David Bizer has ‘lived’ a historical period of the consumer internet industry, the early days of Google.
He ‘bootstrapped’, managed and scaled Google’s recruiting ops in the EMEA region.
I find myself lucky to have had a call with him today, we discussed many things, among them, the executive tech talent landscape in Europe, the most actionable advice on position myself for the right position in Europe and the most important behavioural trait you should cultivate according to David.
Here’s a summary of the conversation, enjoy!
Currently the supply is incredibly limited for scale executive in Europe because people who have experience managing teams of 100s of people either don’t want to do the work again or they want to start their own companies.
While companies only want to hire someone who has scaled tech operations, or sales operations or growth operations before and will replicate it for them.
These scale execs have a lot of options and working for a company is probably the last thing on their list.
Because they can just found a company themselves and easily raise money.
David says 1 of the ways this problem can be solved is by ‘Making Scale Executives’ by hiring those who have the potential to do so.
And according to David, companies who are looking to hire don’t want to put in the effort to raise talent, they are in a race to scale and just don’t care.
Google was in this situation in its early days and in the US, Marissa Mayer did something which is a part of history now.
Reid Hoffman has written all about it here
And he has a podcast episode with Marissa Mayer with full details here
For me the advice David has is following, very actionable, so if you want to be hired at the company you want, take these steps.
- Become a culture fit into that company you want to work for.
- For me, the barrier is relocation, I must convey to them I am ready to do my part in making things easier for them process my relocation.
- Develop a vocabulary they use at work, this is also a part of culture fit.
Finally I asked David “What’s the 1 thing you’ve learnt about human behaviour which you think if you would tell yourself when you were in collage?” The Answer — persistence and perseverance
Keep at it, after every low, there will be a high, higher than the previous high.
Links:
TalentFountain
Usman Gondal 