Galima Akhmadullina on the labor market and fashion professions
Under the heading "Case"We acquaint readers with women of different professions and hobbies that we like or are simply interested in. In this issue, we talked with Galima Ahmadullina, the creator of Galima HR, about how to start a business with advice to friends and acquaintances, about the most sought-after professions, what kind of professionals big companies need, and why women are often paid less than men.
Galima HR is a talent search and development agency, as well as an online job resource. We help companies find employees, and candidates - to develop, build a career and be professionally oriented. We work according to the social business model promoted by Blake Mikoski, the creator of the TOMS brand: you invest some of your work, your time, for free. If this is a pair of glasses, then the cost of their bow, roughly speaking, goes for eye tests for children in Africa, and the second pair of shoes is sent to a bare child in Argentina. In our case, we develop an open resource of vacancies and advise candidates for free.
Before I had my own business, I worked as a PR manager, who was supposed to have a wide circle of acquaintances. Information about the project lacking specialists flowed to me, I was often asked to advise someone. I introduced people as a hobby, wrote characteristics. Then I realized that I spend half of my working time on recommending someone, and decided that it was worthwhile to publish vacancies in the public domain, and candidates should be given the opportunity to communicate directly with employers. Today we have 5,000 subscribers on Facebook, and 10-12 exclusive vacancies appear on the site every day.
A total of four people work on the project: I, a recruiter, who is engaged in recruitment, a content manager who develops the site, and a psychologist-coach who advises our clients and candidates. We are few, but we very clearly distribute our time, tasks and processes within the company. Despite this, we still have much more incoming requests than we can manage. Our company has adopted a transparent system of motivation: everyone has the same salary, and the bonus is received by the one who closes the vacancy. Therefore, sometimes my subordinates earn more than me if they work more efficiently.
Our candidates are young specialists of 25-30 years old who often have already worked their first career, being engaged in finance or jurisprudence, but want to move to another industry and want their work to become more creative. Often the profession is chosen for us by parents or ourselves in the ninth grade, such a choice can hardly be called a weighted or meaningful one. The big drawback of the industry is that the professions for which we select people are not yet taught in Russia. There are courses, including online, there are internships. But at the same time you can get real skills only in the fields. Professions are in demand, but specialists of such a profile are not trained anywhere else.
I can highlight the top 3 fears when changing jobs: it’s scary to start a new business, it’s scary that there will be no corporate pillow and high salary, it’s scary to start without experience. Suppose you are 30 years old, you need to rent an apartment, but you have taken it into your head to burgers or make coffee, but you do not know how to do this, and it is not clear how to live with such a person. We advise candidates with similar concerns, our psychologist helps them to gain courage and take a step into a new unfamiliar territory.
70% of girls who come to us want to work at Condé Nast - they have a feeling that they all know about fashion
Today, everyone wants to work in popular industries - it is fashion, art and gastronomy. At the same time, people have little idea what photo producers or PR managers are doing. Professionals who oversee this industry exclusively outside have illusions that the profession of the manager of a center for contemporary art is permanent exhibitions with a glass of champagne in hand, although in reality this is project management, working with technical contractors and logistics.
Modern pop culture gives a big handicap to the professions. Let's say Jamie Oliver appears - and now you are a great cook. Engineer and techie Elon Musk stirs interest in technology. If more than one series of The Big Bang Theory appears, but at least a few, the IT sphere and science will become no less attractive and interesting than art. The generation that is currently studying at school or just entered the university will be inspired and will develop and raise this industry. Why does everyone want to work in fashion? Because of interest to this industry, TV shows that show the wrong side, magazines, and people. This is all very interesting: backstage, photography, fashion week. If you show what happens in the laboratory, show people who make breathtaking discoveries, it can be no less exciting. Question to the producers who are looking for new formats.
70% of girls who come to us for interviews want to work at Condé Nast - they have a feeling that they all know about fashion. This is the fault of a distorted view of reality, and we want to correct this imbalance a little. Therefore, we organize internships in companies, meetings with specialists, so that people can see from the inside how the industry works, that the publishing house has an assistant’s workload no less than that of an analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers. In addition, we began to focus more on vacancies that are not directly related to fashion, beauty or publishing. We want to show that in other areas there are professions no less interesting and no less rich and vivid than the work in a glossy magazine.
Companies, on the other hand, are most often looking for account-, project- and product-managers; they need specialists in the field of business development and sales. If you are looking for a job, you need, on the one hand, to consider which professions are in demand, and on the other hand, to understand what you can do, than you can be useful in projects that you would like to work for. If a lawyer or an accountant wants to work in the gastronomy, then he can become a good lawyer or accountant in this area. If you have always been involved in project management in advertising, it means that you will be able to cope with project management in another area. Such a transition from industry to industry enlivens your career, and you yourself benefit the project you are entering because you have a fresh mind, an interesting approach and new ideas.
It is believed that to be a designer is sexy, but not a geneticist. Despite this, I personally know the guys who work in science, while they get their hair cut in Chop-Chop, snowboarding and get at least 100 thousand rubles a month. If you are doing research in the field of genetics, you will most likely find yourself in the laboratory of the Academy of Sciences, the Kurchatov Institute or the Moscow State University. And you can go to work in a company that does business based on genetic research, like 23andMe. In Russia, for example, “My Gene” is engaged in such research. There, scientists analyze saliva, extract DNA from it, and according to the results of the test they can tell you how susceptible you are to certain diseases, whether you have children with hereditary diseases. DNA tests allow you to identify genetic relationships and find relatives, which you never knew. I have several North American friends who have thus found their cousins, great-grandmothers, a large branch of a family that has long been separated. The young specialist needs to be greedy for knowledge, to be guided not only in what is happening in his industry, but also in what is happening in science and in the world, because a broad outlook directly affects the professional level.
We have an internal joke in the company: there are factories in the country - there are only photographers around. Yes, we ourselves add fuel to the fire, we work in this territory, but outside the creative industries there are technologies, heavy and light industry, and agriculture. We try not to ignore this, gradually publish on the site vacancies from other industries, from other regions. It would be desirable, that people did not exist in a bubble from art, publishing projects and fashion. Although this bubble is growing and has already captured the hospitality industry: restaurants, hotels, hostels. Next in line may be production. Now, for example, our beautiful new law can push someone to make Russian Parmesan.
In our briefs, there is no gender division. In very rare cases, they ask to find a girl - for example, for vacancies that involve communication with partners or clients, in such positions women are more contact and flexible communicators than men. I’ve been researching a gender issue for a long time, I read Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” when she just came out, but I don’t remember from my practice a single case when a woman was refused only because she is young and is about to get married. It seems to me that, unlike America, our country knows women: the mistress and mother, she runs the company, realizes herself as a person. It even seems to me that we have more opportunities for girls than anywhere else in the world. In our country, girls have established themselves as conscientious, responsible and efficient employees.
A man may still require a woman to choose: either he or a career — unfortunately, such examples are known to me. For me, this is absolutely incomprehensible, I grew up in a different system of values: my mother worked as a trainer, she had her own fitness club, where she conducted workouts in the evenings. In this case, my dad went to the parents' meetings, preparing dinner with my sister. It is not necessary every day when you come home to cook and clean - you can hire a housekeeper, and you can spend the free time with a partner, go to a seminar or take care of yourself. Women have already realized this, and some guys continue to cling to old-fashioned gender roles.
When you need to have time to work out after work and sit with a child, you begin to treat your time quite differently.
In the same position, men, as a rule, receive on average 13-15% more than women. This is primarily a problem of the self-esteem of women, who themselves lower their salary expectations. The same Cheryl Sandberg gives a lot of examples when experts asked a man and a woman to evaluate themselves. It turned out that girls often underestimate their abilities in terms of skills and education, as well as in terms of money. But I can not say that employers, choosing from a guy and a girl, will choose a girl, if her requests are less, not at all. More professionals are paid, and weaker candidates are paid less - everything is transparent here.
I know a lot of girls who, after giving birth, do not turn off from active life. Having given birth to a child, you can relax, but you can use this opportunity to your advantage: while your child is sleeping, you can spend half an hour or an hour to study yourself, read interesting articles, take a course on Coursera, listen to an online lecture. Of course, now all the moms will tell me: you first sit with the child, and we will look at you. But I have an example of a sister who, with a 6-month-old daughter, manages to follow her profession and attend scientific conferences. In addition, the young mothers after the decree are especially active, energized and ready to join the work at 100%. They manage their time better, which is not surprising: when you need to have time for workout and to sit with a child, you begin to treat your time quite differently.
I have no prejudices that I cannot become president or the head of my own company, because I am a girl. I see women around me with an aggressive appetite for work and life that inspire me: Natalya Sindeeva, Evgenia Belonoschenko, Yuliana Slashcheva. And if they tell the others that success can be achieved, that they have enough time for family and work, that they do not suffer from lack of sleep and do not look worse, that they also have children and husbands love them no less, then girls understand that there - at the top - not at all scary.
Photographer: Alexander Karnyukhin