Finding work with high standards - Nicolas Jellab

00:00

... do a lot of interviews and you're like, okay, I have two interviews per day or something like that. You feel like, I'm doing every interview and super motivated. I'm giving you my best to everything. And then sometimes you get a rejection and say, you have a nice profile, nice background, but don't feel like you were as interested as other people.

00:21

Okay, so there is this kind of interview fatigue that you don't realize you have, and it impacts the performance of your interviews and where you're like, okay, I should change my interview skill or do maybe less, but be sure that I'm like 100% motivated. When you do 20 interviews, you say roughly the same thing when you're describing yourselves and you start to get kind of tired of your own story and you're just reciting your things mechanically. That's where you are. You make less of an impression to the person who's interviewing you.

00:56

So practically speaking, how do you go about finding where to spend your time?

01:02

Well, I guess the important thing is to find projects that resonate with me. I know that if I feel like, at work, I'm making a difference for people, it's something that will interest me a lot more than all the kind of areas where it's more while you do your job. Maybe you will see something that you maybe don't, and then you get your salary at the end of the day. I really want to feel like, when I'm at the end of my work, I'm like, okay, I have told people I'm proud of what I did during my work day. These kind of things.

01:45

When was the first time that you made one of those big decisions?

01:50

I guess it was my second job where I was working to help make the hiring processes easier. So I was working with a hiring consultancy firm and they wanted to make some kind of digital interface to make hiring easier to do, easier to track. Right now, it's interesting because I might use it, which is always the first step for me to say it will be interesting. Well, would I use it or not, since it's already like a... It's a good way of knowing, okay, would we make some impact for people?

02:30

What were the practical steps to find that job?

02:36

So, I guess this one was more through my network.

02:38

Okay.

02:38

So in my first job, I met some people that told me, hey, I know this company's starting to build a tech team in this location. So I met some of the already hired people there and said, hey, I'm interested. And there was some kind of informal process, and we realized we were a good match. That's how we kind of started.

03:03

Was it a network of friends or a networker?

03:06

Yes. Yeah.

03:09

You must have friends in good places.

03:12

Well, it was fresh after Uni, so it was still people I knew from Uni that already had experiences where they met people at work and they put us into tech.

03:27

Got it, okay. And in the subsequent decisions that you've made since, has it been a similar thing, where you've found work through your network or if you used different ways of finding work, London Cord obviously.

03:42

Yeah, so a bit of both. So after that, I decided I wanted to move to the London because I was in France. And so, that's where I started using Cord and it worked quite well. COVID arrived, so I got furloughed. So it was back to job hunting, which was very exhausting at the time. And then one of my coworkers from my first experience told me, hey, I'm building a team. Do you want to join? So that kind of made it easier to find a job at the time.

04:24

That's interesting that that's happened twice.

04:26

Yeah. Well, I guess if you find people you like to work with and you feel like you like to have him in your team, I guess that makes sense to keep relationships.

04:37

Yeah. Do you do anything to like open yourself up to those opportunities? Did you make your own luck in some way?

04:44

Yeah. Well, I guess it was very random because I randomly told him, hey, I'm looking for a job. You know of anything?

04:54

He says, well actually, I might have something. Maybe try again, one or two months later in this. Yeah, we were opening positions so I can apply.

05:04

And which company was that you then joined?

05:06

I joined Unibbuddy, which I'm still working for.

05:11

At the time, did you have any other offers on or was it just that one?

05:13

I was looking, but didn't find... It was difficult to find things that were matching what I wanted to do. Technology-wise and project-wise, I guess it was a bit of a tough time for the industry overall.

05:27

Could you talk through how you've gone about defining that, because it sounds like you've got a pretty specific idea of what it is that you want to do. How have you figured that out?

05:39

So there is the technological side, of course, because I want to grow my technical skills, and then there is the mission of the company. So when it comes to the mission, usually I have, I'd say, sectors where I'm not that interested, more than looking for specific sectors, usually finance-related things, and that's a thing that attracts me a lot. So, which in London, is a bit of a shame.

06:13

I guess anything that then comes to me and says, hey, we are doing these things. I guess it's a very ad-hoc basis. If I can see companies where I'm like, oh, what they do is interesting. And I've seen a lot of interesting companies on job hunting, then that makes me want to apply. And then I think that the technology says, okay, is it something I like to learn or not?

06:36

How do you go about working through whether somewhere is the right place? So you can see it from the outside and work through the industry and stuff. But when you start to meet people, how do you go about working out, okay, this is somewhere that I want to work or this isn't somewhere that I want to work?

06:54

I guess the people I meet during interviews are the very first time. I guess, prior to that, just looking for any kind of content of any companies and they have some kind of blog post or something describing how they work, these kind of things. Definitely things that can help with getting the temperature, okay? And then when you meet people that work there, you can easily get what the future of the company is, how people champion it during interviews.

07:28

How heavily have you weighted compensation at that point, because it strikes me that you've spoken about the mission of the company and the technology. How heavily do you weight the compensation?

07:38

Not going to lie, compensation matters, of course, because at the end of the day everybody needs to get paid, but that's not the biggest factor for me. It's an important one. I want to feel like I'm valued for the work, for the value I provide. But as long as it's, I'd say what I consider the acceptable boundaries, then it's fine.

08:05

When you've been inside interviews, have there been any tips that you've got. When you're inside that interview, that have helped you in one way or another?

08:20

I guess one kind of tip I've gotten, one realization I had was when I was doing a lot of interviews and you're like, okay, I have two interviews per day or something like that. You feel like, yeah, I'm doing every interview and super motivated and giving you my best of everything. And then sometimes you get a rejection and they say, yeah, you have a nice profile, nice background, but we don't feel like you were as interested as other people.

08:54

I realized, okay, there is this kind of interview fatigue that you don't realize you have and it impacts the performance of your interviews, where you're like, I should change my interview skill or do maybe less, but be sure that I'm 100% motivated for each interview. Because when you do 20 interviews, you're saying roughly the same thing when you're describing yourself and you start to get kind of tired of your own story and you're just reciting your things mechanically. That's where you are. You make less of an impression to the person who's interviewing you.

09:33

Any there other signs that you are suffering from interview fatigue that you could notice and kind of stop yourself?

09:42

I guess at some point you start to feel like you are kind of mentally drained when you arrive to your interview time, like, I have to do this interview or more. I have to do it more like, okay, let's go. Let's get this job. So I guess you start to fixing in your mindset and it's a matter of picking up the signs and being aware that it exists.

10:08

What's been the most difficult moment for you when you've been searching for work?

10:12

Yeah, I guess it was during COVID because I had kind of a hard deadline at the end of the furlough. So it was either I find something either without any resources, which was a bit stressful. So that was also the reason why I was doing a lot of interviews.

10:28

It's almost like the more pressure that's on, the more interviews you do, the more fatigued you get.

10:34

Yeah, exactly, and you get into this cycle of more interviews, and so you perform less well at the interviews, so you don't get a job, so you do more interviews. It's a matter of realizing it and breaking this cycle.

10:51

Has your definition of doing your best work changed at all?

10:53

I guess I was pretty lucky to have worked with very demanding people in my first jobs where I had, very quickly, a definition of doing my best. That was a very high standard. So I have for little story for that. It was in my first job and I'm doing my thing and my manager told me, hey, when you think it's ready, come to me, we can review it. And so I come to him with what I thought was okay.

11:37

He said, "Before you start reviewing this with me, do you feel it's your best effort? Is it your best work? The best thing you do?

11:45

"Well, I think so," I said.

11:46

He said, "Well, if you're not sure, you can go back to your desk and make sure it's the best thing." It sounded a bit rude, but looking back, it was a very good experience because it was not said in a malicious way. It was really that this is our standard and live up to the standards we have.

12:04

And after a couple of months, I would only go to him if it is finished, and I know it's the best I could do. And, I guess ever since, that's how I've been working. If I'm like, this is the best I can do, I know it, then I know my work is finished and complete.

12:25

Does that affect how you go about finding work?

12:26

I guess, in the sense that I want to find places with this kind of standard as well. Also, for myself, I want to make sure that during interview process, I'm also doing the best I can. And, I guess, the very intensive job search sessions have been a lot of learning in that regard. Because now I will do things differently and do a lot less interviews and just be a lot more prepared, or do a lot of preparation beforehand to be sure that when it comes to interviews, I have minimal work to do, so I can just be at 100 percent all the time.

13:08

There are two bits I'd love to dive into here. One is, what's the point at which you decide to leave a company, because it sounds like you have those clear expectations, and kind of what's the relationship between those expectations, and then, for whatever reason, deciding to leave, if there is one. And then second, how do you know whether a company that you're going into has those standards?

13:43

I guess it's when I start to be a bit bored at work. Usually, it feels like I have seen everything that there is to see or repeating some kind of cycle. For example, at the hiring consultancy firm, we built a whole platform to do all the hiring online and we started to be, okay, where's our first version to release, okay?

14:10

I was there since the start of the project. It's been roughly two years on here, technology-wise, I've seen what I had to see. I want to try new things and that's where I decided, okay, I want to have a new experience.

14:28

And then to know if the company is looking for the same standard as me, I guess I get information through discussions with the people that work there, asking them how they work, giving them my experience of how I work, and then we see clearly if it works or not.

14:51

There any questions that you ask, the particular questions, that can get to the root of that faster than others?

14:57

I guess even very general questions like, how are you organized, how do you work, this kind of thing. I guess it depends a lot on the flow of the conversation as well. But if the person gives a lot of detail at first, I don't need to ask a small, detailed question. If it stays vague on something around, how do you work together as a team and these kind of things, then I will try to deep dive a bit more on these questions to get the feeling of how it's like to be on that team, and would it be a good fit for me or not?

15:35

And what's it been like, now that you're on the other side?

15:37

I guess it's very similar. I kind of know what I expect and I try to blend what he expects and what I expect in some ways. Because if you ask me questions, I won't give answers, but I'm also upfront presenting this is how we work, this is what we do, this is what we expect of people. And then we can start a discussion on that, if there're more questions or she wants some clarifications, I'm happy to give them. It's really, I guess, being upfront. That's what I try to do when I'm hiring.

16:14

Do you think that you'd make a better candidate, a better interviewee, now that you've got experience and that you regularly interview people?

16:26

Definitely, definitely, because I guess I know more of what I expect, in terms of storytelling, when you are presenting us some of these kind of things, because an interview is selling yourself in some way. So, I see what are the things that works and that don't work when I'm interviewing people as well. So I guess that's a learning experience even for the next time I'll be job hunting.

16:56

And what do you do if someone isn't a great storyteller? Interviews are well known for not being a great way to know whether someone is going to be excellent in that job, and it almost kind of optimizes the interview process itself for the extrovert who can tell the good story. How do you spot the people who go underneath the radar?

17:25

I guess for those people, I will ask more questions, as well, to understand what they do, what are their experiences, and I'll just look for how they answer the questions. Because it happened a lot of times, that I'm asking a question on some things, and instead of getting the answer to the question, I'm getting a five minute prepared speech around things broadly related to the question, but definitely not answering the question. That's something I really don't like, because we feel like, okay, are you listening to me? Because I'm listening to you, and I'd like you to listen to me as well. We're spending some time together, so let's try to have a good a time at first and make sure that I give you useful information. It's a good deal for both of us. So it's really a matter of do I feel like I get into an authentic discussion with the candidates or not.

18:29

If you were to go back, what would you do differently in the interview processes that you've been in the past, and would you approach looking for work any differently?

18:41

I mean, aside from doing less interviews, I think, in terms of what I've been saying, I've always tried to be authentic and answer to questions, and not try to, let's say, over-tell a story that is not me. It's more about, this is what I've done. This is me. Will it work or not?

19:08

Feel like you've done that today. I loved it.

19:11

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It's the first time I've done this kind of thing.