Who is this networking of yours?

Hi! I'm Lena Gavrina, I work at HR Tech — I create Alfa People services for employees and candidates. Today I'll share how, thanks to the power of communication, we stopped reinventing the wheel every sprint. You can do the same with your product.

A small disclaimer: my portrait will never be in any guide about networking. For many, I am an inconvenient leader and not the most pleasant person. Nevertheless, I will tell you about my feelings as a product owner, speaker and ambassador.

At first, the article only described collaborations. It turned out to be a successful success and all about the bank. I rewrote everything: in the article you will find examples of how to start networking, which everyone recommends, but few use.

Why I go beyond the product

In 3 years I went from scorched earth to an application that every new employee installs and even a candidate. Even 3 years is just a moment to assemble a large product, and you always need to do it faster, higher, stronger… Whether you like it or not, you need to come to an agreement: reuse other people's developments and go to experts.

Networking: Expectation vs. Reality

I love to spy big ideas from businesses and bring them to HR Tech. The corporation has high standards, but someone has definitely done the work according to these standards before me. It seems like steal like a product and live happily ever after. There is one “but”: everything is beautiful only in words.

As usual

We think: Everyone knows our product, we’ll set a meeting for half an hour (maximum – an hour), and we’ll get everything ready.

In fact: “Everything works differently here, this is not for us, we don't know who.” They listen to us politely, promise to think about it and never remember our product again.

Let me clarify here: community is not about donation, it is about exchange. I start with demands on myself: I open my eyes and ears. Let's be honest, everyone is more interested in being distracted by memes and messengers than delving into a colleague's task.

How I deal with this: When a colleague comes to me for help, I imagine that this is a project that I need to start tomorrow. I think about where I’ll start, what I’ll take from my work, who I’ll go to for advice, and I share it.

First, work and a lot of calls with neighboring teams, then “the record book works for you,” people understand that you are reliable and want to get you into the project.

Accelerate your project with the power of communication

I'll start with a story about how my colleagues helped me. We needed an electronic signature in the pre-login zone: EDI, all these boring words. We wanted to get a candidate's digital signature on personnel documents before starting work, when it is still impossible to identify him in the company's framework.

We found guys inside the bank who know everything about EDI. For this, I left HR and went into business: phygital branches for a long time All documents are signed and stored on a smartphone. We agreed to reuse the signature ourselves: now the candidate receives an SMS code for signing – like in Alfa's client offices.

Wait, and the networking boomerang will catch up with you

I'll tell you about our contribution to other people's products. Businesses also come to me to get on the “shelf” – to integrate into the application for employees.

That's what happened with chat for medium business. The pain was this: a B2B manager is constantly in the field. He must be in touch with clients, while communicating within the bank's circuit. Alfa People is always at hand, so we introduced a client chat into the corporate application. Now employees have a chat in the top panel next to the bell.

Another example is the sales control panel. We have built a small business sales plan into Alfa People. These employees sell a lot on the road. The fact of the deals needs to be entered immediately so that the manager can see the status and metrics.

Nobody thought of HR as a business unit, but we became a software supplier. I am an ambassador in Alfa and beyond. I constantly remind that we have a platform with web and mobile and a design system – create an interface and integrate it into the corporate application.

Enter communities smoothly

Now about where to find the son of my mother's friend, who has everything ready. I look into internal communities – they are well-tuned in Alfa. In the product community, we found colleagues who helped with the authorization of the HR bot.

We had never dealt with official accounts, and the guys had experience in business – they had been communicating with Alfa clients for 34 years.

The magic doesn't start just by joining a community chat. I prepare for community meetings: I watch the agenda, read the profiles and bios of the participants, and figure out which companies will be useful to me.

We recently did a presentation on zoomers' preferences. They see networking as a chance to hang out, an event “not for business, but for the soul.” I feel like a granny with a “forget about pizza, turn everything into benefit” approach.

I take comfort in the fact that in the previous article I was not yet accepted as an old man:

Meetings take time, so you need to convert it into an idea or a useful contact. On the way to a demo or business breakfast, I think about what intersections there are with my product and how to build a bridge to discussing my topic. You can start a dialogue in a personal message, I often get messages from contacts on the slides.

It's not necessary to talk about the product. If I'm interested in whether a colleague's office is comfortable or where to buy the same jacket, I'll ask.

Create the movement yourself

I didn't always get ready-made communities. When we were making pre-login, at some point we ran out of ideas. We don't have a pre-login for business, and we were also pioneers among corporate applications. In the end, we came to HR-brand – these are the guys who make Alpha meetups and hackathons, and together we came up with case championship.

We asked students to fantasize about what to implement in the pre-login for a candidate. We gathered a cheerful company for a month: held a briefing, immersed them in our product and looked at 8 MVP defenses.

Launching any activity takes energy. Imagine that tomorrow you are called to the jury. Before being mentioned in the post-release, you need to communicate with the contestants and check the work. If you got to the conference of your dreams, you need to recompile the report several times. When a neighboring company wants to exchange experience, a couple of evenings will be spent packing their project in Miro/on slides.

My community machine has started working: Alfa People is invited to projects and round tables. So that such events are not one-off, I am responsible for my words. I have spoken so often and so much about the product approach in HR that the Higher School of Economics came to me with the idea of ​​the first HR Tech Master's program (I will also write about it someday).

A fly in the ointment: networking comes at a price

No company has an onboarding event where they show you projects from 300 teams so you can find partners. There will be no mentor who knows 10,000 employees and will tell you exactly who to run to. But there are demos, meetups, internal communities, chats.

When I became the brand ambassador, I had to reinvent myself. I changed my wardrobe: in IT, they judge you by your clothes. I collected references from public appearances, added a task with an asterisk – to fit the merch into my capsule, and turned to a stylist.

Any networking takes time, so I am not a CMS in any sport, I do not play in a rock band, and a nanny helps me with the child. I understand why all this is necessary: ​​there are useful contacts in the phone, and I live through acceptance faster when I urgently need to turn the product in another direction.

Conclusions

• Being able to communicate and negotiate is the basis.

• At the start of each product, I look to see if there is a similar solution in the company or on the market. I'm thinking about who to ask for some developments and where we can meet.

• I don’t withdraw into myself, even if I really want to. You can simply write in the community chat and get answers, this is a quick contact and access to the right people.

• I invest in communities, internal and external. This is a story about reusing technologies that would never have crossed paths in life (how else could a sales plan for cash management services and an application for employees meet!)

• I look at my product from different angles. It won't be like today I'm making an HR app and tomorrow I'm releasing a Formula 1 car. But I manage to extract value for an HR or Agile conference and win a corporate project competition for several years in a row.

• I am looking for applications for my product in other areas. I save resources on development in order to fly forward while others sit at planning meetings.

Communication helps me in life. It was easier to enter the role of the HR Tech leader with him. And with him I have a sense of camaraderie with neighboring teams and companies.

Write in the comments whether you find time to communicate with the community and what is the most difficult thing for you in networking.