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#02 | How to Navigate Diversity in the Tech Industry - Valerie Kuzmenko
19 Plays1 year ago
This episode takes an in-depth look at the key aspects of strategic marketing and business development, making it a valuable resource for professionals in the tech industry and anyone interested in the connection between diversity, inclusion, and market growth.
Key Points:
Transitioning into Marketing and Business Development: Valerie shares her journey from aspiring to be an international lawyer to becoming a leader in marketing and business development. The conversation focuses on the mindset changes needed to succeed in these roles, including the importance of strategic thinking, effective communication, and a deep understanding of market trends.
The Importance of Market Research and Localisation: Valerie emphasises the critical role of market research and localisation when entering new markets. She explains how understanding local cultures and consumer behaviour can significantly impact the success of a product or service, particularly in diverse regions such as Europe and Africa.
Building High-Performance Teams: The discussion highlights the importance of creating and leading high-performance teams. Valerie shares her experiences in building teams that are not only skilled but also diverse and inclusive, which she believes is essential for driving innovation and achieving long-term business success.
Navigating the Job Market as an International Professional: Valerie offers her insights on the challenges and opportunities faced by international professionals working in the UK. She provides advice on overcoming barriers in the hiring process, the value of professional certifications, and the importance of continuous learning and adaptability.
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Transcript
Introduction: Nellia and Valerie
00:00:19
Speaker
Hey everyone, I'm Nellia from Nelly Wax. Welcome to my podcast Nelly Talks, a careers-focused show for those who are are considering careers in tech industry, or maybe looking for a change of direction in this space. We will be interviewing different speakers in this field to understand their journeys, their hurdles to face, how they overcame those, and any tips and hints that they would like to share on the way.
00:00:54
Speaker
Hello, today we have Valerie with us on the call. ah Valerie, thank you for being here. It'd be great if you could introduce yourself to our listeners. I can say myself that in a nutshell, I'm a marketing and business development leader with over 15 years experience of working in tech companies in Europe and the in the US, the companies of all sizes. like from startups to giants like Vodafone and Torxcel. I've been achieving amazing growth and building, winning marketing and business development strategies and leading the teams is my gem.
Valerie's Journey: Diversity and Tech
00:01:34
Speaker
Beyond the ah business role, I'm a big believer in the importance of diversity, inclusion and I love promoting the importance globally. This is what
00:01:46
Speaker
truly fuels me in my passion for strategic marketing in tech companies and I'm committed to promoting the global recognition of the companies that I work for.
00:01:59
Speaker
Thank you for that summary. I think we align on some of the interests around diversity, inclusion and tech in general. Clearly you've you've had a successful career this far. How did you kind of get into this world ah of you know marketing, growth and sales and tech industry? I don't know if that's something you always knew you wanted to do kind of growing up or it's something you felt and to be interesting to hear how you got into this career path.
00:02:26
Speaker
It's a very interesting question because as a kid, I dreamt of becoming an an international lawyer and the idea of bringing cultures and fostering international ah development or was my main dream. And looking back, my current role allows me to connect people with different backgrounds ah worldwide through digital channels and establish international partnerships it feels like a wonderful extension of my initial dream. And the classic way of entering new markets requires a number of factors that affect the success of expansion.
Entering New Markets: Strategies and Challenges
00:03:09
Speaker
For example, the market research, the financial strategy development and logistics supply change some administrative work and just understanding the legal and regulatory landscape. So these are the
00:03:24
Speaker
ah real must-haves. They are also included in my role while expanding to new markets and at the same time it became clear to me that the productive communication is the key to the successful execution of the tasks. Namely, I'm expanding to European markets and I'm working closely with local country managers from Sweden, from Poland and we're localizing a lot of materials so We need to make sure that we're on the same page and we speak the same language with our clients and potential customers. I even had experience of working with a Arabic markets where I also worked with local marketers and sales managers and I learned how to make such diverse international teams productive.
00:04:17
Speaker
it's It sounds like it's truly international environment that you had exposure to. I think I've actually shared your dream when I was young of becoming a lawyer. My my career path into that did not ah go beyond degree to to the disappointment of my parents, unfortunately, but you know, it worked out at the end. It really comes across you enjoy connecting businesses and taking them to international scale. And are there any kind of typical challenges that you face in your role, you know, for anyone who's potentially considering similar career step. There are challenges obviously ah because entering the market you would face the protectionism. It's like a wide sheet of paper where you don't know anything and ah you make a research analysis and hypothesis which you then
00:05:09
Speaker
I check with potential partners, with potential clients, you do cost dev of the product within your market and you pivot the product for the new ah audiences. And I think this iterative and very curious approach helps also to be open and proactive by making a new connection in the market, entering professional a society that's working with influencers and experts in the markets helps a lot. The initial research is planning and planning like a homework is also important because you understand you need to understand the market potential, market size, finances, logistics, whether it is worth
00:05:54
Speaker
ah starting with this market expansion or that market expansion and how to choose and prioritize the markets and how to gather a team and to budget this go-to-market strategy.
00:06:07
Speaker
and to sell it to the main stakeholders. There are a lot of things to develop and to manage just to make it happen.
Professional Growth: Certifications and Expertise
00:06:15
Speaker
Initially I taught my masters in international economics and I started business development and I realized that a lot of the startups require ah product marketing and go to market expertise and to extend and to gain this expertise I entered the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I acquired a diploma in strategic marketing and in digital marketing and master metrics so this helped me a lot to understand how to tailor strategies for this or that audience and also it taught me how to not to make strategies like one product or one strategy fits at all but on the contrary to dive deeper into personalization to learn and understand your client better and to make the difference for this client and to find such a deep pain that he's going to pay for and the solution
00:07:17
Speaker
that will be the right fit for for for this audience. So these are um a lot of things to be taken into account to become successful in the market. And the team is primarily an important factor to be successful. Do you feel like having like professional certifications, being ah belonging to, for example, marketing bodies in a relevant country,
00:07:45
Speaker
is quite important for anyone who's developing career in this field. Yeah, I think that their ah certification is important because it's ah the ah certain vocabulary that is required. For instance, ah if you want to work as a marketer in decay, you need to understand how the marketers work and how they speak and how they communicate and what is their perception of the audience of the market of communication and how they are used to do it. So those frameworks that I learned are important to me because I'm using them. I'm am explaining to the UK stakeholders of the marketing concepts. And to make it clear for them, I also need to speak the same language in terms of the strategy and managing risks and managing budgets and managing
00:08:37
Speaker
um audiences, teams, and so on. So I think it is important. What is more important is that that I found out and realized that the the domain expertise and domain certification is also important. To work in cybersecurity, I need to understand how CSRS and CIOs think, what the KPIs they have, how they manage their business from the inside, because we're preparing and selling solutions for them. So I need to understand what frameworks the user are taking the cybersecurity leadership force now to understand how they manage cybersecurity in enterprises. This allows me to understand their problems, um what they face, how they think.
00:09:25
Speaker
and to feed these solutions and to tailor messaging accordingly. got yeah know it's It's really interesting. I know we both in initially met around the time when you were starting to look, we were looking for a new role in UK. How did you find kind of technical domain in like a local kind of UK market, whether it's as if like a from job seeking perspective also as from like a marketing perspective to where you work before ah in Ukraine. I know you always work on international scale, but did you see kind of any drastic differences in terms of how tech companies approach this domain and also how they approach hiring in this domain? Yeah, I think hiring is a thing in the UK.
00:10:11
Speaker
because there are very high borders for the people from other countries to go through. For instance, the systems that analyze the keywords in CVs, they filter their CVs and you need to really understand how to tailor the CV for the system to go through.
00:10:32
Speaker
or how to be to sit in front of the recruiters and how to make the record understand that you have the relevant market experience. Because if you just came from a different country, how can you prove that you can manage and how can you understand the audience in the UK if you came from a different culture, different background. So you really need this experience. And I had to enter in roles and it's not something that I really wanted to to get, but I had to take some contracts to to get fit according to the criteria.
00:11:14
Speaker
of the UK market. So this journey wasn't straightforward and I think it's very similar to many candidates who come from the UK and I've been speaking to different simials and head of marketing who came from other countries almost all of them had interim jobs when they first came. So I think when you're trying and when you're aiming to reach what you want you you will actually find yourself in the team and environment which is friendly ah for people from different countries which
00:11:53
Speaker
do not only manifest inclusivity and the very diversity are open to people with with different backgrounds on papers, on the principles like written on their websites, but the reality shows that there is a conscious bias and that not ah all the reporters and hiring managers are ready to record international professionals and I think it's something that the companies need to realize and understand whether they are ready to work with people from a diverse background, whether they are ready to provide mentorship for them, whether they are ready to provide onboarding for the person to fill
00:12:36
Speaker
comfortable, insecure to make this and to give this added value to the company afterwards. So this is a very um fruitful aim, but I think it's very hard to actually implement it. I'm sorry you haven't had a ah great hiring experience for The Sound of Things with many
Diversity in Tech Hiring: Reality vs. Commitment
00:12:58
Speaker
companies. i I'd like to say I'm i'm surprised. I think my experience probably would say that I'm not. um i think almost it feels like in the industry there is a lot of still like diversity and inclusion equity like in terms of buzzwords you know branding on the websites but you know companies get this kind of huge agencies to go and design videos
00:13:23
Speaker
When, unfortunately, you start looking at the hiring process, um a lot of companies, when they actually analyze the data, they see that a lot of um candidates from underrepresented communities, and this could be you know displaced candidates, women, people of um you know a different ethnic background, yeah there are different elements to diversity.
00:13:42
Speaker
they actually drop out you know so you might have really diverse pipeline of people you're tracking the process because you know you talk about it obviously the branding looks great the talent brand looks amazing but ultimately when you monitor the the statistics and conversions you typically see a big drop between the ah when the business actually starts speaking to those candidates and then them moving to the final stages of the process Ultimately, the businesses were truly interested in having diverse teams that we all know actually perform better.
00:14:14
Speaker
because diversity of experience is amazing, for product development, for services development, all these companies that are willing to invest in Stepfather, it could be language training, it could be support with relocation, like all the weird and wonderful things you have to do in remote countries, all of the things that people need to take care of to be actually able to focus on work. There are companies that do it well, but when someone starts it's like,
00:14:39
Speaker
well you're here now you know good luck and of course when you've relocated your new country that adjustment period doesn't stop after like six twelve months it's like an ongoing thing and then you need to invest in mentorships coaching and things like that i think in fact those should be things that are available to all employees this is exactly the purpose of this podcast to try and educate people that you know unfortunately recruitment process when it comes to ah candidates who are relocated here is very different and you know those biases are alive and kicking. um Based on what you've just said, what do you think HR recruitment teams can do better in order to improve their process um and make it more inclusive for talent like yourself?
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, speaking about the initial barrier where the CVs do not qualify. yeah ah So I think for for this first phase, it is possible to invite people from underrepresented communities. I think maybe by cooperating with some NGOs who deal with either displaced people or are people who are shifting careers or entering the new market.
00:15:50
Speaker
and talk to them and understand what skills and what kind of professionals they're looking for and then score them maybe in a like closer audience organizing some feed interviews to understand and to score what people out of certain number can be good for the company potentially and then maybe ah to provide some ah preparations for the interviews and allowing ah such ah people from underrepresented communities speak to hiring managers, speak to recorders and then maybe tailor the process according to their needs and ask them what problems they face by applying like hundreds and hundreds of times to this company and not going through
00:16:47
Speaker
So I think understanding where the problems are on the way to the current manager and to the decision making committee would help the companies to tailor this process better. And I think the problem also, as you said, continue when this person starts working and the new tools and new environment new procedures, new products and the feedbacks
Onboarding International Talent
00:17:16
Speaker
is important. Also the onboarding process, because if the company provides a good onboarding and human to human sessions and maybe they are providing a buddy who helps the newcomer to integrate into the culture and understand what the cultural principles and what are the company's values, what do they mean?
00:17:42
Speaker
in reality because when it's written on paper and the ah person from a different culture has no clue what it can mean in real work situations it can be a problem. Also I think organizing onboarding and communication not only within the department but also with joint departments with whom the person will work also will have to integrate and to show better results. So what are the benefits the company can gain by hiring a person from a different country?
00:18:20
Speaker
I think it's a different way of um making decisions is maybe a a person with a different type of creativity, maybe the person with a new approach and so on. So and I think if if the company is prepared to work with ah different people from different backgrounds, it will that make it more efficient in a long-term perspective. But the short-term tactics is much complicated than hiring the person who you are familiar with with a similar background and so on.
00:18:58
Speaker
Absolutely. I think there is, um it sounds like being kind of human centric approach to the hiring and onboarding is really important, but also I feel like I think you've picked a lot of those points. There is a big trend happening in recruitment now to actually look at candidates um as you would look at customers, you know, all the things that you apply to customer acquisition, retention, you know, feedback, like users ah should apply to your candidates because ultimately um you want to deliver good experience, if you want to have good employees that stay with you, then keep talking about your brand, recommend you to their friends. And there needs to be like, I think for many brands, whole level of work that needs to be done to bring them up to the standard where maybe that commercial brand is to ensure that that employer brand is on the level. Thank you for highlighting this, loads of practical tips for
00:19:53
Speaker
any kind of TAs or HR leaders that are listening. i'm I'm sure you've been aware, and I know you work in this space as well, about rise of AI in the tech domain, but frankly across most domains especially kind of last year huge growth of ah generative AI with tools like you know OpenAI and other victim company bringing loads of different solutions. How do you feel ah this has impacted ah you know your role kind of what's your outlook on AI in general and did you feel like you had to upskill yourself in this space as this technology
AI in Marketing: Opportunities and Balance
00:20:35
Speaker
was developing? Yeah, nearly, you're absolutely right. Technology is always evolving and the rise of AI is super cool, I think, because I feel tools are so useful. They make our work more productive, efficient, they can ah write content faster, analyze data faster,
00:20:57
Speaker
and we can target the right audiences, we can choose the keywords in a more structured way and much faster. AI helps me ah even to optimize marketing campaigns and I don't worry that AI will exchange marketers in the near future.
00:21:16
Speaker
Because we have so much of creative work and strategic human thinking that AI can't substitute us at all. And the human skills, they will be demanded. And AI is like a superpower that helps us to make our marketing efforts to the next level. AI also helps with personalization.
00:21:46
Speaker
We can tailor the content according to our ideal customer provides ah profiles to their experiences, to their behaviors, and they can resonate with individual users we're aiming to target and helps to build real connections in the real world.
00:22:06
Speaker
by approaching with personalized messages. As I said at the beginning that there's no one size fits all because we perceive such generic messages as something which does not resonate with us and only personalized messages which we understand which resonate with our everyday life, with our work,
00:22:32
Speaker
they and They can hit the target. They can make us notice this message in the noise of information that we are abundant. We we have so many messages daily on LinkedIn via email. So it's very hard to just to pick up those genius ideas that we might get from some potential partners And we simply do not identify those in the noise until there's something striking and personalized comes into the inbox. So I think the main approach is just to the personalization and having like thousands of clients, it's very hard to do it manually. And this is where it helps us.
00:23:25
Speaker
but that's a really great view of it, kind of using AI to enhance your skills and kind of focus your energy on, you know, where AI cannot replace humans, there's a lot of strategic decisions, kind of human relationships. And of course, AI can be biased, you know, of course, based on the data you used to train it. But yeah, I mean,
00:23:46
Speaker
from efficiency. It's a disrupted recruitment space, heavily. I think I'm of the same opinion. Don't say it's replacing um professionals, but a certain thing is something that people should embrace um as much as they can. Also, thank you so much for sharing so many kind of golden knackers of information and your experiences um you know in your career, but also kind of locally in UK job market.
Career Advice: Embrace and Evolve
00:24:10
Speaker
To wrap us up, um Valerie, what advice would you give your younger self or perhaps anyone who's considering entering similar career path as yourself or kind of changing direction into marketing growth and sales? Yeah, so as I changed the direction from business development and focused more on strategic marketing, I learned a lot of how to shift and I have been waiting for some time not starting this shift and I think that the main advice would be it not wait and do now what you want to do and don't be afraid to take the step outside of your comfort zone and explore new opportunities. I think what is helpful to me is that I never stop learning and growing as a professional.
00:25:05
Speaker
So the advice would be also to stay curious, stay passionate about what interests you. never give up and i it's very obvious but fake it until you make it so the more you fake the more you do something wrong the more you learn and do it better and as you said that AI ah has some bias and you have to use it consciously because it's about managing risks about the
00:25:38
Speaker
ah managing information sources and about data protection and so on. So I think so important for all the professionals ah who want to develop their career is to have some security skills in place because our world is the world of information. But how you deal with information is the key. So you need to manage it securely.
00:26:06
Speaker
you need to respect the data privacy of your clients and partners and so on. So I think that we live in a world where different domains are merging with themselves. So like marketing is not only about marketing, it's also about how you treat the data you work with.
Data Security in Marketing
00:26:27
Speaker
So um I think this is important to dive deeper and be focused on your role, but also to be curious and to merge all the things that interest you and which help you to become the better version of yourself as a profession.
00:26:48
Speaker
that That's great advice. I think it applies to kind of beyond um marketing growth roles. And sadly, I think relevant very relevant to the space you work in now, which is cybersecurity and tech and AI. I'm sure that kind of your career in UK is just started. I can't wait to see you.
00:27:08
Speaker
continue to grow and and be successful. And thank you so much for sharing so many useful tips today. It's been pleasure to have you on podcast. um And yeah, I think our audience has benefit from many useful insights. Thank you so much, Valerie. Thank you. Bye bye.
00:27:26
Speaker
thank you to all our lovely listeners for sticking with us i hope you found this useful and please do share like etc check out our next episode that comes out in two weeks time