 Okay, and so for Kai, Kai is the CEO of Mercurix, people and analytics startup focusing on computational psychology. He previously worked as a recruitment consultant specialising in tech. After working 10 years in the HR industry from recruitment to LND, Kai noticed a gap between companies and its people. Employers not knowing enough to bring out the best in their employees, a gap that can be closed using data. So, with a background in psychology and a passion for tech recruitment, he and his team at Mercurix plan to help companies big and small, hire, train and retain better through computational psychology from getting the right fit to correctly accessing performance. Yeah, and take it away Kai. Thanks, awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me. So, you already shared quite a bit about me. So, yeah, I actually graduated in the Bachelor of Psychology. So, yeah, not tech related. I spent many years in HR, everything from learning and development to internal HRBP to internal talent acquisition to recruitment consultancy. And when I was working as a recruitment consultant for one and a half years at Robert Walters, I was specifically recruiting for analytics. That means like data engineering, data scientist, business intelligence analyst, so on and so forth. That was my main focus. However, before we kind of start, I wanted to do a little poll on how many people are actually in this group right now are currently working in tech or who is not working in tech. And there's a yes and no. So, what you can do is you can go at the bottom, you can click on participants and there's a yes and no button. And like all of you, just if you are working in tech at the moment, click yes. If you are not working in tech, press no. Just to give me a kind of general feel. Okay, I can't see the results. So far it's 15 yes and 17 no. Okay, alright, so we got quite a few people not. Okay, that gives me a good kind of feel so I can focus on that a little bit more. Right. In that case, since I believe a lot of people are you are quite interested to kind of get into tech. I'll share a bit more on, focus a bit more on that. So yeah, obviously I'm not from a tech background. How did I get in this kind of position? It's a bit different. It's not really so much like an applying for a job. It's more like, yeah, I'm running company now. So it's a bit different. But the way that I moved into this space was that I saw there was a massive gap in data utilization within HR. And this was something like five years ago. I realized there was an under-utilization of training needs analysis data, training feedback data, data on performance evaluations and a whole lot of stuff like that. So that got me initially interested and I did online courses in data science. They had a lot of online courses back then. And what I actually then did is a bit unusual. So my next jump was actually to recruitment consultant and within an agency. And when I got that job, I only specifically requested to recruit for the data science slash analytics desk. I would only recruit these kind of people. And the reason I did that was because that gave me the opportunity to speak to these kind of people every single day for one and a half years. So I used to dig their people's brains. So imagine I interview people and I said, okay, what kind of data do you have available within your organization? How do you utilize that data? What did you build from that data? What kind of insights do you get out of that data? So this was basically my kind of job for one and a half years. And I was not so much focused on placing people other than just learning for myself. So generally when recruitment consultants interview somebody, they interview someone for like 15 to half an hour, half an hour. My interviews would go for like 45 minutes to an hour because I would go into detail. I had candidates sit down with me at the table and they draw me how the whole architecture, the database works and stuff like that. So that kind of got me on my own personal interest. And then I actually joined Mercuryx as a startup, initially as a product director and project manager. And then I took over as CEO one year ago. So I was in Mercuryx for close to two years now. But I took over as CEO a year ago. So yeah, what we do is in the domain of computational psychology. So we basically our company consists of psychologist and computer scientists. That's basically just so we have data scientists working together with organizational psychologists, mostly. We do projects and everything from population sentiment analysis, feedback analysis, topic analysis on what people are saying about what's going on. We do personality assessments, pre-employment assessments, job satisfaction surveys, things like that. We also do create models on assessing financial risk. That was for like a hedge for like a fund and things like that. So that's how we've been operating mainly for the past two years as a kind of consultancy firm. And we also now have a platform. We have two platforms, Selfie Corporate and Selfie Personal. I'm sharing links of people. We can try them out when you're free. Selfie Corporate is basically a behavioral assessment platform for organizations. So it lets you easily just log in, register, choose different types of behavioral assessments and send them out to your pre-existing staff or who if someone, if you want to hire somebody, it's like pre-employment assessments as well. And what I realized was that a lot of times these personality assessments or pre-employment assessments, they're siloed. What that means is that you usually do it once and it ends there. That data isn't being re-routalized in the future. So what we do is if you hire somebody and you have their initial assessment and you can tie it up with some pre-existing data about what kind of job they're doing, their pre-employment history, from there you can then track it. You can then compare their pre-employment assessment to some behavioral assessment within the team, to their job satisfaction surveys and so on and so forth. So we want to realize this kind of data from the start of the employee lifecycle all the way towards the end. We even provide exit surveys if someone leaves the company. So this is the kind of stuff we're doing. Recently, just one and a half weeks ago, there was mental health day. So we provide a mental well-being assessment and this is extremely important right now with COVID. So if any of you are part of a team currently or you're a team lead, you can actually log on to SelfieCorp.ai, go to the mental well-being survey and you can send it out to your colleagues. This is good so you can kind of see that, you know, how everyone's doing, especially during COVID, it's a nice little thing to do just to make sure everyone's alright. Then there's Selfie.ai, which we call Selfie Personal. It's basically a site where you can do a whole bunch of different personality assessments for yourself. Selfie.ai is free to use. We built this because we realized that a lot of personality assessments out there are free, yes, but they're only located on one, for example, one type of assessment is located on one site or another type of assessment is located on a different site. So we collate everything together and what you have is all that data for yourself to tell you more about yourself. You have an overall profile and this overall profile, what we actually have is some background technology which we have from ASTAR because we are an ASTAR spinoff company and this model, what it does, it does inferences on traits. So if you do on Selfie.ai, if you do some personality assessments about yourself, you get inferences of your other traits. So it predicts other traits based on what you have, you know, completed for assessments. So yeah, that is metrics. If you're interested, you can play around with the two links that I sent out and any questions, you can reach out to me as well on the telegram chat later. Right. So the objective actually today is talk a little bit more about seek finding a job and finding a job specifically for Teh. Usually when I conduct a talk for this, it's two hours long. It goes everything from understanding yourself to preparing your CVs and everything and all the way to the end of it. So the focus on today is a bit on where can you apply for jobs, how do you apply for jobs and preparing for the interview. That's the main thing that we'll be focusing on today. Okay. So most of the time people the traditional way to apply is number five. It's job portals. But I've ranked these according to the most, the highest chance you'll get a job so number one is personal networks. It's the number one method to get a job and especially if you're for example, not working in technology. If you know someone who is or you have a business owner friend or manager who works in this, maybe your friend runs a startup and you can probably ask, hey, would you take on a project manager, for example, that is not in tech yet but while you're there you can also pick up skills or from experience. So that could be one example if you know somebody. Number two is the best way to get a job is through recommendations. Recommendations through your personal network or recommendations through previous engagements. One of this could be an internship that you went through previously. So you can go back to the previous boss, previous manager and ask him, hey, are you hiring now that I've finished my course and graduated or things like that or you can even ask them, hey, do you know anybody that is hiring at the moment? Okay, so the best way to always get an opportunity is to always ask around. Even for me when I used to be a recruitment consultant I would always ask, do you know anybody that is hiring or do you know anyone that is looking for a job? It works the reverse as well. So the number one method also if I were to hire somebody through personal recommendations. Number three is direct outreach. This is a bit intimidating because it's a bit like cold calling and one of the perfect tools for this is LinkedIn. So what you can do on LinkedIn is you see a job opening on a job portal for example within Procter & Gamble or Hitachi or whatever kind of organization and you see that it's for a specific department under a specific head, department head. You can actually search for this person on LinkedIn and you can connect to them, write a short little message and say, hey, I'm really interested in what you're doing. I'm looking into getting into this field. Could we connect, for example? And once you connect you can open up a chat that you can have a discussion with them and say like, hey, I saw there was an opening. Are you guys hiring? I'm interested in this opening. That's an example of a direct outreach. Other ways is there ways to get certain email addresses. You can also email them directly if you have their contact or if someone recommends you or passes you an email, you can reach out to them and say, hey, this is my cover letter attached to my CV. I'm really keen to work with you guys. Yeah, this is me, for example. Fourth is recruiters or recruitment consultants like I used to be. So recruitment consultants, the way that they work, the reason I put it as number four is because they represent you also for their own interests, meaning that if I were to represent you as a candidate, you are of a certain salary level and you are a certain capability because I earn a commission from your total annual salary basically. So most of the time if you are a junior developer or if you are a fresh graduate, the chance of you working with a recruiter are quite slim because of, yeah, generally your experience isn't quite there. So most of the time a recruitment consultant highly likely will not represent you. So that's why I put this as number four. Right? Number five is job portals. That's the most traditional way. This relies on mainly a pure numbers game sending out multiple CVs. I know of people that send out up to 200 CVs, 200 CVs to different types of organizations in hope that the HR will get back to them. This is also dependent on another factor of how your CV looks like, for example, or depending on the type of job portal. Certain job portals what they require is a Word document rather than PDF where they just scrape the data from your Word doc and then put it into a certain formatting which is not really control. Other organizations, if you can have the chance to do up a nice CV, it's to your advantage so that it stands out. What I'm going to copy and paste within the chat now are two links. So the first link is basically how to do up your resume and if you're going to take the either way you should do up a good resume. Your resume tips this is basically following the XYZ formula. I'm not going to go into detail with it because it takes quite some time but you can click on that link on you know how to improve your odds of getting hired at Google. It's a good example. And then the Canva is coming CV layouts so you can use that on your own time but I won't go through it at the moment. Okay. Alright. So right now this is a question that I get asked quite a bit at this current point especially with COVID happening and a lot of organizations letting people go. How is the job market for tech right now? It's good. It's still fine. Don't worry. Tech is still hiring. It's an industry that hasn't really been affected by COVID-19. It comes with its benefits that a lot of developers can work remotely and generally people that work in tech they're a lot more adapted to this kind of situation of working from home than other kinds of job functions. So tech job market is still quite good and I know that a lot of organizations are still actively hiring for tech. For those if there are fresh graduates in here or people that have recently graduated with a master's that leaves you the option to apply for traineeship programs. So recently there's been a lot of traineeships available but then I get the question should I apply for traineeships? So the answer this really depends on your current situation and your own finances for example. If you are a late career individual late career job switcher and you have dependents like kids or finances and of course the cap for traineeship is 2.5K. So that one is an issue. If you are a fresh bachelor's with no dependencies then it's easier for you to pick up a traineeship program for example because of that amount. So I'm just going to go a little bit through two parts. This one is about interview prep soft skills mainly. After this I'll go through a bit more about technical skills and interview for prep for technical interviews. So I got a little story first. This might seem basic to a number of people but you'd be amazed at how many people don't prepare for interviews or even face to face interviews anything like that. There was an example of one person who actually was going for data scientist opening at Rio Tinto. If you don't know Rio Tinto is a large Australian mining company. They've been around for quite a long time they're huge. They have an office at Marina Bay Financial Centre. So if you think about MBFC you already know from the people that walk around there how they dress and basically how this kind of thing this person went for the interview she didn't prepare at all and it was even to a point when she turned up to the location in slippers and shorts and to me I was shocked because I met her there and I'm like do research on the company please. In tech a lot of times generally it's quite casual especially in start-ups for guys polo tea jeans kind of thing it's cool that's good enough but just to be safe if you're unsure it's better to dress up rather than dress down just to be safe so yeah this person she came in shorts and slippers which was the total wrong thing to do especially for a company that has an office in MBFC she also then asked me where's the office location what floor is it and what is the job so what was the job again that one blew my mind so this is just a completely bad case a very very extreme example so first things yes research the company go online, find out what they're doing go to an extents go through the news, find out what have they been doing recently if it's a start-up check their fundraising how much money have they raised go on to crunch base crunch base is an excellent one for start-ups go on LinkedIn go find out how many people are working in that organization if you are applying for a big organization you can find out who's the potential boss who's in his team things like that and try to find out and this kind of preparation we'll also prepare you to then ask potential questions so that's basics of preparing to research in the company the other one that most people don't know to do is to also do research on the interviewer and most people then ask me how do i do this how do i even know who's interviewing me that's up to your own initiative if you pass the initial phase of speaking to HR and HR for example arranges an interview you can always ask the HR right who is it will be interviewing me do you mind letting me know can you send me their LinkedIn or if not just their names and then with that information you can go on LinkedIn you can go find out a bit about themselves about them, what was their background what is their experience like and continue to find out a little bit more about who you would potentially be reporting to and the other thing is it's always so there's one thing here it's also good to have small talk to build rapport so if you go on LinkedIn and you see recent activity you can see what kind of stuff they like what kind of talks they've attended what kind of stuff they comment on and yeah so you can see oh okay this person give a talk at one of the Google events and then you know this during into you you can throw it out I saw your talk it's really interesting tell me a bit about that this is rapport building this will increase your chances alright next up prepare questions this is really important and even me if I hire somebody always look out for this it shows interest if at the interview if the interview ask you do you have any questions and you say no most of the time it's a red flag it means this person he didn't do his research on the company he's not interested in what we're doing it's a major red flag so always prepare a set of questions before you go for an interview even during the initial call if the calls initially with HR you can even ask some stuff about the company next thing be courteous punctuality I wouldn't even have to talk about but you'd be amazed how often especially nowadays other people's time for granted be punctual turn up 10 minit early don't turn up like half an hour early just like 10 minit and even after the interview follow up be the take the initiative and be the first one to email the person back thank you so much for your time today I really enjoyed meeting you I'm so keen to find out more about your company just pleasantries these little things matter there have been several occasions where even when I speak to someone on the phone for an opening I send them some information about the company and there's not even a reply and sure maybe someone doesn't want the job but I'm going back to the previous slide about recommendations number two even if I liked you and I felt that you weren't a good fit into maybe a role with me or whatever I potentially still could recommend you to someone else within my network so if you reply to me and might have rejected you it's fine at least that I know that this person is courteous he still follow up with me and through an email maybe if I know that one of my fellow startup friends is hiring or looking for a front-end developer for example I didn't want to hire him but maybe my friend will so these things matter you might not think it but it really doesn't a long term practice the last one interviewing is a skill that you learn especially if you are a late-curious switcher or a fresh grad someone that hasn't recently been interviewing or attending interviews it is a skill that you learn and also if you haven't attended one for a long time you lose it because interviewing or attending into you it's an uncomfortable situation we generally feel very uncomfortable being in a room or now mainly or presume with maybe being interviewed by two or three other people we are nervous we are anxious and it's totally normal to feel that way is to get used to that kind of feeling but role-playing is one way of doing it with a friend however there is another avenue and this is a trick that we used to do as recruitment consultants we used to at times send some of our candidates to jobs that we didn't want them to get so for example if I wanted to place a data scientist at a very large organisation but I also have some other vacancies that potentially available I would send him to these other vacancies as well so this person would get practice in interviewing before the big one so I would give him some practice one or two interviews before that before I send him to the third one which is the one that I know he wants and I know I want him to get so you could actually potentially do the same thing for yourself if you apply for certain jobs don't deny it don't say that actually I want a different type just go and attend it first you never know you might actually like it so that's kind of a way to get some practice out there attend interviews even if you don't say 100% that you want it just attend it for practice and then when the job comes around that you really really want you'll be more prepared about technical interviews most of the time based on my experience as a tech recruiter technical interviews do not happen at the start most of the time for larger organisations it's generally the HR that will call you first ask some generic questions and then set up a face to face with the hiring manager and then after that they will follow up with the technical interview when they're doing the third sometimes if they are generic technical tests that are available online some organisations use this as a way to shortlist but these kind of these kind of mass market tests from a higher perspective I wouldn't use them because the information and the answers are always available online they are quite easy to bypass generic tests or assessments it's very easy you just google something and then you can find some information on forums or something and then you can pass that kind of technical test the generic ones the better ones generally happen later on in the interview process one of the main things preparing for technical interviews is to make sure that whatever you put on your CV matches with your skills I've seen some people put a whole bunch of different like they put python r and then java, c-sharp and the list is never ending and then they can actually they only main strength is python they just put the rest as just filler so don't put it if you are not strong in it because you will get questioned about it and if you get questioned about it and they assess you on it you kind of dug your own grave so maybe list some CVs python i put like 4 out of 5 and then that one works too at least it gives you the interviewer and understanding that yes okay you are mainly focus on python but you have skill sets in other programming languages for example okay yep so be prepared to answer questions on how proficient you are and how many me as a programming experience you have in that language and how many projects you've worked on utilizing that and other things yes state if you work on XYZ project be prepared to describe the technical details on what you utilize what kind of technology you utilize on those projects and most of the time your interviewer will be technical so it's get technical too i've seen some where people try to talk in layman and it doesn't do them any benefit right when you talk about the projects you need to be able to highlight what was technically difficult about that project why was it difficult for you how did you overcome those challenges how did you find a solution to overcome those challenges and what kind of framework you used for that project as well so if your CV also states you've worked on a technical project you need to be prepared to answer what role you played in that team so if there was a project team you need to be able to explain i was the UI UX designer or i was the front end developer or i was the backend architect if it's a technical interview and you say i was the project manager for this project for this technical project the project manager it's not really a it requires technical understanding but not of course a full technical role so they might question you on this kind of stuff alright next so number two be very familiar with data structures and algorithms so this is especially important actually it's generally important so the requirement from what i've seen is a recruitment consultant it's more required in the bigger tech firm so during this time they might ask you just be prepared to answer questions to why you chose to solve a certain problem in a certain way was it because of memory efficiency was it because of beenhance processing time things like that there are some tips which i can send to you guys i'm going to put a few links in the chat again these are some resources on prepping for technical interviews i'll put them there now they're in the chat and later on i'll also put them in the telegram group chat it's because i copy and pasted it from a notepad alright okay next thing number three be somewhat familiar with software engineering practices so for example use of git versioning control test driven development agile methodology most of the time these kind of requirements will also be in the job description so you know if they generally work in agile methodology it would state that as well other thing when it comes to actually git is something i forgot to mention in the previous one when it comes to your CVs to include a link if you get hub in there and don't leave it empty make sure it's been active recently because higher managers do check that and the last one of course is basically a topic of this practice practice practice pre-prepared i just provide you a whole bunch of links oh really? oh yeah, still in technical use so there's a lot of sites that provide you information which i've shared just prepare and practice right one of the main questions that most interus always ask is why do you want to join us and don't answer smart like saying oh because there's an opening or because i need a job i've had people say that to me it might sound funny but it's not funny you might think i don't have the sense of humor but no it's after you hear it a few times it's entertaining state why you want it why do you think you would be good in it and what will you help achieve a lot of the times when someone okay sorry so a lot of times when someone applies what's important for me as well is that an organization that you also learn there has to be personal growth for you as an individual if there's no personal growth that is a red flag as well because then if it stagnates within 1-2 years the person will probably leave so it's important to make sure that you think about how you're going to personally grow within that organization itself this can also be a consideration for you whether you should join the company or not but most of the time when I hire somebody I'll ask them what a few things and how you're going to contribute to the company and how is the company going to contribute back to you as well with your learning and your exposure and your personal growth I put first in quotes because I'm not quite sure of all the demographics that we have in here when it comes to your current job role so I don't know all fresh grads or some people on mid-career switchers but let's say if you do start newly in tech what do you prioritize? do you prioritize personal growth do you prioritize salary salary for tech in the market it's generally higher and that's one thing to consider so the question is what do I prioritize but my recommendation generally if you are fresh grads or mid-career switcher focus on growth that's the most important at this standpoint because your future will be determined on how much you learn at the start of that career or career switch and sometimes I get asked what kind of company should I join as an example I actually find that start-ups are a very good option if you are new to tech if you are fresh grad or if you if you are mid-career switcher the reason for this is because when it comes to exposure it gives you quite a bit of exposure to doing different types of things you might go from full stack to focus mainly only on front-end development or different kind of things but of course as Shane was sharing just now within GovTech he had the opportunities to switch as well so that's great but yeah he shared a bit about that already but generally I find that if you're quite unsure at the start and you want to explore what your interests are when it comes to working in tech start-ups are a great place to start starting salary one thing I forgot to mention about follow-ups and interviews the question I got a lot is when do I ask for salary or when do I ask about salary or when do I listen to you never on the first time meeting the hiring manager most of the time this is left towards later on and maybe third interview or third meet-up or something like that if they ask what your expected salary is or they ask or the HR ask that's fine then you can start talking about it managing expectations and self-worth so the reason I put this is because there's a lot of research again we work in psychology we work with a lot of psychological research there's a big correlation between self-worth and salary people with high self-worth have higher salaries so that's why I put that in there about managing your own expectations of salary but of course if you have expectations of salary it's important to note that you don't go out and you throw some ridiculous number out there without the experience to back it so you got to be kind of realistic you can do your own market research on what the market is at and then from there if they ask you what's your demand what is your salary expectation then you can answer them Negotiations wise if you are a fresh grad or a mid-career switcher and you go from a background non-tech into tech when it comes to negotiations as either fresh grad or that you don't have much weight to negotiate so mainly as fresh grads most of the salaries are kind of normalized with an industry according to the university that you graduated from for late careers it can depend but a lot of companies can tap on to grants from our late career switchers so that can be to your advantage as well because they get grant support from government mainly for Singaporeans okay last one is have options when it comes to salary negotiation it helps if you have options because you are not so desperate just to take that one single offer or that one single job and it's okay to have options because it's your career so if you exploring two or three different opportunities and you got two job offers that gives you an advantage because you can decide which one you really want and if you feel that within a salary negotiation process that you are undervalued it kind of gives you you know that the other person has offered me more I'm not going to go into so much detail of this you can ask me questions in the telegram chat later because I think we are a bit over time yep so I'll stop there when it comes to interview prep and other things there's more I could potentially share but we're done for time I guess we're going to move to Q&A now so if you have any questions or you should take over ya so if you have any questions you can either type it in the chat or you can just say here and then we can get you to say your question with your voice so if you have a question for Kai or Shane you can type it out or you can say who will the slides will your slides be available later ya I can try hi I have a question ya so okay I know how to code but I'm not sure about all the methodologies like gel or waterfall so how should I proceed on from the knowledge that I have so I'm unfamiliar with sanitisation and then Ajax and sending requests all those programming kind of stuff like API requests because after all I started out as a self-taught developer but then on to the theory all those I have no knowledge ya so waterfall is quite arcade not used very often anymore most people but generally from my experience it's quite outlaw but agile methodology is actually there are so many courses online I actually attended at some time back which was I used my skills future so you can attend courses there are like I know I can put it in the telegram chat later there's one that offers 2 day course full day and it's $110 after subsidies if you're Singaporean and you can use your skills future credits for that so when it comes to these kind of methodologies ya online courses or you can attend courses the other way of course is actually using the methodology which is a different story getting that project management experience or working on a technical project I know there are some groups out there that kind of do tech for good stuff I have some contacts that are involved with this so what they actually do is over weekend so when you have spare time you can be part of a tech for good project as a developer I know a friend she's working on a project that's looking for a front end dev and these kind of things they're building an app for seniors and it's not profit so potentially if you have time to spare and you want to gain experience working in a technical team these are the kind of stuff that I would recommend that you can do I will fish out some resources and send it in the telegram chat okay got it thanks actually Tyler I think it's interesting that you say that the theoretical part is the part that you find the most difficult to learn because I mean I thought that that one is like learning the theory is where there's more resources but as Kai mentioned learning the practical part like using it generally that one is where you have to work hard to get opportunities because you actually have to work for something related to that but if it's just the theory there's online courses there's even textbooks on data science okay so that's why you are able to build up I think you're able to build up theory relatively easy and practical experience yeah I was actually looking for a job like some months back then I think in the job description there were like a lot of theory requirement like death ops then after that a job then I think there were so many others others that I cannot recall and there is also like okay let's say PHP all those kind of thing which is like okay from what I know it's like an old language but I do not know why in the Singapore market right it's like still in demand yeah there are some companies that still work on legacy systems that require some older kind of technologies lot are banks actually but that one really depends on the organisation now okay I think I will just wait for you to share on the volunteer projects then I wouldn't mind getting into it so that you know I have more understanding yeah there is one more question that came out yeah on the chat what kind of impact does online courses on getting a job in tech Shane you want to go first I would say personally from I've been on both sides of the fence I would say that the online course itself doesn't carry weight it's more like how do you apply what you've learnt from the course because if I see a resume if I see a resume and I see you've done a number of online courses maybe I'll be like okay there's some interest I could maybe ask you a few questions but that's kind of like a lead in it doesn't automatically quantify you but it's more like even if you've done a lot or you haven't done any but when I do the technical interview you're showing me some interesting things then I think maybe this guy is good this guy is showing that he's really he's learnt a lot of things even be it through courses or not it's more of just the learning point so so when I look at the CV journey I look at I have nothing against online courses nothing but good things to say about online courses and which is great with how things work nowadays you can get access to so much information what I look for is does it fill your gaps so for example if there's someone applying as a data scientist and he's a background in physics and he'll be able to work in the technical aspect when it comes to coding might not quite be there so if I can see that there are some courses that this person took to fill those gaps that's the kind of thing I'll be looking out for I know that this person made an effort he filled in the right gaps that he has with certain online courses he made an effort to learn it himself that's generally what I'll be looking out for it also depends on the employer so when I used to be a recruitment consultant in tech some organizations are very hard up on hiring someone with a CS background it's I've I've seen that we're a bit more progressive now in the last two years where because I guess also it is such a high demand for people in this industry but the requirement of having a background in CS is no longer such a huge requirement like it used to be organizations are still like that so how I would say it really depends on the employer and the employer's mindset did you fill your gaps with online courses I mean that said of course it never hurts to do them but I guess the reason why they alone are not seen as like sufficient qualifications is also because if you go through online course I mean you can just like host it without learning anything more than just the bare essentials or you really can like dig in they ask you a certain problem you do your own research you branch out so these two people have completely different experiences from the same course so the only way to sieve out one from the other is really to see if that guy can demonstrate in any of those skills yeah actually utilizing or actually coming with pet projects is another way I would say there is probably a limit the amount of online courses that you can put on your CV to a point where it no longer becomes I would say useful or in a way it's no longer attractive on the CV what I would rather than see is maybe you've taken a few online courses and then after that you've done some pet projects so maybe you have an interest so for example I like rock climbing in the rock climbing community there is a big issue when it comes to finding rock climbing shoes so me and a friend got together tried to develop a computer vision model to then analyze people's speed sizes to then recommend shoe models this is a pet project it has nothing to do with my work it is done out of pure personal interest but this kind of thing I can put on my CV for example that me and him work together and created something like this so people can look at your github and that exists that is more valuable than just taking a ton of online courses anything else? no more questions? no more questions okay I think we're about time also so thank you so much Shane and Kai so I have like 2 announcement over here first is that if you still have more questions for Shane and Kai then you can ask him questions and then we also have okay let me share my screen okay so and then this is a link to a feedback to today's event so like super helpful for us what do you like about today what do you not like about today please fill it up and tell us so we can improve and give us give you like better events so yeah I think last words from Ryder, Shane and Kai I just hope it was helpful and if you have any questions yeah you can ask in telegram chat group okay thank you so much for everyone for your time today as the same goes you can be anywhere tonight but you are here today so thank you so much for Kai and see you next time thanks bye