Grow Talent | Ready for Takeoff by Wix

Hiring great people is one of the biggest challenges that growing organizations face. So how do you do it better? And how do you recruit and nurture the talent you need in order to succeed? Hi everyone and welcome to Ready for Takeoff, the new micro podcast series from wix all about hyper Growth. I'm your host Rob Goodman, Executive producer for content at Wix. In each episode, we go deep on one single topic in under 15 minutes each, sharing insights and lessons learned from the leaders that built WIX as we talk about everything it takes to build a world class global organization. Today we've got Michal Bignitz, head of WIX Partners, our platform for agencies and freelancers to build client websites at scale. Over her more than nine years at wix, Michal has led a slew of teams and hired and nurtured a countless array of people here at the company. In today's episode, she's sharing her top insights on how to attract and grow Great. I started off by asking Michal about the most important part of the recruiting process. Her answer just might surprise you. Here's Michal

Candidate Experience I think it's one of the most important thing that you should think of when you are building a recruitment process. It's not just about who will you hire, it's also about what candidate will feel once you will reject them or once you'll tell them that currently we don't have anything that is relevant for them, but you might want to call them one day and offer them something. So I think that this should be in mind as well. You also want each step in the process of the recruitment process to discover something else about the candidate. If it's the same set of questions being asked by different people, it is not helping you to get a better decision or a better understanding of who is in front of you. But also from the candidate perspective it seems useless and also a bit boring. So again, try to really define what are the steps and what are the kind of questions or things that you want to discover in each of these steps and according to that, build the funnel, the recruitment funnel. I think another thing is that you don't want the process to be too long, right? The stars candidates are probably interviewing in other places as well and probably companies are fighting over them. So you don't want to lose them just because you weren't fast enough or your process were too slow or you didn't discover them early in the process. And this is another thing that you want to have. You want to be able to mark the stars and to make sure they are getting a faster line. You don't want to lose them. These are the candidates that you want to catch and if your process would be too slow, you will end up with, sorry for saying it, but the mediocre candidates and not the stars quality that you want to have in your company. I would say one last thing which I think that you know, every person who is hiring should remember. First of all, a candidate is a person, right? And treat every candidate like they were yourself. And I think that again, it's the candidate experience and it's making sure that everyone is leaving the process whether they got hired or whether they were rejected with a good feeling about themselves. But also you should be flexible. You don't want to recruit duplicates. At the end of the day, every candidate bring their own benefits or their own concern. And now you need to see how this candidate, okay, can fit one of your team. And it's both about the personality and the professional benefit that they are bringing. At the end of the day, each team has different strengths and weaknesses and you want to see how someone that you are bringing will help you create a full working team that can collaborate and work together and complete each other. So I think that also being flexible within the recruitment process is, even if it's a huge, large scale recruitment process, you want to be able to do that and you need to have this kind of flexibility.

It really is about knowing your team and finding the people who are going to be like those missing puzzle pieces that help complete the picture. One of the ways that we do that here at WIX is by nurturing new talent. So I asked Mikhail to tell me a bit about the student program she built here at WIX and the benefits and challenges of training folks with less experience.

So the idea actually came from the fact that I was a student who worked in different companies. So like while I was a student, I experienced in the industry in the real life. And I think that, you know, for me it was amazing because it allowed me to understand where do I want to direct my career, right? So it started from my own experience and I knew how motivated I was, how, you know, passionate I was for what the startup that I joined did. And I think that at the end of the day it was an amazing added value for me as a student. So it started from there. And I think that, you know, at the end of the day, both sides can have great impact out of a student program. First of all, as I mentioned, it creates great opportunities for the students themselves, right? To experience, to see how they are putting in action the things that they have learned. This is on one hand and the other side, the side of the company hiring super talented people at the beginning of their career, teaching them your company way of doing things. In our case it was how to do product, enjoying their super, super high motivation, dedication and of course at the end of the day appreciation, it's priceless. So I think that at the end of the day it's really a win win both for the students and for the companies that are doing that. But I can also tell you that some of the best head of product in weeks today were students in the first few rounds I did six years ago. So again, the best talents out of these programs. But I can say that for this to succeed, you need to have the capacity, you need to have the right people that can support it and you need to have patience because for a student that is joining your company, it will take between six to 12 months until they will start really contributing to what you are doing. Right. So it takes time.

We all love a win win, but like Mikhail said, it takes time and patience to train junior talent. And, and we all know speed is of the essence, especially at a hyper growth company. So how do you find that balance, that right mix between fresh ideas and depth of experience that's so crucial to building a strong team?

Yeah, so as you all know, I'm all up for, you know, the less experienced people that are joining to the team. But I think that at the end of the day you need to ask yourself, can my team support it right now? Because at the end of the day you want to have a good blend of seniors, juniors, people that can teach and learn from each other and you want together as a team that they will be able to achieve the goals that we set to ourselves. So having only juniors or only seniors would never work. But you also need to find the right balance and the right time time to do that or to hire juniors. And I can tell you that now when I'm building the team for partners, the companies of partners. So I started with building the management. Management obviously are senior people, strong people, mostly people that you can trust, that you may be familiar with from before and know what they are bringing and how strong they are. And now when we have feel strong from each of the fields, from the dev team, from the product team, from the UX designer team, now we can afford ourselves to hire also the juniors or the one with less experience because we have a way to support it. But before that, it's not something that you can actually do. So I think that you should aim to that because you want to have a diversity in your team. And at the end of the day, these super talented juniors are the leaders of tomorrow. And there will be like super experts in few years. And you want to be part of their path and part of their growth, but you also need to understand what it takes and you need to be able to support that. Because if you won't do it, it will be a loss for both sides. It can be a massive success for

both sides or a loss.

And it all depends on the capacity that you have to support it.

Yeah, that mix is so critical because

if you have amazing talent with burgeoning skillset, they need to have the right direction in order to grow, in order

to flourish, in order to kind of like focus their lasers, focus their superpowers

in the right direction to move forward. And you know, senior leadership needs that right mix of people setting that vision,

executing it, but also the people who

have that early career fire and motivation and malleability to fit in these different

pieces in different areas and make the vision come to life. So Mikal, we're doing this new segment called Quick Questions where we get to know you in a fun way. Are you ready for this?

Yes.

All right, let's do it. What is the very first website you visit every morning?

So I open my day by looking at 10 website that was built by WIX users and then I can see how they are using the platform and I learned tons out of it.

Wow, okay. And you have those websites like bookmarked and you just check those?

No. So every morning I actually opening like

10 websites that were published yesterday and I can check them every time. It's 10 different websites.

Okay, that's amazing. And that's before email. It's before maybe not before you brush.

Before anything.

Before you brush your teeth?

No, it's not before.

It's before, you know,

before work stuff.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. Back in the day, some of us, many of us had the AOL Instant Messenger, AOL screen name. Did you have an AOL screen name back in the day? Anything funny you want to share with us?

We had something similar here. You can probably guess what was my nickname, can't you?

Well, your nickname here at WIX is Biggie.

It's Biggie. So it's always been Biggie.

I love that. What music do you listen to when you're working?

So nowadays I think it's Zoom is the music to my ears.

That's it. That's a little sad.

That's sad.

That's sad. I don't have time to listen to music during work.

What about when you're doing, like concentration work? You know, no meeting time. Do you have like, you know, electronic music going? You have silence.

You have like, usually it would be without music. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's your favorite business book?

So not a trivial choice, but it's how to Raise Successful People by Esther Wojcicki.

Wow. And is this for family? Does this also translate into work?

So, yeah, it's.

I think that, you know, it's about

how to raise successful people, but I think that there is a lot of similarity of how she sees raising people and how I manage teams. And she has like, you know, the five things that she's talking about, which is trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. And there are a lot of, you know, smart things that she's talking about, which you can definitely take to your day to day managing teams.

Awesome. All right, I got to get this book. What about a favorite book? Just for vacation Time for leisure, when you're trying to unplug from the world?

Once that, you know, it's just from my top of my mind is Eat, Pray, Love. It's a book that I love to go back to.

How about a favorite tech leader of yours? Someone you admire out in the world and why?

I don't think that I have a favorite tech leader. There are a lot of tech leaders that you can be inspired by. And like, I try to take whatever I can from each one of them. Obviously there are the ones, you know, that are more in the spotlights, like Elon Musk. I think that, you know, he's brilliant in some of the things that he's doing. Some of the things might be ridiculous, but some of them you can, you cannot not admire. But not a favorite one that, you know, I look up for.

How about a favorite app on your phone that isn't a wix app that is your go to.

When I'm not working, I would say that I'm probably on Instagram.

Are you posting or are you more like the scrolling kind of finding, searching?

I used to have one of, I think in my eyes, the best Instagram feeds, but Covid time a little bit hurt that hopefully we'll be able to get back to, you know, traveling and having fun and, you know.

Yes, yes.

And then I will pick it up again.

Yeah, that's great. What inspires you on a daily basis?

I think, you know, when I see people that are really passionate about something and they are going for it and are really succeeding in that.

That's inspire me.

When I see professionals like doing things and succeeding in them, I think that it's admirable.

You need to admire that.

I love that. And how about something that you want to build that you haven't yet? What dreams are percolating up there?

A house?

Can I say? Yeah, can I say house?

You can.

A house.

That sounds great.

Would you design it?

Would you work with an architect? Do you have a vision for what it could be?

I have a vision. I have everything. I just need to find the property, the right property.

Amazing.

We'll work on it.

Amazing. Mikal, thank you so much for joining the show and chatting with me. It was so fun and so informative. Thanks so much.

Was pleasure and I had tons of fun as well.

One of the main takeaways from this episode is that it's so important to create that right blend of talent for your team. Mixing more tenured staff with junior talent so that growth and mentorship can happen across the entire team. And how building a talent onboarding program like the one Michal discussed for students can be an incredible way to both attract and train your next generation of leaders. Ready for Takeoff is brought to you by Wix. Now, if you don't know about Wix, we're the all in one platform for running your business online, trusted by over 210 million people around the world. With Wix, you get incredible security, reliability, performance and SEO. No matter the kind of business you run or the size. With Wix, anything is possible. So visit Wix.com to start building and growing your business today. Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes and information on our website@wix.com readyfortakeoff and if you've been enjoying this show, make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you're listening right now. That way you get new episodes as soon as they're released. Ready For Takeoff is hosted and produced by me, Rob Goodman at wix, with production by Lindsey Jean Thompson at wix. Audio engineering and editing is by Brian Paik at Pacific Audio. Music is composed and performed by Kimo Maraki. Our executive producers from WIX are Susan Kaplow and me, Rob Goodman.

We'll see you next time.