"Old approaches tend to become obsolete."
Dmytro Gryn Tweet
In today’s competitive job market, finding the perfect job can be a daunting task. Enter Jooble, an international job search platform that’s making waves across 69 countries by simplifying the job search process for millions of users.
In this exclusive interview with ValiantCEO Magazine, we sit down with Dmytro Gryn, the dedicated CEO of Jooble, to learn more about the company’s mission, achievements, and the man behind the scenes.
Born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine, Dmytro Gryn is an engineer by background who has spent 16 years with Jooble in various roles, focusing on managing change, scaling internationally, and building teams and culture.
Despite facing significant challenges, including the recent invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing turmoil, Jooble has continued to thrive under Gryn’s leadership.
Today, it is one of the top 10 most popular employment resources in terms of traffic in the Jobs and Employment segment.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Dmytro Gryn: Jooble is an international job search website that millions in 69 countries use daily. Jooble’s mission is to help people find jobs matching their abilities and needs.
Our main product is a job aggregator, and it collects job offers from thousands of websites in one place, which is convenient for the job seeker. There are opportunities from well-known sites, like the most popular job board in the country, and small community and company websites, which are barely known.
For now, Jooble is one of the top 10 most popular employment resources in terms of traffic in the Jobs And Employment segment, according to SimilarWeb.
We have been operating in the online recruitment market since 2006.
As of me, I am Dmytro. Ukrainian, live in Kyiv, CEO by title, Engineer by background. I have worked in Jooble for 16 years in different roles, mostly managing changes, for example, international scale, building teams, and culture.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Dmytro Gryn: Our most significant achievement in the past year was completing the financial goal planned in 2021. What is a big deal, you might ask? Achieving the financial goal is very common. Indeed it is unless something rule-changing happens beyond the area of your control.
Jooble is headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since the beginning of COVID-19, most of my colleagues have been working remotely from different cities all over Ukraine. As you know, in 2022, on February 24th, Russia started an illegal and unprovoked full-scale invasion to Ukraine.
Everyone in the company was highly stressed. Some people were located in literal war zones. Most of the employees were busy evacuating their families to safe areas. For a few weeks, regular operations weren’t working correctly.
After the first shock was gone, people returned to work with twice more energy, willing to do “something” good. It took a month or two to channel the energy into business activities and make the process less chaotic.
And then, since the beginning of October, there have been four months of Russian shellings of Ukrainian power plants. The average team member had electricity for 12 hours per day. There other 12 were rolling blackouts. No light, no power, no internet.
But our team’s creativity and efforts allowed us to achieve a financial goal, even though we lost months of precious time and completely shut down all our operations with Russia and Belarus, disregarding losing considerable revenue.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, are an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle keeping talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are adapting to the current shift we see?
Dmytro Gryn: For sure, people don’t quit a job. They quit a boss. And by a “boss” here, I don’t mean a particular person. Rather it’s the whole experience they are getting during the work. And the manager is ultimately responsible for it.
From my experience, people are happy when they know what is expected of them at work, can use their talents every day, influence company strategy and processes, and feel that their supervisor cares about them as persons, not just employees.
We are investing in jooble’s managers development. Setting clear expectations, conducting trainings, for example, Nonviolent Communication, how to give feedback, how to set up goals. Of course, we evaluate the management quality based on regular feedback, company-wide and personalized.
To help people deal with stress and different problems, we have a Mental Health Support program, which includes access to basic consultancy and therapy.
We aim to create a culture of high productivity, support, and safety in the workplace.
Here is a two fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Dmytro Gryn: That will be “Nonviolent Communication” by Marshall Rosenberg. It changed how I deal with emotions and needs and how I give feedback to people in the first place. Using nonviolent communication helps me build more close, genuine and fulfilling relationships with friends, family, and coworkers.
Introducing NVC to my colleagues had a major influence on Jooble culture. The company became a much more peaceful place with more empathetic people. This book definitely improved my overall quality of life. It may be hard to begin, but after seven years of practice, I assure you it will pay off.
So, no surprise, this is the book I gifted the most.
The second one, however, may be quite unexpected. It is “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov. I am sure that reading fiction is extremely underrated in the business environment. We can learn much from fiction, grasping new concepts and boosting our creativity!
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Dmytro Gryn: Creating and following new opportunities may be extremely hard when your business is successful. People and processes in an organization are used to work in a specific, proven effective way.
But the world is constantly changing. Old approaches tend to become obsolete. New approaches are yet to be created.
The real challenge now is to find a balance between “running the business” and “changing the business,” alongside keeping shareholders and clients happy.
The problem is that even searching for new opportunities requires system thinking, risk tolerance, and being comfortable working with uncertainty. This is a major cultural shift.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Dmytro Gryn: From my point of view, the most underestimated part of running a company is the relations between people. We, managers, often completely ignore this part of the equation, focusing on business process, policies, and other depersonalized stuff.
But when you work with uncertainty, predefined business processes fail too often. People and teams must be agile and empowered to make decisions on the go. And to generate and later execute these decisions, they should be able to communicate with each other efficiently and constructively.
Building good and respectful personal relations is not necessary, but extremely helpful for that matter.
For example, you have established a Goals system for a new product. The product is in an early stage of development, so the goals are far from perfect. Two teams see that their goals create an internal collision.
They can escalate the problem, wait for a solution, and be disengaged and dissatisfied. Or, using personal relations as a buffer, they can start a constructive conflict, come to a solution and do the job.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Dmytro Gryn: That is easy. I would pick a superpower of Always Hiring the Right People. Then I would focus on creating an environment that continuously produces new business ideas.
The idea itself is worth a little, but my superpower is to create the perfect team to implement it. And it is worth everything.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Dmytro Gryn for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Dmytro Gryn or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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