Here is the 2nd part of the big interview about career in iGaming industry: affiliate marketing, corporate culture, career ladder, Alexandra – HRD CPA#1 will talk about this and much more.
Let’s continue!
How do you support and develop the professional skills of the employees in your team?
There are several important points here. Most importantly, you need to let employees know that they have the opportunity to get some information and answers to questions from each other, the manager, the mentor, and so on. Asking is normal, it’s how people work.
The second important point is to share one’s own experience, the experience of the manager, the experience of more experienced employees (transfer of experience from the senior to the junior), and it is important not just to pass on some knowledge, but to pass on a certain way of thinking, understanding of the general sphere, which can help to a greater extent than just the skill of solving one specific practical task.
Do you have mentoring programs for newcomers? How do they work?
A mentoring program implies an open-door policy where every employee can write to their manager or colleagues with any question. HR’s job is to convey that these opportunities are available to every one of the employees.
In addition, employees who do not have a lot of experience in the field have their own mentor: a more experienced person who teaches them, helps, supports, prompts and so on.
Periodically there are calls with questions “how are you doing? How are these tasks being solved, how can I help you?”, or other tasks are given out if the new employee does well.
How do you deal with staff turnover?
First of all, the most important thing is personal communications, interactions between colleagues within the company. If we reduce everything to a common denominator, it is very important to create a comfortable environment for employees, in which they feel good: it is the absence of toxic people in the team, clear tasks with measurable results, clear delegation of tasks and planning of results. If an employee knows what result is expected from him and what result he has at the moment, he has no uncertainty, which means he can be more comfortable in the working environment.
Secondly, it is mutual understanding. When a person realizes that in the company they are ready to understand, support, advise, are ready to enter into his situation, if there is some situation, then there is much less staff turnover) The human factor is valued, even when choosing a job.
Thirdly, everyone should have a clear growth perspective. We aim for long-term cooperation, and it is important that employees have an understanding of where to grow. We have a cool grading system, which gives each employee an understanding of what they can achieve, and at what result they will move to the next level. And the most important thing is that employees see growth by example of their colleagues and realize that this system really works. And if this is seen, a person will be much more motivated!
What measures do you take to reduce it?
Another important point about staff turnover is the people who come and go from the company after about 3-5 months of work. In my opinion, the most correct option would be to work ahead of time, at the onboarding stages, at the interview stages. Carefully select the people who will fit in and fit the team best, and this will minimize the chances of layoffs.
To do this, the HR team looks for the perfect match: employees who come to the company fit into the norms and environment that the company has already established. This makes it possible to eliminate or minimize in advance the possibility of conflicts, misunderstandings, etc.
How do you approach building an effective team?
Recruitment of an effective team starts, in my opinion, with setting the right objectives and defining the functionality that we need from candidates. And from this the further recruitment strategy is built.
Once the current state of the company, its needs and possible points of growth have been determined, we can start to assess which people have the competencies that can fill the positions that are currently open in the company.
Sometimes it happens that in the current team an employee is not quite in his position, so we think about what position can be created for him, where he will be able to show himself effectively and bring profit to the company. This way we can free up the old position and find the person we need at the moment.
Is team building a must in a company? Is it so important?
Team building is quite an important thing for a company, it may be optional, you can live without it, but nevertheless, the atmosphere in companies where there is absolutely no extraneous activity, where employees communicate with each other only in the course of some business relations, seems to be a bad idea. Any team needs some space for informal communication, for recreation, space for creating some common memories, forming, for example, group team memes, at least some jokes, some stories that are formed in the process of informal communication.A lot of things are formed in the process of work, of course, but a game or other entertaining event helps to defuse and create a completely different level of relationship and connectivity between employees.
We hold online meetings! This format has an advantage, as you can gather people in Zoom or Google Meet.
Let’s talk a little bit about top employees. How do you define the key competencies and qualities that top specialists should have?
I will tell you about several criteria, and I will start with the one that has helped me more than once. It is, in general, a person’s sense of humor. It seems to me that this is also an indicator of a certain intelligence of a person, a household intelligence: the ability to respond sensitively to the language markers you send him, and the ability to create a situation of friendly relations in a short period of time, which I think disposes to me quite strongly.
If we are talking about what is important in a candidate for top positions, this is most often found out at the stage of discussing, for example, cases: when you give a person a problem and offer to solve it. This framework allows the person to show their creativity and experience to solve the problem. Here we can pay attention to the systematicity of the answer, the extent to which the person can outline the structure of the interaction step by step, suggesting different conditions that did not initially fit into the framework of the given task. A person can imagine a large number of situations and try to take 1-2 potential situations and develop the steps that should be taken to solve this problem. And this shows the competence of a person in terms of just a set of some knowledge and experience accumulated during the previous work, on the one hand, and on the other hand, allows one to see how a person reacts to the set tasks in general.
If a person is able to put the situation in his favor, which is 1 of the most important qualities for a leader, besides the ability to position himself.
Then we get to know him from the leadership side: whether he had to fire, how he behaved with people, and here we can understand how a person positions himself, whether he gives chances, how he explains it to employees. This is quite an important criterion, because a manager must be respected in the team.
Can you tell us about examples of successful career paths of your employees?
Yes! I would like to single out Anatoly Tolmachev, who currently holds the position of “Head of Affiliate”.
He joined our team in September 2022 as an entry-level webmaster specialist and has performed very well. He was and is one of those specialists who systematically execute the plan. In the beginning, he was involved and, importantly for this affiliate marketing position, he was a teachable person who was always up to date with what was going on in affiliate marketing, he also helped our webmasters with setting up their ads.
Anatoly came to us with absolutely no experience, and only in the process he learned and grew in this position, and as a consequence, he reached higher grades and in 1.5 years he has already taken the position of a team leader!
In the article we learned how the HR department of CPA#1 manages the corporate culture, how they make employees happy, and most importantly, how the CPA#1 attracts top managers!
Want to join the team? Send your resume to CPA#1!
