Need For Diversity In Hiring, Impact Of Automation & Much More

Let’s quickly get to our expert’s point of view:

1. What trends do you see coming up in the industry – unseemly or exciting – that might change the industry for good?

More openness to non-traditional backgrounds

Pre-pandemic there were so many assumptions on what was necessary to do your role well, and for the most part that meant being in the office five days a week. Not only did we see that this wasn’t true, but it also opened our eyes to the fact that many of our other assumptions were unlikely true as well.

Does a candidate have to come from your industry or have a role similar to the one you are hiring for? Pre-pandemic this was almost always yes, but now I see people digging down deeper into what skills are truly necessary to succeed in this role and awareness that these skills can be developed in very different fields.

A great example of this is a content marketing manager we recently hired. She had an MA in art history and was working at an art gallery and as a side hustle had built an art podcast with over 5K subscribers. Before the pandemic, there may have been questions about how she would perform in a tech/startup environment. Fast forward to where we are now and we saw that she was able to write and communicate effectively, and if she has an MA in art history she can easily learn about our business. She’s been a great hire and her diverse experience has added so much to the team.

2. With the software industry right now, What change do you see sticking?

If you aren’t open to remote work then you aren’t going to hire the best people for your teams. Employees know that even if your company won’t give them the option to work remotely, four other companies are waiting in the wings who would love to hire them and give them that option.

The challenge for hiring managers is to ensure that they hire people with communication skills that mesh well with their teams and culture. Without body language or other social cues that you can pick up on in person, you must communicate with a group over zoom in mind.

3. As a VP of Global Marketing, what stacks or languages do you see having a larger impact on the industry and consideration by the dev community?

Hands down automation. The pandemic has forced all marketers to up their technical and digital game and more and more of them are seeing the power of automation. The trick will be how marketers orchestrate the data from all of their different systems so they can be more easily analyzed and then actioned upon.

Wrapping Up

From the role automation will play post-pandemic and how hiring non-traditional talent can help retain employees, there was a lot we got to learn and gain insights on with Ali Jawin. Hope you enjoyed reading this QnA session with us.