 Okay, I will speak a bit different than other speakers because I'm mostly like Varoufakis than Tsipras. So I will walk and talk. I will not just stand here. Why this is so important? Because how many of you applied for a job in some period of your life? How many of you have been rejected? That is why I will talk about that today. Because when you get rejected, this computer just died. We have to go back to the beginning. Yeah, I have 40 slides, so I'm sorry. We will get back. Something happened with the laptop, I don't know what. Here we are. This is where we begin. So what you need to know if you're a recruiter, if you're looking for a job, I will tell you in the next half an hour what you should know and how you should act when you're applying for a job. This is more talk about how to get hired than how to hire. But if you're a recruiter, you should be able to understand how we do it in managed WP. And this is not maybe something that you will feel globally in GoDaddy because GoDaddy is hiring between 6,000 and 7,000 people. So hiring process is not the same if you're applying for a Belgrade office where I'm working and if you're applying for Arizona or Sunnyvale or some other office where they're receiving, I believe, thousands of applications each day. But if you're applying for our office or if you're applying for some smaller company and this talk is not just for IT industry. You can apply for a bakery, for anything. You should follow these steps to at least increase your chances to be hired. Okay. Did you know that 95% of the planet is working for less than 200 US dollars monthly? How many of you knew this data? One, two, yeah. So we are pretty much unaware that the rest of the planet actually lives much worse than we are. And sometimes we are pretty much overvaluing our work and we ask for too much money for some position, for some job. Yes, you are the lucky ones with 50 US dollars per day plus. Well, maybe not all of you, but if you're working for some IT company, for some serious IT company, you will probably be somewhere around this figure for some starting positions because let's say that support in GoDaddy is somewhere around these figures. And I'm talking about tier one, about beginners. We're not some high-level technical educated people, but just beginners who can provide some, let's say, useful answers if you need some advice how to use some GoDaddy product, but not how to develop something. Okay, I know that numbers and stats are always boring and that no one likes boring stats, but we will have something that we call six seconds test. Please be focused because you will see something. You will see actually a CV from one guy and you should remember it. And then we will check another CV and you should remember as many details as possible in six seconds. Ready? Who is this guy? Six seconds are over. Let's try one more time. Who is this guy? Okay, why we just had six seconds test? Because of this. Average recruiter spends six seconds for first review. If you don't leave good first impression in six seconds, it's highly unlikely that I will star your email and your CV. I will probably skip it and maybe you will get some reply, some automatic reply that you can even get from ATM, like I'm sorry your card is empty, you don't have any cash or something happened or 500 internal server error. It's the same thing. When you get hard rejected, you will get something like 404, 500 internal server error because no one ever checked your email, no one ever read your CV, but you just will get to reply some, let's say automatic response from our server. What's the first guy? Details? Yes, sir? Something else? Yeah, okay. Very important for a job. All very important information. Some statistic. Well, first of all, those statistics. What does it mean when you say 100% HTML5? What you invented HTML5? 100% jQuery and 100% CSS3. So you invented everything. Is that true? No, it's not true. And you will make me laugh if you do the same thing in your CV and you can see these gorges or whatever. You can see in, I believe on 8 from 10 CVs you will see something like that. 100% WordPress. What, half man, half WordPress? Some new superhero. Well, no, you're not superheroes. And the other guy, who is the other guy? WordPress developer. Something else? Contributor. Contributor, great, awesome. Okay, who would you hire? First one or second one? He left impression in six seconds. You just checked his CV and in six seconds you decided to hire him or the first guy. And maybe the first guy is much better choice than the second one. But his CV sucks so we will not hire the first one or the second one. And very often we will hire a person which is maybe not a perfect fit and someone else who is a perfect fit will be rejected because we really don't know that you are so perfect fit because you never told us. And we are not... We are not looking at stars to understand by your date when you were born and our where you were born. Are you a great person or not? Or is Mars aligned with Jupiter that day when you were born? So that is really not important. Let's go. There is no second chance to leave your first impression and maybe you don't know that when companies are hiring and you see a job posted maybe four or five persons will be really invited for an interview. One more thing that you should know is that very often we post a job and we already know who will be hired. So you shouldn't be demoralized because of that and to lose faith because sometimes it needs to happen in that way. Because there is a process in every big company when you are hiring someone you need to post the job so the procedure is accept his application and test the guide and onboard him and the entire procedure needs to be like that but we already know who will be hired and that job is posted just because of that for him to click apply for a job and to get the job. So it's not always about you. It's not always your fault but you can increase your chances to get hired. So with this calculation between 75% and 95% of you will be rejected or let's say that you need to apply 20 times for a job to get a job but at the most of the time we are blaming bad luck especially people from countries like Serbia, like Greece those countries which are so emotional we are crying about everything we are fighting about everything we are drinking too much eating too much our weddings ceremonies are hilarious so we always find the reason why we are better and why we are so good and so great but the world hates us but that's really not true and because of that I will try my luck let's say hypothetically that I'm looking for a job and I will try my luck now I'm so sad nothing, huh? Okay, let's say that I'm today at work at Athens and I saw that some papaki company is hiring I can see that they're hiring and I know that Mariana is here I know Mariana from other work camps from work in Athens from Zagreb and the best approach is to say Mariana I can see that you are hiring and you know me from earlier can you tell me more details about Open Positions it's much better than luck she's not a singer who? Alexander yes, we do actually talk to me more about your skills Exactly. That is what I'm talking about. I can talk with Mariana about my skills. I can explain what is my, let's say, value for her company. And if I get to the point to think about getting applied for a job at Papaki, I will probably first send an email to Mariana to ask her about the process to ask her to talk with her bosses to some HR in a company to introduce me before I apply for a job. You understand why? Well, then I will not be part of the statistics. I will not be in that four to five person invited for an interview because I will know that I will be one of those five persons and I will not be a part of 95% rejected statistics. And you are now at work camp and what are you doing here? Eating, drinking coffee, smoking, mingling, listening to some Alexander from Belgrade who is talking about how to get hired. Have you tried to find a job here? Anyone? You did? You did? Two people. How many of you are not satisfied with your job, with your position at the moment? Huh? No one. You are all happy with your positions here. Our bosses are here too. Yes, because their bosses are somewhere around. Maybe you should try to change something. Because better things are coming with changes. Okay, there is no such thing as luck but only passion. And if you listen to Rocio, our first speaker today on this track, he just said that you need to be passionate about something. And there is a problem with that passion because you are reading a lot of books. I believe that all of you watched the movie with Mark Zuckerberg talking about how he built Facebook, how he stole Facebook from ConnectU, from brothers who at the end bring the lawsuit against him and won $70 million from Mark because of Facebook, but he did it. They didn't, he did it. Why? Because he was passionate. And you spend one hour or so to watch that video. Then you buy a book on Amazon from Steve Jobs, how he succeeded. And you are reading so many blog posts about successful people around the world. But you are not doing that. Why are you reading all that books and everything? Why are you spending so much time online to read some blog posts, some motivational quotes, some books? If you are not using that in your real life. Just to say, yeah, this alien mask is so great guy. He wants to send a rocket. Yeah, but he's lucky because he's born under the lucky star. And birds are shitting all over him every day because that brings luck. But that is not true. He was just passionate about that. Managed WP, ex-owner who sold Managed WP to go daddy, he was passionate. He didn't have enough money. He hired some guys from Vietnam to build Managed WP Alpha. Then four guys from Belgrade built Managed WP Beta. And by the time I was, let's say, 14 or 15 person in Managed WP, and now we are a team of 50 people. He was just passionate about it and he pursued his dream. You have a problem with the passion because of your parents. Because of your Greeks, Serbians, these nations are pretty much grown in some patriarchal environment. And you need to listen what your parents are telling you. But they gave you five career ruining advice. First one is how to be self-sufficient. Every freelancer in the world, every freelancer in the world is full stack, high-end senior developer. Definitely. I never met a freelancer developer who is junior or some mid-knowledge. All of them are seniors, high-end, full stack developers. But they are not. But they think they are because their parents taught them how to be self-sufficient. So they think that they are best designers, best front-end, best backend developers and best devops in the world. That is so not true because if they try to get hired in our company and they get tested, it's more likely that there will be some junior developers maybe front-end, but they are not in for as a designer or as a backend developer. Another advice, hard work pays off. That's again not true. If you're stupid, it is just not enough to work 26 hours per day because first of all day has only 24 hours, so you can't work 26 hours. Another important thing is that you can't work more than 8 hours and to be productive. And there is another thing, have you ever heard about Scrum? About Sprints. When it's about Scrum, you have maybe 3 to 4 golden hours each day. So your working shift is 8 hours, but you're really working 3 to 4 hours every day. So you're not working hard and it doesn't pay off. Your passion pays off because if you're passionate about something, you will give yourself 150% and that is not hard work because you're enjoying it. Hard work is when you're working and you're getting your salary and you're going each day to work just to get your salary. That is hard work and you shouldn't do that. Another one thing, there is no shame in struggling, yes there is. Why you should struggle? This is IT industry, you should work something that you love. That is why we are here. Why you're spending Saturday here? Because you think that you should struggle because you think that you should enjoy in this day and every day of your career. If you want to have great career, you need to enjoy in each day of your career. Value of Drachma. I know that Drachma was evaluated when you decided to go to Eurozone. But it's not about money. I became happy in the moment when I realized that I really don't know how much money I have. Maybe I have 300 euros on my account now, maybe I have 3,000, I don't know. And I don't really care. I really care that I can buy food in the market, that I can live normally, but I really don't care about money. So the value of money you need to have just enough money to live, nothing else. Because hunger in the world is not because of the poor people, it's because of the rich. We can feed the poor ones, but we can't feed the rich ones. And that is the biggest issue. Do we want to be that rich one? Or do we want to be just normal, just to live normally? So the value of Drachma is completely career-reading advice. And every moment spent together is a gift. That is that story from communist age. When you're working 8 hours and when you get home, you're happy to be with your kids. No, you don't have to, you can work remotely and sit at your living room and spend enough time with your kids. Exactly, you can, as a matter of fact, you can spend 24 hours each day with your kids. So that is not a value. That is something that, if it's that your idea about great life, to spend your life in your house, in your backyard with your kids and work at the same time, that's just great. So you will have to erase these advices from your parents. But I will have to stop you to do this to your kids. Why? Because you will do the same as your parents did to you. Why is that so? When your kids grow up to, let's say, 12 years old and they come to you and say, okay dad, I know what will be my profession. And you will say, he's great in chemistry. He's good in mathematics but not so good at chemistry. He's nailing chemistry. Okay, he will probably apply for some university, some chemistry and he will invent some new material maybe and he will get a Nobel Prize for that. He says, no, I want to be a magician. And you will be like, okay, it's not going to the right direction. You can't be a magician. You can't be a magician because I invested so much money in your education so far. And I will invest more money for your high school university and your career. And you need to be something different, something that will bring you enough money to live. You're just ruining his life. You're not letting him to live his dream, to pursue his dream. Maybe he would be next David Copperfield. You're just ruining his chances to become billionaire. Why? Why? Because your parents did the same with you. What you should say is, yes, you should be a magician. Let's try that. Be a magician, commit yourself. I want to see you pursuing your dreams but you can't because you didn't. You didn't do the same. A lot of you have some hobbies. How many of you have some, let's say, hobby, hobby? Well, the most. What's your hobby? Drive my bike. Don't you think that that could be your profession? Don't you think that riding a bike and writing a blog about the greatest destination for riding a bike in Greece and selling space to Greek travel agents and companies? Don't you think that that could be your career? Yes, for sure. But your parents told you that you should be a developer because you will learn something. Someone else? Someone else with some great hobby? Which one? Marathon swimming. What? Say what? Marathon swimming. Marathon swimming. Another hobby that could bring you money from sponsors, from your blog, from blog, blog, whatever. I won't be the next speeder geniotis anyway. Yeah, you see. But you're not. Why? What's your profession? I'm a developer. Give me that. I don't want to talk to you anymore. Someone else with a hobby? You? Who raised the hand before? Let me see again. What's your hobby? I produce music. You produce music? Yeah. Do you live from that? Music has no money. So, web developer. You're a web developer. You see how many ruined passions, how many ruined great careers, just in one room. And all because of your parents. It's their fault. There is only one thing that matters, and it's a passion. And if you show your passion, when you apply for a job, you will get a job. Let's go through this process, step by step, and we will be quick with this. But you will have to listen carefully. Pursue your dreams, first of all. When you're applying for a job, one application at a time. Don't go like a mad over websites with job ads, and clicking apply for a job at H-C-V. Apply for a job at H-C-V. Apply for a job at H-C-V. And you apply for 20 different companies, and you don't even know for which companies you apply. And you don't know what those companies are doing. You saw just a web developer. Maybe they're looking for Ruby, not for PHP. But you tap apply for a job because it's easier than to read what is actually that company looking for. First of all, ask yourself, who are you really? This is because of those freelance high-end, full-stack, super-humans, developers, freelancers, because maybe you are really not senior developer, as you might think. Second, what a certain company needs. You can't see that if you're just tapping apply for a job or buttons. You need to see, to research, to do a research about that company, about the products of that company, and what would be your value in that company. And what do you need? Maybe the most important thing is what do you need? Do you need to work for a company with 7,000 people? Or you would rather like to work for a company with five people, some web agency? Or maybe you would like to pursue a dream and a career in some bigger company? It's again, the most important thing is what do you need? Because if you get what you need, you will be happy, and you will be productive, and you will be a good worker. You will be a great employee, and you will have a great career. Company and the product. Learn everything about the company and about the company's product before you apply for a job. If there is a free trial, and mostly there is a free trial, if they're offering some online product, test the product, learn everything about the product, and see how you could improve that product with your feedback, because it will be valuable later when you get to the interview, if you get to the interview, of course. Never misspell the brand name. I did it. I applied for Managed WP, M is a capital, uppercase, and WP is, of course. Uppercase, but I wrote WP Managed with lowercase M, but I got hired at the end. But I know that every time when we were talking about some hiring, all my colleagues are like, okay, you shut up, you wrote WP Managed with M, with this lowercase, so you don't have a right to say this, but I do have a right because I learned from that mistake. This one is something that we already talked about. Check if you're a perfect fit for the company, and more important, if that company is a perfect fit for you. Never apply twice for the same company, unless you fail the test or you're hard rejected. Why? If you pass the test, you passed all these steps before, you got to interview. You finished your interview and got rejected. You will never be hired. You're just not a perfect fit. Don't try again because it's not about your knowledge, it's not about some other aspects, it's just because you're not a perfect fit for that company and they will never hire you. This is also very important. Maybe you should consider why. Do you know why is this important? I'm working in GoDaddy, 7,000 people. 150 applications from the moment when I left the office till the next morning. I will probably check other applications like click, click, click, click, okay, your stupid click, no, I don't like this, click, click, click, click. Oh, this one is interesting, let's start this email. But after half an hour or an hour I will probably finish my coffee, 10 cigarettes and everything healthy that I'm doing every morning and probably I will see your email. That is something that will pop out. You have a new application I will tap on the button to see that new application and that is your chance to catch my attention. At least more than 6 seconds as others. Other 150 emails from the last night. Behave on social networks. Don't be bigots. Because we will check. Have you insulted someone? It doesn't matter if it's because of gender, it's because of nationalities, skin color, whatever. If you insulted someone you will never be hired by a company related to WordPress. So Behave on social networks. Everything that you wrote in your CV can and will be checked. Of course if you resigned from codable let's say and you apply for a job here I know at least 6 people from codable. I know owner, co-owner both co-owners actually. I know this guy in the first row. I know one guy from former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. I know a guy from Croatia. So probably ask them who are you. Why you resigned from such a great company? There is something definitely. Maybe you are irresponsible. Maybe you are late for a job. There is something why you resigned or get fired because very often people say I resigned. That's true. Maybe the company will just say okay we will not get you fired because that will be something ugly in your CV and let's say let's make agreement to finish this cooperation. You can leave a company we will not fire you but we will just split. So I will probably check if I know someone but there are big chances that you will know someone from your previous company. Have you been here this morning when Rocío talked about WordPress org and how to get involved? How many of you have been here? I believe that you know how WordPress org profile looks like. You have your activity on WordPress org, you have badges that you earned by contributing to some teams and WordPress org profile is the best CV. If you are trying to job in WordPress related company this is very important and maybe I will never read your CV your actual CV if I check your WordPress org profile I can see that you are plugin developer I can see that you are in the team review team that you are contributing to WordPress core that is probably something that will be more than enough for me than to read your CV and that you are married and that you have two dogs in the house I don't really I don't need that kind of information but information that I can get from your WordPress org profile is priceless because by doing that I know who you are, what are you doing are you committed to WordPress or not and everything I need to know I can find there. Check your email more often than you mostly do reply as soon as possible because you don't want me to wait for your reply if I send you an email or my reply in working hours I expect you to reply in working hours the same day of course okay luckily you are invited for an interview finally congrats but whoop dress appropriately and turn up prepared what does this mean you are mostly hidden behind your computers at your home in some room you are playing World of Warcraft, DOTA or some other game so you can give yourself a freedom to have a stain from a mustard on your t-shirt to have a stain from Coca-Cola on your pants to not being shaved or to have messy hair cut or something like that I woke up that morning when you are coming for an interview and shaved myself and I have decent hair cut and I dressed appropriately this is not appropriate I would never dress like this for an interview with employee possible employee why because I have a hole here here and here and this is not acceptable I will probably wear some pants and will look more professional so if I could do that that morning and I am not like that to wear some pants, some fancy t-shirts or something like that if I could do that you should I could but you should and you have to because you need a job not me and I am there to interview you if I respect you as a person when you come for an interview and someone who will give you a job so you can't tell me I am a great developer and I don't care because then I don't care that you are a great developer then feelings will be we will have same feelings from both sides if you come with that energy that you are so awesome and you don't care about anything except we should hire you and you know that we should hire you let's talk about money nope why? first of all postpone all questions about money for the end you will understand why first question that at most of the time someone will ask you this how much you made at your last job why we are doing that recruiters at the very beginning because you are so anxious about that interview and you want to show me how great you are and my first question is this what do you want? you just want to proceed you just want to move on to the next question to tell me how great projects you worked on how you can be a great employee for my company and everything else but you can't because I asked you this and you will sell yourself cheap just to move on with an interview and that is a mistake first of all I believe that all of us we all have contracts with our companies and you could say to be on the same page with recruiter with rude recruiter to say ok I have a contract with a previous company and I can't tell you how much I made on my last job because I'm not allowed to do that because I will break the contract they consume me because of that so he needs to think differently and then he will ask another question what you will be happy with again just to make you say the price and to sell yourself cheap again you can be rude as he is if he is asking these questions at the very beginning and to say I believe that this company is in the industry average and that you will offer competitive salary in the industry average and I know what is the industry average so again recruiter needs to think about your salary not you and if he offers less than industry average then he is an asshole not you and you didn't sell yourself cheap when you get home this is golden rule after an interview say follow up with thank you for inviting me even though I will be or not will be selected for this position I'm glad that I met you blah blah blah blah even though you don't think that you should do this do it even though if the recruiter was rude and he is not something that you really liked that day is not the best part of your day do this ok we came to the end so what we said about this luck nothing about luck just be passionate about everything I need to say one more thing next year work in Europe in Belgrade it's very close to Athens and Greece so I hope that I will see you there next year Evkaris Toparapoli have I told you you're amazing I will tell you now this is a small gift from us for speaking here welcome Athens 2017 it's not very heavy but if someone is being rude you can throw it on his head do you have any questions for Alexander no questions you were very explanatory oh over there that's great since my profession is completely something completely different my regular profession I'm architectural technician so I've been working as a construction site supervisor for 15 years and my passion is IT my passion is WordPress and when I get to the age of 35 I change my profession from construction site supervisor to web developer so I'm pursuing my dream he could also be a singer one more one more just wait for the microphone over here I'm HR manager at Papaki and I have a question for you will you come to work with us my bosses are around no they are not but they will watch this on WordPress TV other questions over here we didn't hear enough regarding how to hire most of the presentation was regarding how to get hired that's what I said at the very beginning smart recruiters should get the message from the part of the talk how to get hired if I explain how to get hired then you should follow the different side to be someone on the other side who is respecting someone's passion and who is evaluating person by his passion by other human traits than just a CV some text or some test very often we are training people because sometimes it's easier to teach someone who is cool as a person to teach him how to use WordPress how to speak English and everything else then to change the personality someone's personality who is not a great person but he's a great developer he's awesome in every other aspect except he's a douchebag and that is something that you really can't change and another question do you check for portfolios when you hire people for WordPress do you ask for is it necessary to show you something well for in my opinion it's more important to send a good and quality motivational letter motivational letter because you should address your email a message to me, to my company your portfolio is something that is maybe something that you should mention on interview but you should tell me I want to work for I tried your product I'm your manager WP user for a couple of years I know how it's functioning I would really like to be a part of your team and I see that you have a position open you have a perfect fit for because I'm communicative and this is more important than any portfolio or any CV, your formal education or whatever it's the same for recommendation recommendation letter is very important for me it's very important so you check for especially on LinkedIn I always check for recommendations on LinkedIn