Paolina Vladova, Talent Acquisition Manager at Programista;: ‘The world will definitely be transformed’
This year, AUBG held its traditional Job and Internship Fair online. One of the employers recruiting students at the fair was information technology outstaffing company Programista;. We talked to Paolina Vladova, Talent Acquisition Manager at the firm, to learn more about the effect of COVID-19 on the business, the way she sees the future of the tech industry and what are they looking for in a successful job applicant.
Paolina Vladova is an HR Professional with over 10 years of experience in the fields of Talent Acquisition, Employer Branding, Recruitment, Sales and Business Development. For the last two years and a half at Programista;, she actively worked on popularizing one of the company's most important missions - to reduce the gap between traditional education and business by giving students the opportunity to start their careers in tech.
Programista; has a proven track record of digital user experience design and development for scale-ups and enterprises in the area of Finance, Video Conferencing and Network Infrastructure Monitoring. The company pushes the limits of technology to achieve business goals, drive digital transformation and deliver innovative solutions. The firm's main activities are software development and consulting. We engage in long term projects in which we assist our customers to move their software products to new quality levels. The team consists of more than 200 bright, curious, and always objective engineers functioning at all levels of software analysis and development, whose goal is to make their customers feel proud of their software products.
How has COVID-19 changed the way you work?
COVID-19 crisis is something unexpected for all of us. Tech companies have enforced work from home policies long before the COVID crisis came up. We are not an exception. Actually we never had limitations over the days working from home. With this being said, I mean people in our organization have the routine of working so.
Another thing is that our offices are scattered across the country and we build teams based on skills, not based on location. Our colleagues work in distributed teams like currently almost everyone else gets used to. It didn't take longer than a day for us to go completely remote for the period of the crisis.
Working completely remote has some specifics of course. We have more online meetings, we are looking for ways to cooperate and interact outside of work. We drink beers and play board games online.
What do you expect to be the long-term effects of the pandemic on the industry?
The world will definitely be transformed – for better or worse. Now, the pandemic is pushing organizations to operate in new ways. The disturbance of social distancing, the rise of telework will lead to the need of creating new values, beliefs, policies, and procedures. I can't say how we'll exit the crisis, but we will be more adaptable and resilient after it for sure. There are some notable trends already and I think they will remain even after the crisis - employees' mobility will decrease, more remote work opportunities, more virtual communication and even more digitized services.
What opportunities are there for businesses to learn from the crisis and take advantage of it?
It's time for the business to rethink status quo and accept the new normality, which brings a lot of changes we need to adapt to. This situation holds a bunch of new business opportunities and I think the IT industry is prepared to grab them. Aside from creating new products and services, companies have the chance to become leaner in terms of processes and rethink their people strategy. People's well-being should be the main focus for each company more than ever. This will help organizations exit the crisis stronger than before.
What advice would you give to students on successfully preparing for an online job interview?
Online job interviews are not very different from those conducted face to face - you need to be calm and friendly. In order to act so, you need to do your homework.
- Research about the company and its focus of work.
- Test the software and the equipment that you will use for the call.
- Make sure you have a camera and it is on during the whole conversation.
- Make sure you are in a place with a stable internet connection and it's isolated enough so you can focus on presenting the best of you.
- Prepare the questions you are willing to ask, during the interview. Interviewing is a two-way street, remember?
- Put a big smile on your face.
What are the top three characteristics you are looking for in an applicant?
The three characteristics we are looking for in an applicant are actually our top company's values - authenticity, benevolence and desire to continually develop their competencies. Technological expertise is as important as culture fit and sharing the same values. This makes a solid ground for further professional and personal growth.