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From Stay-at-Home Mom to Full-Time Web Developer: An Interview with Olena Drugalya

Our interview with Olena Drugalya, a self-taught front-end developer who just recently managed to go from being a stay-at-home mom to a full-time dev.

The first part of our interview with Olena Drugalya, a Berlin-based, self-taught front-end developer who just recently managed to go from being a stay-at-home mom to a full-time dev. Born in Ukraine and having lived and worked across Europe, Olena discusses her transition into tech, the barriers she encountered along the way and how other women can overcome them.

Learn of Olena’s progress with her account after two months into her first developer job.

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Interview with Olena Drugalya: Congrats on your new job! You made it. How did you go from stay-at-home mom to full-time developer?

Thank you! My transition into tech was a long and winding road of failure, hard work and, eventually, success. So, let’s start from the beginning.

I graduated in linguistics and law, but I never worked as a lawyer. Fresh out of university, I found a job at a trading company as a translator, as there was a huge demand for speakers of foreign languages at that time in Ukraine. I worked in the company for 10 years and was promoted a couple of times, ultimately becoming an executive manager.

What happened then?

Then I met my husband and we got married. We moved to another town, and I worked remotely for some time, but it didn’t go too well because my daughter was born, and I didn’t take maternity leave. Not long after that, I was already burned out from the job, from having a baby, from the move. So, I quit my job.

But, after some time, my daughter had grown older, and I started to think about what I would like to do next in my life, my career possibilities, etc.

My husband is a software developer, so he suggested that maybe I could find a development job in our city. There was a coding academy that offered a course on software development on the weekends, so that worked for me as my husband could watch my daughter during the weekends. I learned there for two years and graduated as a .NET developer. After that I graduated, I participated in several projects. I even built an online game and actually got some money for it. So, I was like, OK, I can do it.

And then…

Then I decided to try to get a job at a company, not just freelancing. But at that time, in Ukraine, it was very difficult for a woman to enter the tech world if she didn’t have a computer science degree. So, I had a couple of interviews, and that was a failure. A total disaster.

So, after a range of failed interviews that got me discouraged, I decided that tech was not for me. I always thought that, for being a developer, you needed a special mindset, and that I just didn’t have it. And everyone around me seemed to think the same, except, of course, for my husband. But I was too unmotivated and frustrated. So, I stopped. I decided it was not for me, that I would try something else.

Women in tech

We moved to Denmark, where I got a job as an office manager. I was quite happy with the job, since we had just moved in, and I could learn Danish and do something useful instead just sitting at home. But while working there, I realised that, in western Europe, the situation with women in tech is totally different. In fact, tech companies encourage and offer women enormous possibilities in the tech industry. That made me think about tech again, and I decided to give it another shot. This time I started with web development and that’s what I’m doing right now. We moved to Berlin, and I recently got a job as a junior software developer at IT services provider Novatec. And I love it.

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You mentioned how hard the interview process was at times. What would you say to people who are going through failed interview after failed interview? How can they keep their spirits up?

Above all, that you just must keep going no matter what. If you really want this job, if you really want to work in tech or in any other industry, you just need to learn from your failures and just move on and try again. Failing at an interview doesn’t mean that you are not good in what you are doing. Sometimes there is just a better candidate, or the company has a different profile in mind. It often just means it’s not the right time or the right company for you because they are looking for something else.

Do you think your background in humanities has helped you in tech?

Absolutely. Knowing a lot of languages, for example, has helped me a lot. Speaking English is a big plus in this industry, and I can speak German too. There are a lot of wonderful developers out there who are missing out on great opportunities because they don’t know languages. All technology now is made in English. Plus, if you know how to learn a language, you know how to quickly learn new structures and words. You can directly apply that to learning a programming language. You learn the grammar, the syntax. The same goes for fluency. In order to get fluent, you just need to write code often. You just need to treat programming just like any other language.

How do you combine your job, learning and raising kids, especially during lockdown?

You need to have a daily routine. Otherwise, you will always feel like you don’t have enough time. I was lucky to have the help of my husband. When my son was little, I usually studied for two hours after he went to bed.

That was, of course, tiresome, because usually you don’t feel fresh anymore in the evenings. But I had no other choice. But the first lockdown actually helped me a lot with goals, as my husband started to work from home, and we shared the time with the kids. From morning until noon, he was with the kids, and I was with the kids from noon until the evening. I had my two or three hours to myself every day, and that was fantastic. Then I jumped right away into the 100 days of code challenge. I made a habit of coding every day for at least one hour. And I have been doing it every single day since. So, yes, the daily routine is very important.

You are very active in the dev community, sharing development tips and your journey into tech. Why do you enjoy blogging, how has it helped you?

I started my blog when I started my studies as a web developer. First, I wanted people just to know my story about being a stay-at-home mom and learning web development. I was hopeful it could encourage other women like me who were afraid of transitioning into tech. But as I proceeded with the study, I started to write posts about topics I was learning at the time.

I thought that many blog posts or YouTube videos out there were not really that beginner-friendly, often being written in a rather complicated language. So, I decided to try to write down these difficult concepts just in a simple language, just for myself. If you manage to understand something by writing about it, you actually learn it more deeply. Then I saw others were struggling with the same problems and decided to share these materials with the broader community.  

I encourage everyone to start writing the blog. It’s one of the best ways to learn by yourself because you need to research something and then you have to explain what it is and what it does, and how you can use it. It’s also a great way of holding yourself accountable and make sure you keep progressing towards your goals.

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Make sure to follow Olena’s blog and Hashnode activity.

You can also follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Interview with microsoft Wesley Backelant: Becoming data-driven is more than just saying you are data-driven (Part 2)

Part two of our interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant. We discuss his role and what's ahead for the cloud industry.

The second part of our interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant, in which he talked about his role, what the job entails and what’s ahead for the cloud industry.

A Microsoft insider, Wesley Backelant is a Belgian cloud solutions architect who works together with the company’s customers to engineer and deploy impactful data and advanced analytics projects. Among other things, Wesley is an expert on the various components of the Azure AI platform. He is also a frequent speaker at numerous community events and regularly shares Azure news and tips.  

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Interview with Wesley Backelant: What part of being a cloud architect at Microsoft do you enjoy the most?

There are a couple of aspects that make it very interesting to me, personally. One of them, and that’s probably one of the benefits of being at a company like Microsoft, is leading the space in terms of innovation and cloud. You are at the forefront of technology, and that’s what I like. I like new stuff. Every time I get to learn something new, I see it as an incredible challenge, and I really love doing these things and getting my hands on new stuff and new technologies. That’s what drives me from a technological standpoint.

But the other thing that I really like about being in the data and BI space is that it puts you in a position where you are not just talking about technology, you’re also talking about business and societal outcome. One of our customers, for example, is in the public transportation space, and the fun part there is that, when you do something that’s innovative with them, you know that it´s going to have an impact on people and that it’s going to improve the experience of a hundred thousand or millions of people. To me, that’s one of the more rewarding parts of my job. Seeing a project succeed is fun, but seeing it drive real impact is the real deal.

At the technical level, what do you love most doing as part of your job?

Making it all work together. Azure is a continuously evolving platform. New things pop up all the time. Figuring out where all those things fit together and how you can make things more efficient and cost-effective is one of the role’s key drivers and, honestly, quite fun. Matching what we deliver as a technology to something that can actually provide value to the customer by leveraging existing building blocks.

Also, coding is not so much part of my job officially, but it’s still something I love to do, because it’s quite tangible. You get to see the result pretty immediately, and that’s a lot of fun.

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What tools do you like using the most?

I would be obliged to say Azure SQL Database is my favourite tool, as SQL is my old love, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair, especially, if you look at what we’re doing today with open source. I’d like to split my answer between cloud and open source.

Containers and Kubernetes are clearly changing the way people are building software these days. I talk a lot with start-ups and partners, and pretty much all of them are building stuff based on containers and mostly Kubernetes as an orchestrator. It’s impressive to see what the impact of these tools has been in the relatively little time that they’ve been around for. We are also seeing them as a big foundation for our own services.

Then there’s open source. For example, something people sometimes forgets is that, whenever you have a service that has to run in production, you need proper monitoring and alerting. It’s not the most fun part of building a solution, but it’s one of the most crucial steps when you want to do something seriously. We have Azure Monitor, which is a great tool that I strongly recommend, but at the same time, I’m a huge fan of open-source solutions like Prometheus and Grafana. Luckily, they have integrations with Azure Monitor, so that makes them even more interesting. What amazes me of the open-source world is the community, and the power of the community, how the community sets the direction in a lot of ways. Even the big players follow the direction set by the community. That’s quite nice to see.

As a data expert, what’s the biggest issue you are seeing with data these days?

I think we all know the challenges from a more technical point of view, so data quality, governance, etc, to me things that between quotes we can easily solve with technology. But one of the biggest challenges I see with customers is being more data-driven. It sounds like a marketing term, but it really is not.

I really believe most companies are aware there’s a lot of value in the data they have, in applying machine learning or even good reporting. But getting into thinking what’s the difference I can make with this data, and do I have the proper environment and organisation in place to really benefit from it? That’s where I still see a lot of companies struggle. If I were a c-level person, that’s probably the question I would ask myself – are we organised to benefit from all the data and what it can bring to our company? Becoming data-driven is more than just saying you are data-driven. It also means having a proper organisational structure in place together with technology and tools.

Interview with microsoft Wesley Backelant: What’s next for cloud?

One of the things is that I still see too much of is that there’s still a strong focus on infrastructure. I still see a lot of IT departments that can tell you what server or specific IP address is hosting an application or service.

Things can change, the infrastructure can scale in or out. It shouldn’t matter to you. I really believe that infrastructure part is one of the things will see disappearing over time. One of the best things about cloud is agility, and when people start really to adopt the whole serverless idea, and also DevOps as a philosophy, that’s the point where we’ll really see the whole power of cloud.

Secondly, at Microsoft we strongly believe in the intelligent cloud and edge. Bringing some part of that computing power, or at least how it works closer to where the data is, is definitely also an area where there is a lot of innovation happening these days. The big challenge is, obviously, making it all work seamlessly together. We are definitely doing progress there. But I still think there’s going to be a lot of new developments in this area still. And, thirdly, there is the abstraction of where things are running. If you look at tools like Azure Arc, basically, Kubernetes is having a big impact on that whole story. Being able to host your solutions be it on the public cloud, your own cloud or multiple clouds and having it all seamlessly work together from an operational standpoint and management point of view – that’s also where cloud is going.

Check out more of our interviews from our podcast episodes.

You can follow Wesley on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Also, make sure to check out his blog: My long term memory for data and development related information.

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You need to share your knowledge and not just keep it to yourself

Cloud solutions architect and Microsoft Azure MVP Karel De Winter discusses his career in IT and shares tips for advancing your cloud career.

An interview with Microsoft Azure MVP Karel De Winter to discuss his trajectory in IT and how to advance your cloud career.

Karel de Winter is a Belgian cloud solutions architect working at Azure Expert managed cloud services provider DexMach. He is passionate about helping others in the cloud community grow and develop their expertise. Whether it is on Twitter, on his blog, or at an industry event, Karel is constantly sharing news and resources that will help you make the most of the power of cloud.

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Interview with Karel De Winter from Azure: How did you get started in technology?

I was about seven when I started to play around with some old computers. The first things you learn are the basic commands like DIR and CD. And, from that moment on, I just wanted to learn more about computers in general and what you could do with them. So, getting into IT was all about doing what I love to do and the things that I was playing around with. The hardware that was given to me by family, by neighbours; I was looking to improve that hardware, making all those things work together.

Then the Internet came and became this living thing. And a lot of things happened from there. I joined some local communities in Belgium and learned about a lot more besides computers. I learned a little bit of programming, I learned to build websites. It was just the beginning of the web, so it was all about playing around, building websites and making music and then putting the music on those websites.

That is how it all started. And now I have around 14 years of experience in IT. I have always worked with Microsoft partners, and every company I worked with had the possibility to try out the Microsoft products, to try new things, to test them, and then implement them together with customers.

Interview with Karel De Winter:What about Azure?

The same thing happened with Azure. The platform is about 10- or 11-years old right now, so I started to play with Azure in the very beginning. I got interested at a local community event. Somebody was showing something from Azure Storage; you could put your files on a storage account or you could run your SQL environments and servers on Azure.

I was curious about all those things and how they worked together. So, I got involved with the Azure community in Belgium and attended several sessions. And I immediately saw the benefit of cloud products. But I must say that, ten years ago, Azure was not the Microsoft Azure platform that we now know. A lot has changed since then. So, it was a lot of exploration and investigating what was possible, always learning new things through the process. That is how, throughout my career, I went from being a systems engineer to making cloud architectures and other related things.

Interview with Karel De Winter from Azure: And what are you up to these days?

My main focus so far has been on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). But, since I started working at DexMach as a solutions architect, a lot of things have changed. Now I am focusing more on the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) side of things and everything around governance, making sure that we have a good landing zone and keep security in mind. Those are the things I now focus on.

Now I am designing architectures, but also doing a bit of pre-sales. Together with our team, we help to make proposals for customers so that they are having a clear understanding of the cost and architecture of the Azure environment. Aside from that, I’m also a competence lead, which means that I am responsible for all platform related projects and guidelines related to Azure. So, I am looking at, for example; how we can use Azure Stack HCI as a hybrid solution for our customers, or how we can standardize platform-as-a-service in Azure with Azure Functions, Logic Apps or Web Apps. Even Kubernetes comes into play when a customer wants to keep full control. I am making sure that everything is secure, that everyone who works in the team is on the same page (we have standards that we need to implement with every customer).

What is your advice for more junior Azure experts?

My number one piece of advice for junior Azure experts would be that learning is important. It is so important that you have to do it for the rest of your life. Especially because a lot is changing in cloud. It is going very, very quickly. So, if you are not learning day by day, six months later you are behind your competitors. You need to keep on learning and keep doing new things.

If you want to start with Azure, just go with Microsoft Learn. That’s a very good starting point. You have different paths you can follow. So, if you are a junior and you don’t know which area or which track you should go for, this is the way to go. You have the ability to sign up for free and have a complete Azure environment in a sandbox and see what is working for you. You can see if you are doing a lot of development things, or enjoying the web development part, or if you are an infrastructure guy like me. Or are maybe more into VMs, more into Kubernetes and managing all those things, networking, storage, etc. Just have a look at that.

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What about official certifications, what would you recommend focusing on?

You can’t learn everything in these times of digital revolution, there is just too much information. But when preparing for an official Microsoft you should start by looking at the PDF that’s on the page of the exam. There you will find the exam skills outline. All the topics covered in the exam are listed with some percentage at the end. And you should aim to learn by that percentage. The skills measured with the highest percentage must be also your highest learning priority and the biggest investment in time. That’s something I always do. My main focus will be on the biggest parts, and then, if I have time to go into a really deep dive, I will look into the other parts.

Learn more with our article: The Most Popular IT Certifications

What’s the best career advice you have been given?

Networking is important because, for example, if you are going for a job interview and they have two people with a very similar resume (same certificates and experience) but the one person knows somebody within the company or knows somebody that knows somebody — you know, they will be picked instead of the other one. I think networking is very important in every job. But not only in it. If you want to work at another place or you want to take a career step, it is very important that you know people and that you do some extra networking as well. Yeah.

Secondly, as you are becoming an expert, you need to share your knowledge and not just keep it to yourself. Sharing your expertise with people in your company or even online is very important because you show that you are doing things. You get on the radar of other people and other people. Create a blog or do a podcast or make a YouTube video. Just explain something simple. Get started sharing something you’ve learned, something you worked on, a project.

And the last thing: try to get involved in as many projects as you can. And don’t be shy to do some complex projects. Mostly you will be working in teams, so you will learn from other team members, from other people. Cloud is still very new, so nobody has 20 or 25 years of experience with it, as it happens with other technologies. Everybody is kind of new to the job. It is by doing that you will learn a lot. Making sure you have complex projects in which to get involved. That has worked very well for me in my career.

What would you do if you were not in IT?

That’s a good question. I think I would have a small company that gave mountain biking lessons because I love mountain biking. I imagine this little village in the mountains, where I would have a little shop full of mountain bikes. And I would give lessons, or give some tours. Yeah, that would be nice.

You can follow Karel on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Also, make sure to check out his blog.

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Interview with Wesley Backelant from microsoft: Playing with technology is one thing, but you only start learning when you have requirements (Part 1)

An interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant to discuss his career trajectory and the best strategies to gain new skills.

The first part of the interview with Microsoft cloud solution architect Wesley Backelant to discuss his career trajectory and share some tips on how you can gain new skills and become a self-made IT pro like him.

A Microsoft insider, Wesley Backelant is a Belgian cloud solutions architect who works together with the company’s customers to engineer and deploy impactful data and advanced analytics projects. Among other things, Wesley is an expert on the various components of the Azure AI platform. He is also a frequent speaker at numerous community events and regularly shares Azure news and tips.  

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Check out the second part of the interview 

So, Wesley, tell us a bit about your professional trajectory. How did you get started in your career?

I’m actually what they call a self-made man. I started studying ICT or IT, but I had been doing an internship at a company during high school, and that’s the company I got started in. They were looking for someone to help them and support them with software development and, because I worked there as an intern, they asked me to go work with them in my first year of university. They offered to teach me. There were some very senior people working there, who knew everything about development and so on. So, I left my studies and joined the company.

I decided to do that the first year because, to be honest, the education system in Belgium at the moment was not that strong at this level, so I was kind of frustrated. I finished high school and I thought, okay, now I am going to study IT stuff, I am going to learn how to program, and when I got there, there was a lot of stuff that I had to do that was completely unrelated to IT. There was accounting, economics, different languages. It was all super interesting, of course, but I was there to learn how to develop, and even when we did that, it was only old school stuff that we learnt, COBOL, and so on.   

When I got that opportunity to get hands-on, I said, okay, let’s do this. It was a leap of faith too, but it turned out to be okay! A small company, so I was the IT department together with a few colleagues. We did a bit of everything.

Interview with Wesley Backelant from microsoft: What sort of career path eventually took you to become a cloud architect at Microsoft?

Well, sometime after that, I started getting interested in the database side of things, more than on development. I needed bigger challenges, so I got into outsourcing to have more variation, customers and technologies to get in touch with.

Learn more about Microsoft Technologies Careers Overview

I then had the opportunity to become a database architect at a large enterprise in Belgium, and I took it because I knew they were hosting one of the most transaction-intensive SQL environments in Belgium at that moment. I thought it would be a great learning opportunity, which kind of proved to be true, because it put me on the next level of data, focusing on database design, performance tuning, and so on. They were also looking into some business intelligence solutions and, given my passion for data, I had been doing some reporting services work. We implemented together with a colleague the first reporting solution there, and that’s how I got into contact with some people at Microsoft. I figured that, with that experience, it was the right time to apply for a position at Microsoft, as they were looking for a pre-sales for their data and BI.

Back then I was not really a BI specialist, I was more focused on the database engine, but I figured, hey, new stuff to learn, fantastic, let’s take that leap. It was the same year I first saw the demo for what back then was called Red Dog, which is now known as Azure, at an internal event. Looking back, it was hard to imagine. It was the early, early days of Azure, and, seeing that demo, it was still hard to grasp what cloud would mean nowadays.

It was fun being there. Being at the birth of Azure, so to speak, put me in a nice position. I actually grew up and worked together with Azure at Microsoft, meaning that I was blessed to be able to go through this whole cycle of innovation and new services coming up. You know, looking back at something like SQL Server 6.5 and what keeps me awake at night today, it’s really amazing. We are so far from the traditional idea of the database now.

What educational resources do you turn to as someone who is constantly learning new things?

Well, at Microsoft there’s a huge focus on learning these days. It’s one of the key priorities to make sure everyone is up-to-speed with technology. Especially with our roles as cloud architects, we need to be ahead of the curve in many ways. But it’s a broader concept, of course. Everyone at Microsoft needs to at least have some part of technical knowledge, and there’s a strong push for that. Most of that is coming from Microsoft learn these days, which is also open for external people, so I really would encourage people to look at it, as there is great content on the platform.

Additionally, I like to look at blogs, from the official Microsoft blogs to the heroes in the industry. For me that’s actually the queue, when I see something on a blog post, I say, okay, let’s see how can I learn this, how can I get my hands dirty with this.

Is that what you tend to favour, a more practical approach to education?

What I’ve noticed works best for me — I have these “production-like” pet projects. It could be something you do at home, but where you try to have a scenario in mind. Playing with technology is one thing, but you only start to learn when you have requirements, I think.

At first, I had zero knowledge of Linux, for example. I saw it was going to become important. Since I had a server at home running Windows, I decided to make it a Linux server – that was before cloud, to be clear – so I said, okay, let’s use Linux, let’s start building RAID arrays, save some pictures on a central server, etc. I broke the server several times. Luckily, I had backups, thanks to experience. I think I had to re-install it like 3 times because I did something wrong with permissions and partitions in Linux, but that’s learning.

The point is that you need something that has real requirements so that you challenge yourself to try new things. And for me that’s what works best, getting your hands dirty with technology. It, of course, starts by reading and learning the basics. But then you need to start pushing yourself.

Check out more of our interviews from our podcast episodes.

You can follow Wesley on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Also, make sure to check out his blog: My long term memory for data and development related information.

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Women in IT: Women Must Claim Their Spot in the IT World

Freelancers in tech: did you say precariousness?
How the Covid-19 Pandemic is Accelerating the hybridisation of Careers in Tech & IT

The numbers are clear: women are under-represented in most IT roles. Yet, ironically, companies are increasingly looking for women’s talent and their unique skills to fill technical and leadership positions. So how can we ensure that women get the place they deserve in IT? How can we collectively be better at speaking to their dreams and ambitions? How can we encourage them to pursue a career in technology?

By Manuela Delfort-Garampon, co-founder of Mindquest.

Looking for a job in IT? Check out our IT job hunting guide.

It can often be difficult to find a single woman in the IT department of a large company, even across entire office floors. As we celebrate Ada Lovelace Day in honour of this champion of women in STEM; we should take a deep look at how much progress we have made towards equal gender representation in technology. Spoiler alert: not enough.

According to various recent studies on the subject, the proportion of women in IT professions varies between 10 and 30%. Gartner estimates this proportion to be at 31% globally in 2018.

What is more, the higher up in the hierarchy, the fewer women there are. Only 13% of women occupy the position of CIO according to the 2018 Gartner CIO Survey.

But most alarmingly, the gap appears to be widening if we consider the decline in the number of women enrolled in IT-related schools.

IT needs women more than ever

IT functions are affected by a terrible talent shortage. The number of unfilled positions in digital professions is exploding. To the point that the main threat to start-ups and large IT departments has become how difficult it is to find the right person for the job.

But, as it stands, the IT world is virtually depriving itself of half of its talent pool. Attracting more women would certainly go a long way in solving the problem.

On the other hand, IT professions would have everything to gain from welcoming more women for one simple reason. Gender diversity increases team performance. Numerous studies show the positive impact of gender diversity on employee engagement and confidence, customer satisfaction and the company’s brand image.

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According to McKinsey, which has been publishing the “Women Matter” study series for ten years now, companies with 3 women or more within their management bodies; or 30% of a classic boardroom; obtained performance scores up to 7 points higher than more male-dominated companies.

The challenge of attracting interest

So, there is no lack of good arguments to move towards greater gender parity, but how can we push for it? Several axes should be tackled at once. The often-proposed principle of quotas could be a solution. But it is not a very good strategy from a talent quality point of view. Above all, it would be necessary to change social perceptions around women in tech. Rather than imposing, we should facilitate and streamline women’s access to IT professions and encourage them to choose these careers.

In the era of digital transformation, IT jobs have gained in atractiveness. But many functions are still widely associated with men. Systems architect, network engineer, project manager, data scientist, software developer … are all professions from which women tend to stay away. It is important that we give more visibility to the women already working in these sectors in order to attract future candidates.

Campaings like #WomenInTech or #WhomenWhoCode are good examples of how the IT community is working towards this goal.

Want to read more about Women in IT ? Discover our articles 20 Amazing Women Leading Europe’s Tech Revolution and A Look at Diversity in Tech

The challenge of empowerment

To break the glass ceiling, we must also make women aware of their abilities, of their value and what they have to bring to IT teams.

Today, great figures from political circles and the show business are encouraging women to get out of their comfort zone, to be vocal about their goals and fully unleash their potential and break down all these social barriers.

We should apply this global push to the world of IT so that women can stop devaluing themselves and settle for lower salaries. Finally gaining access to more strategic and technical positions.

Here again, education and communication are key. So are role models.

Women are undeniably welcome in IT, they just need to be more daring.

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The Mindquest Manifesto

The Mindquest Manifesto
Technology is reshaping not only the ways in which we live and communicate but also how we work. Discover the Mindquest Manifesto.

Technology is reshaping not only the ways in which we live and communicate but also how we work. Discover the Mindquest Manifesto.

The skills we need to be successful in our careers and business projects—that means both hard and soft skills—are constantly evolving. The ways in which companies and teams operate are changing dramatically, even more so since the start of the pandemic. But that is just the beginning. The classical employee-employer relationship is being fundamentally redesigned.

These sudden and profound changes can be confusing for both companies and employees, creating a great deal of uncertainty and posing a new set of challenges.  

Today’s IT professionals are concerned about how to best manage and build a successful career of their choosing in an ever-changing environment where skills must be constantly updated to stay relevant. On top of that, tech workers, like any other professional collective, have personal lives to attend to and want to figure out a way to achieve career success while ensuring that all their needs are covered at each stage of their life cycle. Should they work as a permanent employee, or as a freelance contractor? The answer might change depending on which point of their lives they are in.  

For companies and IT managers, it is all about how to adapt to and stay ahead of this changing landscape while retaining agility, competitiveness and a cohesive approach to talent and operations. New ways of working require shifts in company structure, as well as new ways of managing teams that are increasingly composed of both permanent employees and external contractors. Aspects like maintaining a unified company culture, securing the best talent before the competition does, and preparing for upcoming regulations are of major importance to today’s business leaders.     

At Mindquest we like to think of these changes as a journey, for professionals as well as for businesses. 

The journey requires all parties to be in constant motion, to step out of one’s comfort zone, to make a few mistakes and learn a lot to keep on advancing.

Some people can get lost along the way and make the wrong decisions, resulting in greater concerns, anxiety, and a waste of talent and energy.

Mindquest – This is where we come in.

Our mission is to provide people and businesses with the best possible guidance and support throughout their entire professional journey. For us, it’s all about people, and it’s all about growth — personal and business growth.

We are here to uncover the true potential of brilliant and unique minds and help them build their desired career paths, working with companies and projects where they will be able to excel and achieve their professional goals.

We are here to help business leaders find the best IT talent and develop comprehensive talent strategies that generate as much value as possible.

We are here to create a new kind of community within the tech sector, to create long-lasting professional relationships and partnerships from a win-win perspective.

We are here to help our partners live up to their full potential in this new technology-driven world of work.

We are here for you.

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Calling on Freelancers: A Winning Strategy for IT Departments in Times of Crisis

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

While flexibility, responsiveness and speed are more necessary than ever, the use of independent consultants takes on a new dimension.

Manage emergencies

IT departments – and especially support services – were put to the test during the lockdown. Between the massive deployment of remote work, the explosion of security threats and the problems of VPN congestion or application availability, support teams have had to deal with a major increase in requests. And this, overnight and under a lot of pressure. The business continuity of the company – and therefore its survival – is at stake.

Imagine that your organization is facing a massive ransomware attack. If you are not able to mobilize the right skills in-house very quickly, you expose yourself to serious consequences in terms of data loss and potential suspension of your activity.

Using freelancers such as cyber security consultants makes it possible to respond very quickly to the overload of work and to absorb the peaks in demand. Whether these are basic requests or tasks requiring specialized skills, calling on additional reinforcements on an ad hoc basis allows the company to have all the responsiveness necessary to respond to these exceptional and urgent situations.

Dealing with uncertainty

While the lockdown has plunged companies into paralysis or at least a slowdown in their activity, the looming economic crisis will be a long-lasting problem. Uncertainty and doubt set in, challenging businesses to continue to grow when they are virtually forced to navigate on sight.

In this context, agility and the ability to adapt are crucial. IT departments have long been used to working in project mode, but this ability to mobilize the best skills very quickly for success will become absolutely essential moving forward.

Ambient instability greatly increases the risk, especially in terms of recruitment. Caught between the need to restart as quickly as possible and the threat of economic crisis, companies must nevertheless act. In the IT field, using freelancers makes it possible to reinforce existing teams in an efficient and less risky manner.

Did you plan to recruit a Data Scientist or a Product Manager on a permanent contract before the economic and health crisis broke out? Opt for a freelance profile while things stabilize internally and externally. Companies can find the talented and experienced consultants they need, while still maintaining the budgetary and organizational flexibility needed if the situation worsens or if the prioritization of certain projects needs to be changed.

Without forgetting that freelancers have, in essence, a great capacity for autonomy and adaptation and are also more used to teleworking. They are therefore a particularly suitable response to the crisis.

Accelerate development

Despite the difficulties and complexity of the current context, there is no reason for companies to get stuck. On the contrary, they must find the tools to continue to develop and grow. This crisis is a test: companies must not only prepare for a quick recovery, but also think beyond the crisis and build solid and innovative models for tomorrow.

For these reasons, structuring technological projects and IT architectures that enable business transformation is at the heart of the game. It is essential, even vital, to continue to implement them, and even to accelerate them. However, the success of these strategic projects largely depends on the teams in charge. So how do you make sure you have the most competent people possible?

Using one or more experienced freelancers on specific IT subjects, such as cloud or machine learning, can save a lot of time and significantly speed up these major projects. In addition, the contractual relationship between freelancers and the company often requires them to make a higher commitment in terms of performance and quality of service.

In conclusion, the use of freelancers is not a one-size-fits-all solution and must be part of a more comprehensive strategy. But it represents a flexible, responsive and efficient solution for IT departments, which must more than ever learn to juggle between internal and external employees to emerge winners from this period of instability. One thing is clear: the success of companies in these times of crisis depends in large part on the skills and talent it can mobilize.

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IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. And it will probably last for a while. How to manage your activity?

In this unprecedented context, independent consultants may fear a drop in the number of new assignments and income. Here are a few thoughts to help you better understand the situation and come up with a strategy to maintain and develop his activity.

Also discover our special guide: IT Job Hunting Done Well: A Step-by-Step Guide

The state of the market

In this period of relative normality, many wonder what the next few months will look like in terms of economic activity. And it is true: the outlook is worrying. All predictions point at GDPs falling across the world’s biggest economies.

While not the hardest hit, the IT industry will nonetheless feel the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. Gartner recently published a new report in which it estimates that global CIO spending will fall by 8% in 2020.

Before the crisis; during the Gartner IT Symposium, October 20, 2019; the same analyst predicted an increase of 3.7% in 2020. Entering now a period of resource management and reassessment, CIOs will suddenly be forced to prioritize critical services.

IT Pros: How to Work On Remote in the Post-Pandemic World

As a result, many projects are and will be postponed. This isn’t a complete market shutdown or outright cancellation of projects, but the impact is going to be heavy nonetheless. And there’s no denying the fact that freelancers are often one of the first to be scratched of the budget.

However, and this is the first reason to remain positive, IT freelancers are also the ones who are called on first when projects restart. (We are already seeing this with the confirmation of many migration projects to SAP S/4HANA). Freelancers offer companies a flexibility that is an obvious advantage in a context where business is unstable and where uncertainty remains.

We should also take a closer look at the IT sector, since its different sub-segments are not impacted uniformly. In some areas, the role of the IT department has even been reinforced by the crisis and certain skills are in greater demand.

With the advent of teleworking in particular, IT departments are under heavy pressure to implement dedicated technologies. While overcoming the cybersecurity challenges that go hand in hand with this trend.

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Manage you activity: Tips for adapting in times of crisis

Several best practices can be recommended to manage your activity in times like these. The choice of industry is the first element that deserves the attention of IT freelancers looking for a job. If this choice was already important before the crisis; now it is even more so as all the sectors of activity do not suffer the same impact.

It is, therefore, advisable to sectors that are experiencing a strong peak in activity due to the Covid-19 crisis. Such as mass distribution, health or even online entertainment and education.

The second tip is flexibility. More than ever, the independent consultant needs to adapt to changing situations and be more flexible on certain criteria for choosing an assignment, such as the location or the context of the assignment. It is not about accepting just anything or being underpaid, but simply about punctually and opportunely expanding your usual criteria. For example, it may be wise to position yourself more in the area of TMA (third-party application maintenance) and carry out small assignments rather than embarking on full-fledged projects.

It is also important to pay special attention to your “self-marketing.” As always, you must know how to sell yourself. This can start by taking stock of your skills and aspirations to properly orient the way of presenting yourself before employers. Being active on social and professional online networks is also something that will help you stand out from the crowd and develop new connections.

Finally, you have to continue to train and learn, all while cultivating your softer skills. Keep in mind that the ability to adapt in times of crisis and other interpersonal skills can often make the difference between two similar candidate profiles.

Stay positive

Focus on the positive. We know that we have entered a difficult and complicated period from an economic point of view. However, as we have seen, there are several things that should keep IT freelancers positive. First of all, the IT sector is largely spared compared to other sectors (tourism, catering, hotel industry, etc.).

Secondly, the pandemic has strengthened the role of IT departments (setting up teleworking, cybersecurity, etc.), and the current circumstances can encourage companies to resort to hiring more freelancers.

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Need Extra IT Support? Avoid Mistakes When Hiring Tech Freelancers

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

How to avoid mistakes when hiring IT freelancers? With most of the workforce operating remotely, it is highly likely that your company needs to expand its IT team. Whether it’s due to a lack of preparedness in terms of digital transformation or increased cybersecurity concerns. A good way to go about it is to seek the help of independent experts. Working with freelancers grants you quick access to the specific skills that you need while reducing the risk of hiring new employees in uncertain times.    

But beyond budget restrictions, to recruit is to take a risk. The risk of selecting a candidate who does not have the right skills or who will not be able to adapt to your team or your company. This risk is all the more obvious in the case of the recruitment of tech freelancer; since they are expected to be operational and produce results right away. So how do you limit this risk as much as possible? And find the right profile, within the limits of your budget and in an often-tight schedule? 

First things to avoid mistakes when hiring: define your ideal candidate 

Be careful, as hiring mistakes can be made from the start of the recruitment process. To find the right person, you must first define the profile you are seeking. The first common mistake is to ignore this first key step. Start by listing your needs, write a clear job description and validate your budget. 

Next comes the step of selecting candidates. Are you looking for an SAP expert or a Business Intelligence consultant for a mission of several months? You will need to assess the level of expertise of your candidates. Beyond the CV and the list of skills, you should ask freelancers for examples of their previous work. You can also ask for their portfolio or their GitHub profile, which can provide a lot of information. 

Finally, the interview stage is essential for evaluating the skills of a freelancer. And the candidate is not the only one who has to prepare. Think beforehand about the points you want to assess and do not hesitate to alternate concrete questions and open questions to test the ability of freelance to solve complex problems. If you do not have the level of technical knowledge necessary to assess a profile; it may be wise to be accompanied by someone who does and to set up specific filters such as technical tests. 

Have you found the freelancer with the most suitable skills? Very well. Do not stop there. If you do, you might be on the verge of committing the most common hiring mistake. Limiting yourself to the technical aspects and neglecting social skills. 

Know-how or the distinguishing element  

In any recruitment, the human factor is essential. You may find the candidate with the highest level of expertise and with the most suitable experiences. But these will never be sufficient factors to ensure a successful recruitment. The so-called soft skills have become a must-have for IT professionals. This is particularly true in the case of freelancers. An independent consultant will have limited time to integrate into your team and will have to adapt very quickly to get to the heart of the project. 

But how do you assess the soft skills of a tech freelancer? It is not easy to measure elements as subjective and intangible as the human and relational qualities of a candidate. The interview is again decisive: you have to know how to ask the right questions and be emotionally intelligent to properly identify a profile. Here again, being accompanied by a specialized actor. An actor who knows the tech & IT talent market well, can prove to be saving to avoid hiring mistakes. 

Avoid mistakes when hiring: The secret weapon to assess a freelance profile 

Last tip: seek professional references to limit the subjective aspect of assessing a candidate’s skills. Who better than a former client or employer to tell you about their reliability and expertise? Keep in mind that a “good” freelancer will never be reluctant to give you the contact details of these contacts, as they will be confident in having fulfilled the objectives set during previous projects. This check often takes time if you decide to do it yourself, but it will allow you to dispel your last doubts and confirm that the freelancer you have chosen is really the expert you are looking for. 

HR Managers: How to Assess the Technical Skills of IT Candidates

Hiring or onboarding error? 

Have you followed all of these steps and recruited the perfect profile, and yet are disappointed with the freelancer’s performance? First, give them some time. Of course, a freelancer must be operational very quickly, but they must nevertheless be allowed enough time to assimilate the context and all the data necessary for the success of their mission. Be realistic and don’t expect your freelancer to work miracles from day one. 

But above all, ask yourself the following question: have I taken the necessary steps to integrate this freelancer into the business and team? Sharing information, providing the necessary equipment, and introducing them to key team members are all important parts of the onboarding process. The performance of your freelancer also depends on you. You have made the choice to take an external expert to accelerate the work on a project: go all-in with your investment and make sure that they have all the weapons required to succeed.  

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AI for recruitment: How AI will allow recruiters to focus on people

IT Contractors: How to Manage Your Activity in This Unprecedented Period
The dual health and economic crisis we are going through creates a particularly high level of uncertainty and instability. How to manage your activity?

AI for recruitment. AI penetrates all areas and promises tremendous gains in efficiency, speed and performance. There has been a lot of media buzz lately around its recruitment applications. What long-term impact will AI have on the staffing industry? Used well, these new technological tools will allow recruiters to focus on their added value and; paradoxically; make the recruitment of the future more human.

AI promises in automation

For the past twenty years, we have witnessed an ever more extensive and efficient automation of the recruitment processes. These developments are built upon extremely complex analytical models. Defining and anticipating the skills that the company needs, identifying the most suitable talent and ranking candidates based on precise job criteria are processes that require taking into account many variables.

Moreover, through its ability to consider contextual elements as rich as they are varied, artificial intelligence promises to make this level of automation a reality. In a field like IT recruitment, where time is of the essence, being able to quickly match candidate profile with company requirements is a decisive advantage.

Artificial intelligence in IT recruitment

In the recruitment of IT freelancers, for example, AI makes it possible to process very quickly huge volumes of data linked to the profiles of candidates. Previous gigs, areas of expertise and preferred sectors, years of experience… But also exogenous data such as the candidate’s place of residence and travel times. AI also makes it possible to analyze the quality and interest of the positions offered. Helping identify the types of projects that are most promising in terms of career development.

Furthermore, considering elements linked to quality of life or to the characteristics of the offer maximises the chances of success of an investment; by making it possible to identify profiles with high potential and that are likely to be interested in the mission.

AI for IT recruitment: Towards an uberisation of recruitment?

AI’s capabilities are making great strides in matching supply and demand. Hence the emergence of fully automated solutions, of players who “platformise” recruitment. Which bring about a vision of recruitment as an almost exact science.

This vision would like technology to replace human appreciation entirely; thus putting an end to the recruitment profession and replacing it with ever more sophisticated and intelligent algorithms.

But this vision is implausible. Recruiting is not just a science, it is also an art.

IT recruitment: the human touch

In recruitment more than in any other field, the human being occupies by definition a central role. Soft skills, matching the values ​​and culture of the company, and compatibility with other team members… They are all key factors for a successful placement. As much as the level of education, years of experience, references or results obtained in a technical test. And yet, these are all parameters that an artificial intelligence can never assess as well as a human.

Even more so when we talk about recruiting for high-level positions. It is hard to imagine choosing a CIO or an Innovation Director via a fully automated process. Neither the candidate nor the company would subscribe to it.

Discover 5 Online Courses to Get You Up-To-Speed with AI

From artificial intelligence to augmented intelligence

It is really a question of going beyond the dialectic “all digital vs. all human”. Recruitment professions must integrate AI and make the most of it as a tool for human decision-making. And thus allow the business to refocus on its true added value.

AI involves a real qualitative leap, reducing the risk of error and saving unprecedented amounts of time. AI will certainly replace humans on certain tasks, but mainly in repetitive and boring tasks. It increases the performance of the recruiter by allowing faster and more targeted searches. And thus optimizes time and communication with the candidate. Far from dehumanizing the relationship, AI, on the contrary, allows us to focus even more on humans.

Artificial intelligence for recruiter: the next level

This is good news for recruiters. These new tools will allow the profession to gain new levels of recognition, with richer and more interesting daily tasks. Also, it will give us the ability to understand the needs of the company in terms of skills. To create a stronger connection with the candidates. As well as to understand the aspirations and constraints of each party involved.

It is also and above all good news for candidates. Because recruiters will be able to devote more time to them and offer them a better experience. Firms will be able to enrich their service offer with more support. Especially in the key stages of onboarding and taking of office of the selected candidate.

It is, therefore, the human-machine association, the combination of artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence. That will revolutionise recruitment and put people back at the heart of the processes. We may no longer be talking about Artificial Intelligence, but augmented Intelligence.

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