We’re constantly working to bring you useful insights to help you thrive in the tech industry – and what better way to do that than hear it straight from the experts themselves! We started the OfferZen Podcast a year ago to get behind-the-scenes insights, advice, and tips from the best in tech hiring and tech leadership. Here are some of the highlights.
If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to the OfferZen Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other platform you stream your podcasts through. You can also follow OfferZen on Twitter to make sure you never miss a new episode!
What’s in ‘a year’?
We officially launched the OfferZen Podcast on 17 September 2019. Since then, we’ve interviewed over 55 guests, and published more than 80 episodes!
Our mission really is to help more people thrive in tech; for software makers to build great careers and innovative software, and for tech leaders and their HR teams to build tech teams that win.
That's why we're talking to people who've done a lot and learned a lot about what success in tech hiring and leading tech teams looks like in practice. We're taking a deeper look at their experiences with what works and what doesn't to inspire your own approaches to winning in tech.
Here are some highlights from the past year:
Behind the scenes of how tech companies win
- Benji Meltzer, Aerobotics: How Niche Focus Helped Us Win in Agritech
- Simon Hartley, WumDrop: Achieving Product-Market Fit Without Experience
- Mike Jones, Picsa: 4 Ways Picsa Optimises for Risk-Reduction as a Non-Traditional Startup
Lessons in building great tech teams
- Amy Miller, xGoogle: Even Big Tech Companies Can’t Hack Hiring
- Katrina Kibben, Three Ears Media: How to Break Tech Hiring Rules
- Domina McQuade, Microsoft: How Microsoft Hires Top Tech Talent
- Henrique Boregio, Primephonic: 3 Lessons in Switching from Dev Agency to Inhouse Dev Team
- Agustin D. Bianchi, King: How King Automates HR Processes to Hire Tech Talent Faster
Nurturing tech teams that win
- Parham Doustdar, Booking.com: A 3-Step Process to Communicate More Effectively as a Developer
- Marian Jarzak, xRocket Internet: How to Improve Internal Team Comms by Understanding What Information You're Missing
- Dean Broadley, Designing Humans: Why Self-Awareness Builds Better Tech
- Themba Chakela, DimensionData: Why HR Best Practices Don’t Work in Tech
Building great tech products
- Jeremy Edberg, MinOps: Lessons in Automating Netflix’s Alert System
- Sanjukta Barooah, Finturi: 4 Ways Finturi Uses Creative Thinking to Build Product Roadmaps
- Dimitra Retsina, ReceiptBank (a.i.): Data-Driven Product Roadmaps - How to Know Which Data to Use
- Sizwe Ndlovu, Pineapple: How to Effectively Scope a Project Before Touching Any Code
- Jason Grishkoff, SubmitHub: 2 Approaches to Fast and Effective Software Development from a CEO-and-Solo Dev
How tech leaders are winning at ‘remote’
- Sjamilla van der Tooren, VanMoof & Vanessa Raath, The Talent Hunter: Hiring Remotely - Why Companies Need to Care More About Employer Branding
- Neil Kelly, Luno: 4 Ways Luno Fosters Human Connection in a Fully Remote Team
- Panel Discussion: Team Engagement, Onboarding, and Opportunity in Remote Work
And of course: We ‘MERGED’ with all of you!
Only a few months after our launch, we had the pleasure of meeting some of you at our 2019 MERGE Conference in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The podcast featured some of the conference speakers in exclusive interviews, and we got to pick their brains off-stage for a more personal look at how they think about software — we even had a film crew!
Here’s me chatting to Paul Mesarcik, CEO and Co-founder of Lumkani, and Ridhwana Khan, Founder of Kasi Maths and Senior Software Engineer at DEV:
Enter: COVID-19 and taking back ‘remote control’
Needless to say, in March 2020, COVID-19 meant the podcast became an exclusively remote experience. Companies around the globe needed to adapt quickly, and work fast in order to keep employees and customers safe. Amidst all this chaos, some of the top tech leaders gave their time to speak about how they’re responding, and how they’re thinking about their products and their teams:
- Kurt Kruger, SnapScan: How SnapScan Sticks to its Delivery Roadmap During COVID-19
- Panel discussion: Prodigy Finance Devs Discuss Parenting Hacks, Working Remotely
Inviting you into the conversation
Over and above expanding our community outwards, it’s been a really fun journey to expand our community inwards, including your voices and thoughts in the episodes, and inviting you to join the conversations we have!
Whether it’s your feedback via Twitter and LinkedIn, or having you submit interview questions when we post calls-for-questions, seeing more of the community in the podcast is one of the most exciting things for us.
Where to from here?
We have some exciting ideas in the pipeline, some wonderful guests on the horizon, and some really epic things in store. So stick around, and join in the conversation!
It’s been a really fun year ‘on air’, and we can’t wait for another one :-)
Do you know a thought-leader in tech? Or do you yourself want to feature in a podcast episode? Please get in touch! I’d love to hear your recommendations.
And please send me any of your feedback and questions! Hearing about your experiences with the podcast helps us improve, and also gives us a cool excuse to get to know to some of the people we chat to through ‘the void!’ ;-)