So I think that the most difficult thing is to. This attaches right. on the project. Especially that one that became my baby. You know, like

TIM: Right.

NATALY: I knew everyone in the company because I hired them. I was involved in all the processes. So really the emotional detachment is what is difficult. Yeah. For me especially, but again, I see it in front of my eyes. I have achieved. And for us, especially, what is important is that, in the bottom line, the company will get all the tools, whether they're actual tools, digital tools, or the skills to basically handle everything by themselves. So for me, it kind of compensates for my feelings of letting them go, like your baby, but just understanding that. This client will always be in my heart, and I will always keep in touch with them because I'm not losing the touchpoints with the team because I'm moving out, and I'm always there for consultancy or something they need advice on or help with. I'm always there for them. But I think what's. Difficult and challenging is actually the way there. You know, that can be very short. If it's a small project, you know, I can do it within one month, and then it needs to ramp up everything. This one month that you need to achieve the goals and push as much as you can. But on the other side, you have clients that you see, that you forecast for a longer time, for a longer period, and then you need to start already strategically on that, how actually it's the best way also to succeed in the goal that we have.

TIM: What about thinking of it now? I guess startups that are just at day dot, they're just thinking about hiring for the first time. Is there anything that would be like your kind of top, top requirement, the most important thing to get right in creating that kind of very first hiring strategy?

NATALY: So it depends, like we like to say in Germany, it all depends, but it really depends on the company itself. So if we're talking about startups that already have some establishment in the market, so they operate for a while, they still act like startups with no structure and everything. But they are big. Startups, you know, from, I would say, even if they're around 50 people, that's a different approach. And I would suggest they first review the current people that they have and what actually each one of them is capable of doing before hiring new people. Because. The first thing that we need to understand is that the candidate needs to fit into the quarantine. What do we lack in the quarantine? What do we want to improve, maybe in our culture? So those things are very important for building a persona for the candidates that you want to attract. And once you understand that, you can start having. All kinds of strategies about how to find those people and how to search for them if it's doing active sourcing and really reaching out to the support people in all the social media networks that we have. Of course, mainly LinkedIn, but not only LinkedIn, if it's to publish it into, spread it around job boards, or if it's maybe to ask for a referral program within the company because people within the company also bring people that they already think are fit for the company on this. A remark for this referral. And this is also something that we experience more and more with young founders. Building a company for the first time in their life, they sometimes tend to want to see someone that is similar to them and not necessarily someone that brings other topics into or

TIM: Right.

NATALY: That can compensate for what they are lacking. They want to see us call it in German stunts. Basically, they want to see someone that is like them. And we are always saying no. The other way around is what's best for you? Think about what you don't have and how this person can actually help you reach what you are lacking and not bring the same, because then the culture will be a friend of a friend or a friend that looks the same, acts the same, and thinks the same. In the long term, you need a diversity of opinions in your team, in any team that you want. This is the first thing that I would recommend: to really think about that and also to always say to my clients and do expectation management from day one, not necessarily if they want someone that has experience at the Big Four consultancies. The startup, for example, you know, being in hypergrowth or scale-up companies before, not necessarily that this is available on the market. So we need to identify what is a must-have non-negotiable in the profile and what can be. Maybe lower it a little bit if it's related to seniority or whatever you need to consider. You will need to make compromises in the first initial filtering to be able to see more diverse people, and maybe someone will surprise you.

TIM: And that's maybe especially the case for some startups that might not necessarily have the same remuneration package as other companies. So they're going to have to—something's going to have to give somewhere, probably in their requirements, I guess.

NATALY: Exactly. And let's say it like that. There is I, with all my experience in recruiting; I can say that sometimes the most. Unexpected profiles are the ones that are rocking it, you know, because it's not only how the CV looks. I had a case recently with a founder and CTO that judged the profiles based on the CVs and not on the interview feedback that we gave him. And I told him, Listen, we need to understand. That not everyone in, like, the job-seeking area knows how to write a CV. I will not put them in the position of saying that they're not HR people. They never learned how to do that. You know, we even have a lot of AI tools to support us with that now. Sometimes it's the small thing that you see because that's what you are looking for, but the other side doesn't know. So. Be a little bit more forgiving in the CV and more flexible in the mindset to speak with people. Because in the end, you hire people; you don't hire a paper with experience. And this is something that is also, we have this constant talk about AI all the time in recruiting and what can, if it can be really replacing us. My answer for that is simply no. No one can replace human touch in the hiring process because in the end, if I were to ask you now a question, would you be interested in signing a contract with a company that you only did an interview process with AI tools for and you didn't speak with anyone? The answer most probably would be no.

TIM: Yeah, I think most people now would say no, but I wonder if it's just because AI is so new and that as we become more accustomed to it in day-to-day life. For example, you know, you call a call center, and you speak to an AI instead of a human. You know, if there are just more AI human interactions, then maybe it'll become normalized. Also in hiring, potentially.

NATALY: Again, I'm, I'm all AI, Paul. Okay. I'm all into AI and whatever can make my life easier during the process of hiring, and my job in general is welcome. I don't think, and maybe I'm a little bit more old-fashioned and traditional on that, that. A machine and/or robots or whatever can actually replace our decision-making. In the end, it can help us reach the decision, but the bottom line is I, as a candidate and also as a manager in a company, will not want to hire someone or to get hired if I didn't speak with someone and understand the culture because in the end. We have the human interaction in the job. So skip completely the human interaction in the hiring process; for me, it's a no-go. Of course, AI is helping us much, much, much to improve our workflows, to help us, you know, shorten the things that we need to do the specific work. Yes. But also, let's face it, AI is a machine. Machines need to be taught and need to be fed with data. And then we are not 100% still sure that it's not going to be biased, you know? Because in the end, a human being is giving. Data to the machine, you know, to learn from it. So that's a really big topic now. I don't know what will happen next, you know, sky's the limit with the revolution of AI in the workspace. But I'm still skeptical that something really can be a matter for completely replacing a recruiter, you know, in the future.

TIM: Yeah. Yeah. I guess it all really depends on the timeline we look at, you know, if we said a hundred years, yes, of course, but maybe not in the next couple. And it's, yeah. So hard to see how it'll play out, given it's changing so quickly. Nobody's Nostradamus. I, I, I feel like, though, that personally, the way hiring's done traditionally has so many issues with it that. AI, in theory, could help to solve it. One of those is bias, and yes, AI itself is trained on web data, which is biased, but we have a current situation in hiring where, just to take Australia as an example,. I'm sure there have been similar studies in probably Israel and Germany where they, the researchers, take job applications and divide them up into like groups of resumes. And then the only difference between the resumes really is the names. And so then they apply for all these jobs, measure the rate at which the resumes get a callback, and then group them by. The ethnicity of the name. And so by doing this, they can test well. Is there any kind of discrimination or bias against a particular group of people in Australia? There was a study like this, I think about three or four years ago from the University of Sydney, and they measured Chinese names versus Anglo-Saxon names.

NATALY: Mm-hmm.

TIM: To cut a long story short, they found that if you applied to a role in Australia with a Chinese-sounding name,. First and last name. Compared to an Anglo first and last name, you had only one-third the chance of a callback as an Anglo first and last name. And they controlled for many different things in their experiment. Like they thought of language differences, they thought of all these other things. So it was like a pretty good study. And that's a big problem. Like if I were Chinese in Australia and I was applying for a job, I'd be pretty angry at that. That I just don't have the same chance or anywhere near the same chance as someone else. So in theory, a larger language model could do a better job. I think at that resume screening, at least a more consistent job. And even if it's badly implemented, I can't see how it would be as racist as the average Australian is, apparently.

NATALY: Yeah, so we're not even talking about Germany.

TIM: No.

NATALY: Again, in Germany we have some constraints that are maybe a little bit different than Australia. Regards the languages because the

TIM: Okay.

NATALY: It is super, super, super complicated. Speaking and basically. It is very hard, within your one or two years in Germany, to speak fluent German in a language that can support you to work in

TIM: Yep.

NATALY: Properly German in the market. So I can tell you that. There is a difference between the more corporate world and very, very German companies versus the startup scene. But it also relates to not finding someone that is similar to you, but actually more diverse, because it's something that if you are not, as an example, a white, old, white male speaking German, you know, you will not have a chance to get this. And this is something that I see a lot: that my work is to educate them and to help them. Like, I don't feel comfortable, for example, contacting only males. Or someone that is having a very German name, because sometimes that's the only way that you can understand if they're native or not, because you need someone on a native level by the name because a very German name is very non-German. And then you can also check the language requirements in the end. But I can tell you that our job as recorders is to make this. Gap and bias as minimal as it can. I can push back. But of course, if the CEO of the company says, I only want men who speak native German, then unfortunately I need to disqualify others. But this is something that I think there is no black and white in. And that's why. Of course, maybe in the future, AI will be able to go in this tight line between yes or no to the gray zone area. But currently for us, if I ask for machine learning to screen my CVs that are incoming in my ATS system,. It's a yes or no. There is no maybe, maybe check, maybe not. You know, there is only reject or proceed, and in that case, we might be missing some people. What I usually do is tend to put only knockout things like that. It's language or something that unfortunately we cannot get away from hiring someone with these skills. But the rest, I'm keeping vague because I do want to see some other candidates other experiences, backgrounds, and stuff. Not necessarily successful, but sometimes there is a surprise, as I mentioned before. Again, bias. It's a very, very tough topic in recruiting. Because in the end, try, because we are the function that is basically building the bridge between the candidate and the company. But sometimes the tactic is actually to get them to fail, and then they will understand we need a drastic change.

TIM: Yes, and I can think of. An example is myself, where I perceived maybe a little bit of bias from a hiring manager in their requirement. Nothing to do with race or religion or anything like that. It was just more to do with the fact that they had this thing where they didn't want to hire anyone who'd ever worked for the Big Four consulting firms. They, they viewed them as, I don't know, too corporate or something. I'm not sure what, but for the data analyst role she was hiring for in her tech company, she's like, Never give me a Big Four profile. But I saw someone. They had worked at the Big Four. They then worked at a startup for two years. I interviewed them. I tested their skills on our platform. I thought they were great and exactly what they needed. And so I thought, well, you know, I've got better data here than, you know, I, I've, I've, you know, I've, I've done my homework. I feel like they're the right candidate. But then when I presented them. They kind of got almost relegated in the hiring process to a, a sort of less important track. And the feedback they gave me, the candidate after the interview was like, Well, I could tell the person interviewing me was almost like, Ugh, I kind of have to do this. I've been asked to do this, but they'd already been rejected before they'd started the interview. And so I sent my boy off over the top, and he got shot, unfortunately, by the soldiers, is the way I think of it. And I know, I know from that now, you know, if someone is just determined on something, you can't really change their mind as much as you can help and maybe nudge them. At the end of the day, you're just wasting everyone's time. I guess if you push too hard.

NATALY: And I can tell you a story that happened to me just recently: we started with a new client, a new project in a different country, and they were basically looking for salespeople. In the beginning, when we started, we always, in the first weeks, tried to figure out what could fit and what could not. We are starting to speak with people. It's not necessarily there. This is it. This is what we are looking for: trial and error, basically, in the first weeks, just so they also will understand more about the market that they're working with, what their goals are, and what they actually need, because sometimes what they are saying that they need is not what they actually need. And this I'm doing by, first of all, a lot of. Talk with them, with the company, try to understand, and mainly speak with people, even with the non-relevant people. It's all helped me with getting the feedback from the company. And recently I had it with the role. They were only interested in seeing people from the big, fancy companies, you know, like those SaaS companies. That is the biggest one. You can think about all the brands in the world, like that's what they want to see. And every time that we brought them, someone that does not necessarily have this but works in SaaS products, but not the biggest one, et cetera. They either were rejecting this person or they were like, We will speak with them, and then after the first week, No, it's not for us. And then to be able for me to understand what exactly is happening. I went along with them for one week. I approached only. People from companies that are in the target list of us. And I approached them, and I started to have interviews, and once I started to speak with candidates from those big companies that are having a great sales strategy and think, then I understood why exactly they are looking for those people. Because based on what? I got from the company and the need together with the interviews that I'm doing the puzzle that I then understood. Okay, that's because those companies have a great sales strategy. The people there are very, very high level and can speak with X, Y, and Z that we need and stuff like that. And so sometimes. You should push, but sometimes you also need to really understand the reasons behind it and not because my first reaction was like, You are just like the fancy schmancy brand names. You know? You only want them because they worked at Google.

TIM: Right.

NATALY: No, it's because of. A little bit deeper, which

TIM: Yes,

NATALY: out during this exploration thing is, so I must say that it's really like sometimes there's a point in that we are not only the only ones that are right, you know, in our work with hiring managers, et cetera.

TIM: Yes, for sure. And there's surely a difference between them. What we've just described there, which is, okay, I don't want to see anyone from the Big Four with surely a history of good reasons why maybe she'd hired people from those companies before, hadn't worked out, et cetera, et cetera. And the scenario you've just described, which is fair enough, versus those something where it's like, well, okay, I'll, I'll give you. An example that I think is too far, and I think is unreasonable. So we had a candidate with a company about a year ago, and three candidates had gotten down to the last stage for this role. And so I was speaking to the hiring manager, hearing her feedback on each of the candidates. And for one of them, she was talking about the pros and cons, and it was like pretty positive feedback. And she said in passing, she, she said, Oh, well. The candidate was Russian, I should say. And she said, in regard to the candidate. Oh. Like, I just didn't get the sense that she was anti-Putin. Okay. So that was the feedback. And I, I, I was slightly taken aback because I didn't really know what to say to that because not only is it irrelevant, but also I'm assuming she didn't actually ask her, her affiliate, her, you know, political views and affiliations because. What business is it of hers anyway? So maybe she was almost expecting the candidate to come in waving a Ukrainian flag or something and saying, "This is my team.

NATALY: Yeah.

TIM: I feel like that's way too far, and it's just unfair that something like that could even be popping into someone's head for consideration. What do you think?

NATALY: We, actually, because recently we also had the elections in Germany for the Bundestag. So the topic of politics in business is

TIM: Right.

NATALY: It was a very big topic recently. Again. I am in the middle of a world conflict as an Israeli, and you know my opinion on involving politics or this kind of thing, like you mentioned that you didn't, you know, like Putin. It's something that I think that in the process of hiring, of course, you cannot. Consider that. But I do see a complete clash, you know, if she would be the one to communicate upfront, you know, like about her opinions, that is. Maybe not democratic because this is the difference, you know, between, and we had this debate and discussion within Dun about how politics should be in a company if we should stand behind topics that relate to politics. Or not, you know, we have the right wing in Germany that is rising, and all this topic of this is, and we came to a conclusion that, of course, you need to have a state. You cannot be this; detach it from the current situation, you know, but it's not something you can publicly pronounce. I am supporting. X, Y, and Z party in this, but you can make a state for pro-democracy, which is, I think, very important because in this current situation in the world, we have enough crazy people whose intention is to destabilize the democracy in the world. And this is what we need to defend, you know, and I'm into it. Being able to speak even about politics at work, but not about the recruiting process. And I, as you know, if someone in the process will be pro-Palestine and I'm Israeli, I would not mind, but if they would try during the interviews, kind of. Trigger me with that. That's something that then there is no place in to hire this person.

TIM: Yeah, it's such a tricky, tricky one and such a gray area that's hard to navigate. And I, I could go on, but I, I feel like we could discuss something slightly different. I, I'd love to get your thoughts on something that's come up quite often on the show, which is, you know, whether or not we should be using our intuition, our gut feeling, for hiring; whether or not we should be using metrics; or whether or not we should be using a combination of both. And I almost imagine a spectrum of. Intuition-based to data-driven, like, what do you think about this? Where would you put yourself on the spectrum?

NATALY: So, first of all, I must say that recruiting, it's all about numbers. If you don't use data in recruiting, you cannot know how good your work is or how effective your work is. So that's just the title for every, the, this big topic. I think that you, a good recruiter, are someone that combines the. Analytics data and logic part with gut feelings. Because if you know enough about the role and the company that you are recruiting for, you tend to have a gut feeling. I would not say that. Base your decision only on gut feelings; you know if you. I don't know, experience a candidate that is a little bit more with attitude or a little bit more rubbish to you in the call. It's not necessarily that he will be the same to another person, so I'll always try to. I have this bias, I will. I have this gut feeling that is a little bit arrogant. I will put it as a con, as a concern, in my feedback. But I will let another pair of eyes or another pair of ears kind of speak with this person and see if that's actually only my gut feelings or not. I can tell you that I already developed a pretty good gut feeling about people. The amount of people that I'm speaking with, I already can see, you know, and detect if the hiring manager will like them or not or stuff like that. But I always, always also back and think about my candidates first, to put it on the hard skills, soft skills, and where I am standing versus it. Because if you don't know your numbers, you just. Don't do recording properly. For me, the balance between—so I would say I'm in the middle for balancing it a little bit more sometimes to gut feelings a little bit more for data, but it's moving.

TIM: I've had an idea recently that I'm trying to unpack a little bit, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it. So I, I wonder if. The intuition element of the decision process is where you, as you say, have done this so often, you must have interviewed like thousands of people in your life. You've been working with a hiring manager for a long time. You get a sense of the type of person that they will like and the type of person they won't like, and that's just built up through your experience. If you sat down there and wrote out, like, what, like when I'm looking for the candidate for this role, if you, if you kind of unpacked and articulated some of that gut feeling, would it not mostly come out as almost like more objective criteria that just aren't maybe perfectly articulated? Or is there something that's completely black boxy about it that you wouldn't be able to put into words?

NATALY: Yeah, so for me, it's not a black box at all. You know, because I already have this skill very, very developed in me due to me speaking with thousands of people in different kinds of seniority as well. I can hire a working student or intern that is just starting. Their job is the first job, or I can hire, and I do hire currently also C-level, like CFO, CTO, and CIO. So generally my gut feeling is also based on my logic and the experience that I collected during the year. So it's not necessarily. Black box, but it does sometimes need an adjustment. You know, it's, and it, as I said, the first collaboration with a new client for me is to explore, to get to know exactly what they want, and then I can base my gut feelings correctly, you know, because not necessarily whoever I loved and had a connection with. In the interview, I would pass on it, you know, it's not the case.

TIM: And so that's why those, those deep conversations with various people in the company are so important because that's really where you start to learn about that. I guess no job description will ever tell you that there's going to be so much more data or information you really need to collect in those conversations.

NATALY: Definitely. And also, this is something that I would suggest to every company that is hiring. And I'm not talking about hiring one or two roles, you know, but I'm talking about a fast-paced environment that is scaling up. Think about really value-based interviews. That means that you are basically developing a set of. Interviews that each interview is covering different aspects of what you want to achieve in this overall hiring process, and have interviewers also very focused on what they need to clarify or to check or whatever. Why is that? Because. I speak with what? Thousands of people, or two people, every year. Hiring managers may be more involved because they are hiring for them, but other stakeholders, other interviewers within the team, are not necessarily the most experienced interviewers. I had this question tons of times: I needed to jump into training. What can you ask? How to ask? What do you need to check? Ask the interviewers some questions that they would also be able to evaluate properly, and then don't skip debrief. Debrief is basically a round of interviews that are conducted, and then all the interviewers join a call, where for the first few minutes the recorder is asking them everyone. Now I count to three, and everyone says "count, thumbs up or thumbs down for yes or no to continue. And then we are doing it simultaneously so that everyone cannot be biased in their opinion. And then we are starting to talk about the experience that we had with this candidate. And then you are aligning; you are drawing a straight line between all the stakeholders that were involved, even if we decided not to. To proceed with this person for the next one. They already know more or less what we are looking for. So engagement with the interviewers is so important in this process. To be able to judge and really to have valid data, you know, because it's not helping me. If they only say yes, hire him. Why? I want to know the why.

TIM: And so there's this kind of debrief session that's live presumably after the interview. The interviews are also, and interviewers are also grading them in an ATS or providing their ranking and their thoughts there as well.

NATALY: Again, I. In the a TS generally, who the only, the hiring manager sees the full So

TIM: Right.

NATALY: As you see, only theirs.

TIM: Yep.

NATALY: It really doesn't matter if they put it before or after; we usually tend to do that if, for example, the interview round of onsite finishes at 2:00 PM. Two 15 until two 30. We have a 15-minute call with all the stakeholders together just to vote and to straighten the line. And then they are uploading their feedback, and based on that, we can make a decision that is well thought out about all the aspects of the need of the role.

TIM: So you mentioned, yeah, using those kind of value-based interviews, what? Is there any particularly big challenge that you see companies face when they're trying to scale hiring, and if so, how should they solve it?

NATALY: Yeah, definitely. Most of the companies that I supported didn't have anything in place.

TIM: Right.

NATALY: We are coming to a green field, and then we need to understand most of the time. Not necessarily have the structured vision and mission, you know, and this is something that we then need to be doing a little bit of interviewing with the management and the leadership. What do you need? That's, I, I see it as an integral part of talent acquisition. know that we need to understand the goals and everything so that we can bring you the best people, because it's also. I see a lot of comments from hiring managers. Let's hire them. We have a probation. Worst case, we are canceling after six months. No, that's not the way you are losing resources. You are losing a lot of money during this process of hiring. And then you also build a higher fire in your company, which can ruin every good company that is doing that. In the end, this image will stack. So it's, you need a lot of interviews and questions and everything around to understand what they want to achieve in that. And then once they achieve it, you, of course, need to build a concept. Okay? What kind of process do you want? It's all. And this is something as a recommendation for hypergrowth companies or scaling companies that are entering the scale-up phase: think about structural processes and standardized processes, that you have a process in place, because then when you have a process and everyone's starting to follow this process, everything is much clearer and much faster. You have a process that, based on that, you can develop with training for hiring managers and training for interviewers on how to evaluate the candidates publishing strategy. If we want to push it on LinkedIn or we want to do direct sourcing. Everything is related to, first of all, when you have a process, the hard thing is that in those companies that are usually all over the place, they need people yesterday. It is that they don't like to stick to processes. And that's our challenge, to be the annoying person that sits here and always follows the process. Please do it. Follow the process. Please put your feedback into the TS. Please. You know, you constantly need to

TIM: Yeah.

NATALY: But in the end it will work. Practice makes it perfect, you know, in the end.

TIM: Yeah, it's like a short run, a short-run effort for a long-run return, basically.

NATALY: And then, like, it's pretty easy to create the value-based interviews. Once you understand the vision of the company, the values of the company are what they want to flag. And based on that, you can ask the questions in certain, if it's. Value-based questions. But in the skills-wise and experience-wise, you have certain questions that you can ask. There is a bank of questions that we can help interviewers to ask or to lead them to answer the question that you want. Not necessarily, but are you an out-of-the-box thinker? But actually. Frame it and ask him to give you an example of something, and then during that, get whatever you can from it. And for this also, AI is supporting you in the interviews. If you transcribe your interviews, you can get all the data very easily with AI tools.

TIM: AI interview transcriptions are a lifesaver. those note-taking machines

NATALY: dunno

TIM: You are awesome.

NATALY: Before that, you

TIM: Yeah.

NATALY: Know what I did before that because I'm an old-fashioned person. I'm everything written in my notebook, you know? And I had a lot of candidates, you

TIM: Yes, it's unlocked this whole bit of your brain you are using for note-taking, and now it's just laser-focused on the candidate who you're speaking to. It's such an improvement. Speaking of questions, Nataly, if you could ask our next guest any question about hiring, what would you ask them?

NATALY: Hmm, good one. I would. Interested to know that about how it is going in terms of difficulties in the market in other markets, because I'm pretty familiar with, for example, Germany, but for me it's very interesting to hear about. Other recruiters or other hiring managers in other markets, if they're experiencing the same and have the difficulties that we have—of course, challenges, not difficulties. I like to say, Always challenge accepted, because we can basically, with a. Will, we can do everything. But I'm really interested in seeing how people struggle or have challenges with hiring in difficult markets and times, uncertain times, I would say.

TIM: That's a great question that I'll level at our next guest sometime next week. They're probably not in Germany. And so yeah, I'll be able to give you a slightly different insight to the one you're across. Nataly, thank you so much for joining us today and having a really wonderful conversation and sharing all your insights with us.

NATALY: Thank you. It was a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.