Practicum graduate on confidence, hard work and authenticity as main factors for effective job hunt.

Here is Olga Leikin, a new repatriate from Belarus. 3,5 years in the country, with a degree in biotechnology and experience in chemical engineering, food technology and marketing. Once she finally settled in Israel and started working in tourism industry, the pandemic broke out. Not really planning any specific change, she accidentally saw a post about Practicum DA track and decided to give it a try. She wasn’t sure if it was truly something that suited her, but made a decision to treat it as a good time investment. Going with the flow lead to a successful graduation from the program and a new line in the CV: now Olga was open to work as a Data Analyst.

Just before finishing the program, she started looking for a job, randomly sending out CVs. In two months she had already sent around hundred CVs, but something wasn’t going smooth.

When Career Accelerator started, I decided to rethink the process, I was clearly doing something wrong, since I didn’t land a single interview or a decline. It was obviously really frustrating and I felt I was going nowhere. Accelerator on the program helped me manage my job search, I started paying the required attention and asking people for help.

Using the network is always crucial in a job-hunting process, so Olga decided to follow this advice and started asking her friends and acquaintances working in tech to take a look at her CV and help her fine tune it according to the requests of each company. She sent out about 60 CVs, for almost half of them she used her contacts in hi-tech. Funny thing was, that out of 10 CVs that landed her interview invitations, 9 were sent by hand and only one was independent. In the end it was the one that brought her the employment!

Most of the job seekers feel really frustrated when they get one rejection after another, not to mention it all happening in the most unstable time for changing the career path. One important thing Olga learnt throughout the way was keep believing in luck and just continue trying.

I didn’t want to give up, this frustration made me realize this was something that I wanted to do. I used to doubt my choices during my previous employment, I grew tired of it in three years, so it was more of a conscious decision, really. “The world may go cold, but I will land this job” kind of decision. I can’t deny the support I got from my friends, however. They often let me know of opportunities available, and even though I was frustrated and just wanted to sleep all day, I felt obliged to work on them, you know, one can’t let their friends down.

Even though she got rejected with her CV when she first saw the position on Linkedin and tried to pass it through a friend, she decided to still apply for it and send it again independently. Surprisingly, it worked! She completed all the required testing, received a call and went to the interviews. Four of them happened in just 3 hours! Three days later they called for references and then went straight to signing the contract. After months of hundred applications and a dozen of interviews, it took just two weeks from sending the CV to getting hired.

I think landing a job in general is 50 percent luck, but one needs to be prepared to take advantage of it!

— says Olga about her successful employment, forgetting to mention another 50 which take a lot of hard work and practice. The failed interviews were not just an unpleasant experience but more of a way to get better in technical tasks and finally get the hang of it. She worked a lot, stayed persistent and just used her skills. With time Olga’s answers became more and more polished and the whole process became less and less frightening

One of the failed interviews was entirely centered around SQL, so when I got a test from Payoneer, it turned out it was almost the same as the previous one that I had spent two weeks preparing for, so I was totally ready for it.

And yet, it wasn’t only the familiar test that gave her confidence. Apparently, the roots of Olga’s assertiveness were literally in the roots!

Just before the interview I went back to Belarus at the peak of my frustration, since I wanted to land a job before I hit my thirties and I had like three weeks left. I felt like there was no way I was going to land one in three weeks, so I went home to my parents and decided to experiment with a hairstyle. When I came back to Israel, I went to that Payoneer interview rocking an afro, and this change in style gave me some much-needed confidence. I believe I created confidence for myself in a way.

Using one’s creativity, being spontaneous and thinking out of the box are always good skills to use when you’re challenged on a personal interview. Sometimes just being remembered for something unpredictable can make your rating go up. Yet there is no bigger power than just being natural and true to yourself.

One of my interviewers began talking to me in Russian, which I wasn’t prepared for since I was practicing everything in English. He laughed and allowed me to choose the language to continue in. I chose Russian — the language we had in common, something to appeal to. Wasn’t the best decision though, because I failed to answer the simplest questions I had been asked countless times before, like all this “tell me about yourself” stuff. Luckily for me, my nervous mumbling didn’t make him uncomfortable or anything. There was also something that I did right, but not on purpose. When he asked me whether I had any questions, and I actually already ran out of questions to ask by the second interview, I mentioned the home assignment, and we went through it together. I unintentionally showed that I was interested in learning the answers. Or maybe it still was my African hairstyle, you never know. By the way, my first day at work later was most confusing, because I changed my hair back. I was like, do they know they hired me?

Fast forward to that search that landed Olga a job, she was so overwhelmingly sure that this was what she wanted that she met every related question with utmost confidence, which definitely scored some points for her. She knew that this is a company she belongs to and this is the job that she deserves.

They asked me what I wanted to get from this job, and I said that even though I was aiming for a given position, I was actually planning to grow and move to another department, which provides more analytical work. So basically everybody knew what my plan was from the day I started working

As the say: dream big and work hard! Olga takes any experience as a valuable one. One step a time helps you build your career ladder: meet people, make connections and get more options for your next job switch. When the tiring job seeking process finished with a happy end, Olga got some piece of advice to share:

It’s always easy to see when you’re trying to be someone you are not, and it doesn’t work toward establishing a connection with people. It happened during the interview, that I led the conversation a few times and I was very open. I honestly mentioned that even though I didn’t know how risk department worked, I found the respective home assignment interesting and this was what I wanted to do. Maybe it wasn’t wise, but I felt like the person interviewing me already understood what kind of person I was, so I decided to just speak the truth. So don’t ever stop and just be yourself. Be excited about the position, stay positive and keep trying! You’ll get lucky if you keep going long enough. Convince your employer that you really want this job! And convince someone you want it, you first need to convince yourself you do, which in turn will keep you motivated.

Today Olga works as a junior staff member in risk management department of a fintech company. She is still learning things and crafting her skills every day. Global companies like Payoneer provide career enhancement opportunities and all the necessary courses to make sure their employees know the main insights of the work.

It takes time and practice to become embedded in the style of the company. I need to learn the ins and outs of the company, rather than receive outside knowledge. I don’t use Python in my work at all, for instance, but I studied it during the program, and I don’t feel like it went to waste, because when I sent my course work for approval, it came back structured in a certain way I was familiar with, thanks to the program. It gave me means to get to information, ways to approach it. The program also stands as a title in my CV, useful, isn’t it?

According to Olga’s experience, there is no magic stick to make the job search process easier, as you’ll always get refusals to a greater or lesser extent. However, asking people for help gives you more and more motivation to keep going. Olga reached out to many people on LinkedIn, sending them simple messages like “‘I’m really frustrated with this and that, I don’t know what to do, could you please help me? I saw the position available in your company, but I’m not sure how to make HR notice me”. Most of them answered with “yeah, sure, send me your CV”.

Today three of Practicum graduates landed a job in Payoneer, proving that studying hard enough and believing in yourself sometimes plays a more significant role than having years of practical experience or building a perfectly looking CV. As Olga says, just never give up!