Behind the Brand®

[00:00:00] Jeff Adamson: Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada.

I'm excited to welcome Ilya Brotzky, the CEO and Founder of VanHack, a global recruitment community, reshaping tech talent acquisition all around the world. After graduating from Cornell University, Ilya found his way to Brazil where he ended up working for one of the country's most successful early stage accelerators.

During his time there, Ilya discovered a talented community of software engineers interested in relocating to Canada, but challenged by the language requirements and soft skills needed to work internationally. In 2015, Ilya returned to Vancouver and founded VanHack as a solution to empower tech professionals globally seeking opportunities in Canada and the US.

Today VanHack boasts a network of over 350,000 tech experts hailing from over 120 countries. Through Ilya's leadership and the dedication of the VanHack team, the platform has supported over 1500 developers to relocate to cities across North America and Europe. Ilya, welcome to the show!

And first of all, I mean, we go way back to the SkipTheDishes days, but I just want to say that I think what you guys are doing at VanHack is super important. If we think about, you know, the number of people that we're trying to bring into Canada and just the importance of engineering talent to Canada's economic strategy and talent strategy, so… first of all, big fan of what you're doing and appreciate you coming on.

[00:01:49] Ilya Brotzky: The experience we had with SkipTheDishes changed our company and my life, so I have to thank you as well. And then of course, to continue working together at Neo has also been great. So yeah, you know, the feeling's mutual.

[00:02:01] Jeff: Before we get into the kind of the Skip and Neo stories, I'd love for you just to kind of give everyone an idea of what does VanHack do and how are you guys different.

[00:02:11] Ilya: For sure, so VanHack is a tech equity company that focuses on the world's tech talent that wants to relocate, which opens up a much larger talent pool and much more diverse talent pool for employers and allows them to hire those people pretty quickly. So we've been around for about eight years, actually today is our eighth, exactly eight years, our eighth year anniversary today and we've helped about 2000 people get hired. Mostly across Canada, US and Europe. And we do this through our software platform where we verify people's English using AI, doing tech assessments as well, and streamlining the entire interview and immigration process through our platform.

[00:02:46] Jeff: That sounds a lot different than your typical search firm. Why would a company think about using VanHack versus just doing their own internal, you know, using their own internal recruiters?

[00:02:56] Ilya: Typically, companies come to us when their internal team is maxed out, like when they're really looking to hire quite a bit of people, or their internal team is, you know, looking only locally and doesn't have the skills or understanding of how to do international tech hiring.

[00:03:09] Jeff: And I think that was kind of exactly why we had reached out back in, was it 2016 or 2017 when we first got connected?

[00:03:15] Ilya: It was 2017. 2017, yeah, kind of the spring.

[00:03:19] Jeff: So basically we, I think we did the math, and this is at SkipTheDishes, and in order for us to keep up with growth, we were, we would've had to have hired basically every single software engineering grad from every single university in the prairies and have them all relocate to Winnipeg in order for us to kind of like keep up with our scaling. And, I think we were at the point where we were like, “Okay, maybe, maybe we should ask for help.” [Laughing]

[00:03:45] Ilya: Yeah, no I remember Dan on our first call said, you know, hire as many people as we can. And the upside is unlimited work and unlimited opportunity and kind of just, you know, that grinding mindset and it's obviously served you all well. So it’s very exciting.

[00:04:01] Jeff: I'd love to hear your side of the story, 'cause I just remember, I remember we had a meeting, it was you, me and Chris Simair, [and] we were like, okay, well we need to hire hundreds of engineers. It's funny 'cause like so many companies would've shied away from that or they would've kind of kicked, kinda kicked the tires and take up a lot of time. And I think they would've probably been pretty intimidated by it.

But, you know, working with you, we kind of came up with a pretty different idea. Maybe, I'd love to hear your side of kind of how that went, because I kind of was part of setting up the partnership we had, but that I wasn't part of the execution, so maybe share that story.

[00:04:33] Ilya: So we had done, I think, about 10 hires in three months or something like that, where we were starting to have success, you know, making hires at Skip. And then we were given this challenge of, you know, hiring as many developers as possible, as soon as possible. So I remember writing an email of all the different ways we could do that, you know, hosting a webinar or, you know, other ideas like that. And then at the bottom, the last line I made said, “Well, how about we just all fly down to Sao Paulo, rent a, you know, a conference center and do a hackathon. And then, you know, speed interviews.” And that that's what we ended up doing. So we actually hosted, I believe, largest international tech recruiting event for talent who wants to relocate, I think out there. Maybe, Amazon's probably done the bigger ones too, but definitely to the prairies.

[00:05:14] Jeff: [Laughing] Yeah.

[00:05:15] Ilya: Yeah, we had 300 engineers come spend two days. Actually, they spent the full day, like half on Sunday, half on Saturday. And then I think that led to 72 hires. People, I think are still at the company now, leading, the VPs of engineering at Skip and things like that. And I think a lot of 'em also went to Neo.

So yeah, it was [a] pretty exciting experience and a lot of sleepless nights making like the lanyards for the event and the interviews, you know, how are we gonna do the logistics of the actual, because we had this big, big room and where [are] the interviews gonna be, where's the internet? We actually had internet issues. It was an adrenaline rush but it was, it was very exciting and rewarding at the end.

[00:05:52] Jeff: Yeah and like the stories I remember hearing coming out of it where, you know, these people who were driving across Brazil, I think I heard about someone who bought [00:06:00] like a one-way ticket from Cuba to get this…

[00:06:01] Ilya: Yeah, Oscar!

[00:06:10] Jeff: But yeah, you had these stories of people who were just kind of like betting it all to kind of get their shot. It was almost like American Idol meets like software engineering through VanHack. The stakes for these people who are incredibly gifted, talented people, very rare talent, and literally willing to kind of completely change their life just for a shot at being able to come to Canada to work for a tech company here. I feel like, and I'd love to hear your thoughts, like, do you get the impression that we take a little bit of it for granted here in Canada? That we don't know kind of how good we have it when it comes to tech jobs?

[00:06:57] Ilya: I think we just don’t know how good we have it in general, right? Like I immigrated Canada when I was five. So my father was born and raised in the Soviet Union and telling me the stories of back there and then still exists in the countries today where you need a passport to leave the country, right? And there's no such thing as property, at least, you know, in communist countries, you can't own a, you can't start a business. You can't, you know, there's, so there's like that extreme, right?

And, and just in general, we had a call with one of our developers who we helped relocate to Toronto from Nigeria yesterday. And he was telling me how he used to have to walk like, 10 kilometers to school when he was a kid. And, the term he said he was, “We were poorer than the church mice.” And now he moved to Canada and he bought a house and is living in Windsor with his three kids and wife.

And so, yeah, I think in general, Canada is a very great country to live in, high quality of life. And there's a lot of people here that just take living in Canada for granted. And then of course on the software engineering side, if you're a, you know, a tech professional with let's say, three to five years experience and you have a Canadian passport, A) you can just move to the US and easily work for a US company, or B) you can work remotely in Canada, for a US company, or C) you work for a Canadian company in Canada, which is also great. And it's not like you apply to the job, the job that applies to you. You just reply to one of the 15 recruiters in your inbox.

And then on the other side with, you know, VanHackers and just immigrants in general, you know, it's a life change for them, right? And not just for them, but their families, their spouse, their kids. They're not just moving across the street from Google to Facebook. They’re, you know, moving across the world so it's a big, big change.

[00:08:42] Jeff: I remember, so my wife was in charge of helping kind of relocate a lot of these folks and she was working closely with you and your team, and some of them would come from Sao Paulo or Cuba, or Argentina, basically warmer places than Winnipeg, Manitoba [laughs].

Like, I don't know exactly what their expectations were, but I remember I went with her one time to pick up some engineers that had, they're relocating from Brazil and they had kinda landed in the airport in Winnipeg, I think it was like January or February. And so we would kind of, we would go there, we would pick 'em up and we would then bring 'em back and we had housing kind of set up for them to help them kind of get their feet under them and kind of start their lives in Canada.

And I remember going to the airport and we're kinda like looking for the family that was coming 'cause it wouldn't just be like one dude or one girl, it was usually, you know, a husband and a wife and a couple kids. And I remember, these Brazilians kind of come outside, and then it was almost like they got hit in the face with like a freezing ice wall. It like sucked all the air out of their lungs, they like couldn't breathe. And I was like worried that they were just gonna turn around back into the airport and go back to Sao Paulo. It was just going from like plus 40 to minus 40. Like an 80 degree swing.

[00:09:54] Ilya: [Laughs] Yeah.

[00:09:55] Jeff: But like when I talk to these people, they're still super grateful for the opportunity. And this is kind of how we look at things in general at both Neo and at Skip was like, “How do you grow the whole pie?” And when we were growing really, really fast, we either decide we don't want to grow because we can't, like, we're not gonna do what it takes to grow, we're not gonna hire enough people and we'll limit our growth.

Or we say, “Hey, we're gonna hire a ton of people to keep up with growth.” But then the question becomes, “Well, where do you get all those people?” If the schools aren't producing enough people then, okay, well do you poach them all from every other tech company in the community?

[00:10:27] Ilya: Right.

[00:10:28] Jeff: And that's not growing the whole pie. And so what we really loved about working with you guys is it was this opportunity to do something that we knew that all three levels of government were aligned with. Now we can bring these folks in and we thought, listen like, I don't know how many of them are gonna wanna work for us, for how long.

But at the same time, if they come and work for us for a year, two years, three years, maybe, then they're gonna go across the street and they're gonna work for someone else who was really desperate to hire engineers. And now we've just increased the level of talent, which then reduces the amount of kind of intercompetition between the existing tech companies, which I think is really important.

And we were super happy with how that went, and a lot of it's because of you and your team and willing to kind of do things in an unorthodox way.

[00:11:07] Ilya: Yeah, no, I love that growing the pie analogy or thought process. Every developer that relocates to a new city, I believe, creates five new jobs, you know. Or every skilled worker, not necessarily developer, but anyone who's, you know, making a good salary and they're contributing to the local economy, so for sure government's gonna be happy about that.

They're probably gonna be a team lead training up the junior folks. I know three or four people are now VPs of engineering at Skip and they're still there, you know, three or four years later, or even five years now. And then also you guys introduced us to Bold and 7Shifts and Vendasta and you know, a few other companies in the prairies and we've been able to help them out too so it's pretty cool.

[00:11:54] Jeff: What was the motivation to get into this? Because you know, you could have done a lot of different jobs. How did you get started at VanHack?

[00:12:03] Ilya: Yeah, I worked in Brazil for about four years in the startups ecosystem. Actually, at first I went to work in Brazil in mining, which is super random. Kind of got a job abroad myself outta university and then fell into this startup accelerator back in 2012 that was trying to be the YC or Techstars of Brazil, connecting American investors to Brazilian startups.

And through a friend of a friend and some networking I got to be a co-founder at one of the startups. Learned what a, you know, MVP was and lease startup and what a pivot was and all those things, and pitched at demo day.

[00:12:38] Jeff: You learned all the startup lingo.

[00:12:39] Ilya: Exactly. I just fell in love with that space and that world, I didn't know it existed. And during my time at this accelerator, it's called 21212, twenty-one is the Rio area code and 212 is the New York area code. And I met a lot of developers there who were really good at coding, but not so good at English and soft skills. And a few of them asked me about Canada, just, you know, “Hey, I heard you're Canadian. I have a friend who wants to move there”, or “my brother or I wanna move there one day”, or something like that. And so this idea of helping people move to Canada kind of stuck with me.

One night randomly, just on a whim, I started a Facebook page back when those were a thing [laughs], and then it got like 3000 likes in a week or something crazy like that. And a bunch of people just started DMing me their life story, like, “Hey, like, this is who I am” and everything was in Portuguese. It was all very focused on the Brazilian market. And so I kind of had this idea like, there's something here, there's this kind of pain point that people have of wanting to immigrate, but they just don't know how.

And then I moved back home to Vancouver in 2014, actually on Canada Day, July 1st, and started going to a lot of networking events, looking for a job myself. And a lot of the recruiters were asking me if I was a developer. And I distinctly remember this one moment when someone asked if I was a developer, I said “no” and they literally just stopped talking to me and walked away. It's like, wow! Like people really just wanna talk to engineers and there were even billboards with some JavaScript saying if you can read this, we have a job for you.

[00:13:59] Jeff: [Laughing] Yeah.

[00:14:00] Ilya: So I [was] kind of starting to feel like, hey, there's this demand on one side, supply on the other. But I didn't know how recruiting worked. Like I literally had no idea that you can make introductions and get paid for that. Like, I just didn't know. So the product that I first started was an online school to teach developers English, which we called VanHack Premium, now we rebranded to VanHack Academy. And for the first year we were just, you know, selling courses just to senior engineers from Brazil, helping them with their resumes, job interviews, skills, things like that.

And then about a year into it, a company started asking for introductions to the students, and then they started asking how much it costs and I realized that these weren't students, they were actually candidates that we could place. So that's kind of the medium story. There's a lot more details, but that's really how we started.

[00:14:44] Jeff: Yeah and like, there's such a demand too. Like it's interesting, it is kinda like a marketplace in the sense that you have like supply and demand and then it's just like, how do you reduce the friction in between those two things?

I know it's not a commodity, but there's so many firms out there and they all claim to have like the best talent database, but like you're taking a bit more of a technology focus than others. What are some of those different pieces of tech that you've brought into the placement and search side?

[00:15:31] Ilya: First thing I'll say is that it's started off very basic, non-tech at all. It was just an Unbounce landing page to collect emails for the candidates and, or the students at the time. And then we had a WhatsApp group where we'd manage the community. And then anytime we wanted to send an email list, anytime we wanted to post a job, I would just email a Google Form, people would fill in the Google Form and apply to the job, and then I would manually match them and make the email intro.

So it's come a long way since then. One kind of, I would say secret weapon or superpower that we have is that we're able to hire software engineers, you know, VanHackers for ourselves. And actually our, one of our first hires, his name’s Tiago, he was our community manager and then software developer, [and] now he’s our CTO. And he also like hired a lot of folks onto our own team over the years. And I would say we have a pretty sophisticated software platform right now where companies can sign up, post a job, then [a] notification goes out to the candidates based on our matching algorithm, candidates apply, and then we'll shortlist the amounts that the candidates and send 'em to the company. And we can do this all without a human involved.

And there's a lot of variables that need to be considered when you're doing that. Things like time zone, preference of do you want a candidate who's worked at a product company or an agency? Do they wanna have startup experience, enterprise experience, all these little things. There's a lot more, but all those little things that we need to understand. And another thing that's really important for us is communication skills. Because we are doing international recruiting, we need to make sure the candidates speak English. And this started off as just us calling and setting up, you know, Skype calls or Zoom calls with candidates, which isn't scalable. That then morphed into us doing a self-serve video where candidates can record their own videos. And we had an ESL school grade those, and we had 40,000 people record those videos.

And then at the end of last year, we realized that we actually can build an algorithm based on this dataset. We have this unique dataset of a bunch of people you know, speaking fluent English, poor English and understanding the, the, you know, the way that they said words like, oh, they have pauses, or whatever the, you know, things like that would predict someone's English level.

So now we're just about to launch this product where anyone can record themselves speaking. It doesn't have to be video, it can just be audio, 30 seconds or more and we can predict within like 98% if they have fluent, advanced, poor or no English at all.

I'm really excited about this because you know it's gonna make the flow of someone signing up to VanHack and be able to apply for a job much smoother. And then on the company side of things, we also have like a full kind of ATS that we built out, Applicant Tracking System, where companies can log in, review profiles, watch the videos of the candidates, see the test, the technical test scores, as well as book interviews. We were just always thinking about all the different friction points.

[00:18:27] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:18:28] Ilya: And then last thing I'll say is after [a] hire is made, we also have the global mobility side of things or the integration side of things. So it's like an ‘Uber-view’ of when your developer will move to, you know, wherever they're moving to, and seeing all the different documents that they have to fill out or where they are in that stage, and making sure everyone's on the same page and taking that out of email.

So it's a pretty robust product. There's a lot of steps and data that we're gathering. And yeah, I'm very proud of our team and then we'll be built. I think after, you know, you're always kind of in the weeds of like, of the next feature, but then when you step back and you're like, well, wow, this is actually the full solution here.

[00:18:58] Jeff: Yeah, and like you're building out both sides and yeah increasing the quality of the leads that you're giving to the companies, and then making it easy for the companies to actually like, reduce that workload and friction of vetting those candidates. And frankly, like, I'm not surprised that you built up the platform to the extent you have because from working with you back in the Skip days, and then obviously now at Neo, it's, you're not someone who shies away from problem solving problems.

But I do want to talk a bit about just that kind of competition for talent. To me, fit is one of the most important things because you can be super talented, you can have a great company, but it really comes down to like what is each of those sides kind of looking for? And some things are very difficult to determine. What are you seeing from companies specifically, actually it doesn't need to be in Canada, but what are some of the best companies doing when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent in the current job market right now?

[00:19:48] Ilya: I think in the current job market, if you're just, if you’re not doing layoffs, like you're ahead, right? Like there's just been such a wave across the industry over the last year.

[00:19:56] Jeff: Is that having a big impact on the supply side of talent? Like, on the candidate side, is that really scaring a lot of people from applying for a company if they've made layoffs?

[00:20:05] Ilya: I don't think it's scaring them from applying, I think it's just making it so there's a lot more supply out there.

[00:20:10] Jeff: Okay.

[00:20:11] Ilya: So, you know, if you're hiring right now, it's definitely a great time to be hiring 'cause the quality of talent is higher and probably not as such crazy high salaries as we saw the last few years post-Covid. And so just like step one is that. Another thing I think like, the best companies are doing is just moving fast or being very clear in the interview process.

We work with some, you know, large companies, you know, brands that everyone would know, banks and grocery store companies and things like that. And they just take forever to get back to candidates on, you know, interviews and booking conversations. And I think that's like the most frustrating part because you'll have a one month interview process and then the startup comes and they do two quick interviews and make the offer and then you lose the candidates.

And then, yeah, I think just like in general retention right now, and honestly I think it's easier now to retain talent just 'cause there is such a swing.

[00:20:59] Jeff: Well relative to like a year or two ago when it was just insane. But what about like pre-Covid versus now? Like what are the commonalities between the best companies from a retention perspective? Like what are they doing differently?

[00:21:12] Ilya: Generally, having very clear levels of your career, like where could the person go in the next few years? Don't have people get stuck. Or have like, a very clear track of like, you're either gonna be a manager or you're gonna be like a subject matter expert. Or like, having interesting problems to solve. And a mission and passion that the candidates can get behind, I think that that really resonates.

[00:21:35] Jeff: I'm curious, like you get exposed to so many different people like you're an absolute hustler. I feel like every time I go online I'm seeing you and like you're in some different country and you're at another event. Like you literally, you do a great job of being present and going to where you should be going. What are some of the things, like, do you have a framework when you're meeting people and like your job is really identifying talent, and then also you're a matchmaker, your company is a matchmaking company. But like, when you meet people, what's the framework that you have in your head for identifying top talent?

I know you must do it where you meet someone and then, you know, within seconds that this is someone who's dialed in and then you probably in the other side of your brain are thinking, I know the exact company where they should go. How are you doing this in your head?

[00:22:17] Ilya: Well, at first it was in my head. Now we've scaled a little bit of it [laughing].

[00:22:22] Jeff: [Laughing] Yeah, you don't really scale all that well on your own. I think you've probably learned that the hard way a few times.

[00:22:27] Ilya Brotzky: I don't really know, I think it's just kind of an intuition or…

[00:22:30] Jeff: Oh, come on! You know, Ilya!

[00:22:32] Ilya: No, I don't know! [Laughing] I've always been that guy who makes intros. I just, ever since I was a kid or like a teenager in university, I just really like meeting people and making introductions. I was always…

[00:22:43] Jeff: Yeah but listen, sorry to interrupt you, Ilya, if I meet you…

[00:22:46] Ilya: Yeah.

[00:22:47] Jeff: And I'm a, like an absolute deadbeat, you're not introing me to the CEO of RBC or Loblaws.

[00:22:54] Ilya: Sure, okay.

[00:22:55] Jeff: So there's something that you're looking for. So what are those leading indicators that you see in someone?

[00:23:00] Ilya: I mean, I think it's some pretty basic things like are they a developer? How many years of experience do they have? What tech stack are they working with? Is it software like skills that are hot right now in the market? Have they worked for companies that are well-known or like, obviously I've heard of? And I think one advantage that maybe we have is that I, like we know good companies in Latin America and good companies in Africa, so we can kind of tell that this is like the top startup in X market and this person's like a very good engineer.

Obviously English communication skills [are] important. But I don't do too many intros specifically myself for developers to companies, like I just, it's more through the software. But a lot of the intros I make it’s just 'cause, I feel like I just meet people, like it's literally my job just to meet people, get to know them, and then you kind of just know that, okay, oh, I had this conversation two weeks ago with with Jeff and he was saying he was looking for this, and then now I just meet John and John…

[00:24:09] Jeff: You're basically cataloging people and needs and then just keeping track of those, you know, in the back of your head. I think one of the things that I've heard people talk about is some people interview really well, some people are really good at first impressions, but then there's no substance underneath it. So like, how do you spot the fakes? They can talk the talk [but] they can't walk the walk. So, do you have any advice on that side of things?

[00:24:33] Ilya: Backdoor references would probably be the best way to do that. So if you know someone who knows that person and kind of asking about them, you know, not just being like, “Hey, gimme a few references of people” and not calling people that have been pre-approved or are most likely gonna say yes 'cause those reference checks are usually like pre-vetted in the company or the person is already expecting something positive.

But if you can find a way to, you know, through your network, back channel and really get in that, that way, like, get someone's opinion that way, that'd probably be the best thing. But it's so hard, like when you're dealing with people, I always say like, we're dealing with the most complicated product out there, right?

It's a human being who, you know, changes from one day to the next and things can surprise you in positive and negative ways. It's a hard problem. I don't really know, uh, other than it, like those reference checks and maybe like an intuition of, “Hey, this person kind of feels like they're telling a story here.”

[00:25:21] Jeff: Yeah. When, you know, I hear the word intuition and gut, I always, people always [ask], “Well, how do you develop that?” And it's like, honestly, it just takes a lot of doing it and often getting it wrong and then like, starting to recognize patterns and then eventually you just, you start building it.

[00:25:33] Ilya: I'm a very, like, trusting person to a fault. So this aspect of developing gut and, and learning by doing and being burned, I have a lot of horror stories, which we don't need to get into now of like, you know, hiring the wrong person and that person ended up doing something terrible for the company or, you know, yeah, just a lot of like mistakes that I've made with people and hiring for myself and our company, which is ironic since that's what we help companies do. But a lot of it is just learning by doing and getting burned and maybe not being as trusting.

[00:26:06] Jeff: That's a good point. Like the other side of it is like your reputation is on really the quality of the people you're placing. Without naming any individuals or companies, what kind of stands out? Like what was one of the, some of the kind of most painful lesson that you learned?

[00:26:19] Ilya: Yeah, we had someone steal some money from us. Not a huge amount, like three, $4,000 and then turn around and start a competitor. So this was [an] ex mentor of mine who I brought in as a Head of Sales at VanHack, [it] didn't work out, and yeah, ended up starting a competitor and also recruiting away someone else to join him.

And I gave a whole talk on, I don’t know if I can swear, but Fuck Up Nights. If you just Google my name [and] Fuck Up Nights, you can see the full story. But it, yeah, that was a pretty painful one.

[00:26:45] Jeff: Especially because you're in the business of trying to identify talent, like that must have been hard to recover from just emotionally because… Like, do you ever ask yourself like, how did I not see this?

[00:26:55] Ilya: All the time, yeah. It's actually my wife who is my co-founder as well. And she's the much better people reader than I am. I think 'cause she grew up in Brazil, not Canada. Canada we're all, you know, friends holding hands here. In Brazil, it's a little more, you know, [it] would be [a] dog-eat-dog kind of world, so…

[00:27:10] Jeff: Well, and even my wife is from Ukraine and I feel like Ukrainian and Brazilians are like sister countries in some ways in terms of like the trustworthiness of one another. And yeah, and she's much more skeptical of people and I'm much more willing to trust people and obviously like it's different, like if you screw up in those countries, the consequences are a lot different than if you screw up in Canada. So there's reasons, kind of cultural reasons why it's different. But yeah, I'll often get her to give me a second opinion on someone. And usually I'm very grateful that I did because she'll come back with something I hadn't considered.

I wanna know though, on like the competition side, because I hear a lot of people, like, even just like earlier today I got a message from someone saying like, Hey, the someone from the government is going to Toronto and they're like, which company should they meet with and how do we recruit talent? And I feel like there's just so much, so many people who are trying to compete for like the same pool of resources in the same areas. And I'm curious to hear, just 'cause I, I feel like you have got a good finger on the pulse of the up-and-coming pools of talent. Where are the pockets or pools of talent that maybe people aren't thinking about right now, but they're probably gonna be talking about in the next couple years?

[00:28:16] Ilya: For us, the top countries are on our platform just in general, and a few of these are obvious, India, number one, like the biggest population [of] developers in the world. Brazil would be number two. But number three is Nigeria. And I think that's one that most people don't consider, or just Africa in general, to be a tech hub, but it's the youngest generation or youngest population in the world on average is in Africa. A lot of really well educated people and a lot of self-taught people. So that's definitely a big pool.

Southeast Asia, so like the Philippines, Vietnam, very kind of strong talent pool there. And then, you know, Cuba, they're all very, very talented engineers. So yeah, those would be ones and then you know, obviously Eastern Europe, very strong too, but I think that's also kind of one that people already know that, you know, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, has good, good software engineers there.

[00:29:21] Jeff: Are you seeing like, a large influx out of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus at the moment due to the war?

[00:29:27] Ilya: Yeah, Ukraine for sure. Russia, we haven't seen so many. [The] Canadian government gave Visas for Ukrainians. So I think 70,000 Ukrainians relocated to Canada since the war started, or that was the latest figure. So, yeah, definitely a lot of folks from there. And yeah, very, like a lot of them are already working for US companies, so very strong.

[00:29:48] Jeff: Yeah. What's the reputation like? I'm always wondering around like the FANG tech companies, Facebook, Amazon, or Apple, Netflix, Google. I feel like 10 years ago it was like, if you got a job there, you're like going home, telling your parents, your grandparents, they're throwing a party for you. They're like, “Oh my God, you did it!” If you knew someone who knew someone who worked at these companies, that was like a big deal.

What's the reputation nowadays? Like, is it still like a desirable place to work from an advancement perspective, like a career advancement perspective? Like, hey, you've got that on your resume, you're good to go for the rest of your career? Or is it now flipped where people are like, yeah, like you go to Amazon or Facebook or Google if you want a bit of a cushier job with great benefits, but like you're not gonna be really doing hardcore stuff anymore. What's it like and what's the reputation in the industry like for those tech companies?

[00:30:37] Ilya: I dunno too much 'cause we don't really recruit out of those companies and those companies are a lot of times the reason why we have demand because they scoop up all the developers and then like the mid-size local tech companies don't have enough engineers. But I will say just in general, like I do think it is kind of more the cushier job to go to.

Obviously not easy to get into, but I think there's that kind of reputation of very stable, you're, you know, gonna get great, great salary, but it might not be like the most interesting work. And I'm sure there are a lot of very interesting problems to solve, but like, yeah, do you really wanna be optimizing Google AdWords or the Facebook ads algorithm or whatever, like just being the end engineer versus like joining a startup? So I think a lot people go there, save money, get that reputation, learn, and then go do a startup after. I don't know too many people personally who work at those companies.

[00:31:23] Jeff: I had friends that went to work for them a long time ago, and then more recently, and I remember one of them was kind of saying like, he called me up and he is like, “Hey, are you guys hiring?”

And we said, “Yeah.” And he said, well, I'm like, what's wrong with you know, this big tech company you're working for? And he said, “Well, it's just not super engaging or inspiring kind of spending a couple years on a team of people who are really just debating like one pixel of, you know, on the you know, the logo. And then it has to go through like several committees of approvals and, you know, the stakes are so high. You know, all, all the, the kind of decisions are all more about focus on downside risk and it just becomes very difficult to kind of get things done. And so I felt like there was a bit of a switch in the last five to 10 years where these companies just got so big and so, so successful that a lot of the focus is just on more risk aversion and… rather than like making big bets anymore, working on really interesting problems.

[00:32:16] Ilya: Maybe a little bit of both, because they probably have like innovation departments. I know, you know, Meta's doing a lot in the Metaverse and VR. You know, Amazon I know is always like launching new products with AWS or whatever, but there definitely is, it's probably like very hard to get into those product projects and since you're like, new, you're probably not doing something like that. I don't know.

But yeah I think it's, you know, there's something for everyone, right? Some people just want that stability. They want to kind of have that clock-in, clock-out, guaranteed salary, stay with the company for 10 years. And then some people like the, like I think us, you know, like the adventure of the startup world.

[00:32:48] Jeff: Yeah and neither is right or wrong, it just comes down to what someone wants. What are you seeing from the companies that are the best at attracting talent? Like, they seem to be doing a good job at hiring highly talented people and then the talent density within those companies is quite high.

[00:33:04] Ilya: First off is just having the HR department locked in. That is a really underrated thing, especially for early stage companies. They see it as a cost or, you know, a burden or like a line item that, you know, this is not bringing us revenue. Why are we gonna have this, right? So, especially early stage companies, they underinvest in that. But once you have that down, I think just having like a very strong employer brand and kind of seeing it as sales and marketing rather than just kind of something that like, we're gonna allow people like just post a job and, you know, pray.

So I think like the best companies are very aggressive in terms of their reaching out and, you know, even from the, from the CEO down, right? Like having recruiting as a priority for the entire leadership team and then all the way to the hiring managers.

Another thing I think is really important for companies is that there's this tension between, you know, the lead developer on a team who's the hiring manager and HR because the lead developer is wanting to build a product and, you know, get code into production and get things done, and they're not necessarily interested in reviewing resumes and giving feedback. So there's, there's always this, we found [at] the best companies that tension doesn't exist, where the hiring managers are fully on board, or at least like on, more on board than most and actually see recruiting as a key part of their job and really take the time to make sure that it's, you know, it really gets the attention that it deserves.

'Cause you know, we've so often run into times where we're trying to get a meeting with the CTO or we're trying to like, at least, you know, talk to someone who's on the product side or the dev side of the fence and they're just like, they're even too busy to talk to their own HR team. And you know that it's really hard to make hires when there's not that alignment between both sides because, you know, HR is out there trying to find folks, you know, talking, working with companies like VanHack, recruiting on their own, et cetera. And then they'll bring someone for the interview and it can be completely the wrong person and it's just a waste of everyone's time.

And then I think a lot of times, I, I don't know, it's this really fine balance between being overly picky and being unrealistic. So there's this really hard that, I don't know exactly the formula, but people need to figure that on their own, right? Like, what is it that we are looking for? What are really must haves? And what are things we can be flexible for?

And I think especially when it comes to hiring women in tech because just it's so hard to find, you know, women who are senior engineers. And also, I don't know the exact studies, but I know there are studies that show that like they tend to undersell themselves and like only apply for jobs when they're a perfect fit. Whereas, us guys are just like, oh yeah, I fit two of those five boxes, I'm gonna apply [laughing].

[00:35:33] Jeff: And if I didn't, and if I didn't get the job, then it's like, they obviously aren't a good company.

[00:35:36] Ilya: Exactly [laughing]. Yeah. So there's a little bit of that. And one example that always sticks with me is this company, Smile.io. They're a gift card company, so it kinda makes sense of why they would do this, but they gave a gift card to one of the candidates that made to the final around, but they didn't actually get hired. And he told me that story and it just stuck with me 'cause like they were even, you know, grateful of the person's time.

And seeing candidates almost as customers, right? Like, and having your employer brand is almost as important, if not even more important than your actual customer facing brand, because if you can't hire people then, you know, game over. So it’s this kind of holistic view that you need to take and I think that like, companies that are able to do that really well, it's become a huge competitive advantage.

[00:36:27] Jeff: The biggest one that you mentioned, I think is just that airtime at the executive level, and how much of a priority are the leaders in the business making the people side of the business.

I've seen the kinda, the rule of thumb is like 10 to 20% of your time is usually focused on either recruiting directly or around talent in general. And I think a lot of people, it's just, it's like the first thing to kind of go on the back burner and then it's like, okay, but like if you're not putting in 10 to 20% now it's gonna become 50 to 60%, six months from now when you're dealing in with all the fires you have to put out and all like the scrambling to find people and then you might hire, it becomes a domino effect because then you're scrambling to hire people. You hire people too quickly or you're not monitoring performance well enough and then you're holding onto people that should be gone and then those people are poisoning the other people. And then you gotta like put in a ton of time. It's almost like writing bad code where you're having to like go and back and do a bunch of rework because you just didn't invest the time in the first place to do it right.

[00:37:21] Ilya: Yeah, you got that tech debt. So you kind of have the people, debt… I don’t know.

[00:37:24] Jeff: Talent debt.

[00:37:25] Ilya: Talent debt, yeah that's better. Talent debt sounds better. Cost of a bad hire, the impact of a bad hire is so high and so expensive that it does make sense to do it up front or else, yeah, you're gonna be paying off that talent debt and how fun?

[00:37:37] Jeff: Yeah, and I feel like, like some people ask me like, how are things going on the people side? And I've, I don't know if I've ever felt like it's going awesome. And to me it's almost like when you're riding a bike and it never gets easier, you just go faster. There's always something that you're working on. There's always someone, you're always trying to upskill your teams. You're always trying to find the best people for the roles. You're always trying to drive alignment across the org.

[00:37:59] Ilya: Yeah.

[00:38:00] Jeff: Just even at Skip when we were, you know, just absolutely flying high three, 4,000 employees and hiring like crazy and getting all these awards and stuff. It still felt like there was a million different people issues that we were solving.

Any key messages you wanna get out to our listeners? You know, what do you want them to know about VanHack?

[00:38:15] Ilya: For sure, if you go to VanHack.com, you can just search there and see if we have the candidates that you're looking for. We basically built our product similar to Airbnb, where you can go there, browse candidates, see right away whether we have the talent for you or not. So it's very fast.

Hopefully when you're listening to this, our new semantic search will be online where you can just do like a free text search of senior developer with five years experience who has worked with Ruby on Rails and whatever, like free text and or just kind of like a prompting to find a person so that's, yeah, that. VanHack.com, you can see right there all 450,000 people.

And then, obviously if people want to get in touch with me, just find me on LinkedIn or Twitter. I'm the only person in the world with my name, so pretty easy with SEO [laughs]. And then, ilya@vanhack.com to my email.

[00:39:02] Jeff: Cool, Ilya. Well, I love the work you're doing, big fan and super grateful that you came on the show.

[00:39:08] Ilya: No, my pleasure! I was really excited to get the invite, Jeff.

[00:39:15] Jeff: Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.