IAM2053 – CEO Provides Solution to Simplify Job Searching by Aggregating Job Listings

In this episode, we have Dmytro Gryn, the CEO of Jooble, a leading job aggregator.

Gryn shares his unique journey from being the first employee of Jooble as a software engineer to rising through the ranks to CEO.

He discusses the challenges and milestones of leading Jooble's international expansion and how he guided the company through the uncertainties of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 with resilience and innovation.

Listeners will gain insights into Jooble's approach to providing value to both job seekers and employers through advanced data-driven personalization and a focus on simplifying the job search process.

Gryn also reflects on his personal philosophy of leadership, emphasizing decentralization, the importance of patience, and the value of keeping processes simple.

Website: jooble.org

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Full Interview:

Transcription:

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Dmytro Gryn Teaser 00:00

For our customers who are job marketers who want to provide the candidates to do the jobs for all the jobs online, we can deliver the large volume of high-quality applicants, high-quality candidates. Based on previous point on based on our great matchmaking as we called it system.

Intro 00:20

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of.

This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:54

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Greg from the I Am CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dmytro Gryn. Dmytro, it's great to have you on the show.

Dmytro Gryn 01:02

Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm happy to be here today.

Gresham Harkless 01:06

Yes, absolutely. Super excited to have you on. You're doing so many phenomenal things and super excited to tell your story and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing.

But of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Dmytro so I can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Dmytro is CEO of Jooble, a Job Aggregator. Dmytro, is an expert in the information technology industry with 15 years of experience. He joined Jooble team in May of 20 2007 as a software engineer becoming the first employee in the company, after its two founders.

Becoming CEO. Dmytro worked as an engineer, team leader of the development team and CTO of job aggregator, mutual led Jooble's international expansion into foreign. Online recruiting, recruitment, markets created and manage all necessary processes and built and trained as a team.

As CEO, he is now responsible for improving the company's ability to create more value for Jooble's customers. And at the day, it's awesome to hear about Dmytro's journey. I'm hearing like how there's so many different ways CEO. Super excited to hear that.

But 1 of the things that really stuck with me, and I think we talked about it a little bit before we record is I was reading 1 of his interviews and he said that February 24, 2022, during the full-scale Russian invasion was when his self-belief was tested and he was overcome that within the business.

With everything that happened, he said that seeing the Ukraine on forces fiercely fought the overwhelming enemy brought him back to his reality, and he had, he realized that he had a business to run in a large team to take care of. So, disregarding uncertainty, he started to do and try to make the best management decisions that he could.

So, I believe he said that he believed that he helped. The company not to fall apart. And as much as we talk about all the things that happen in business, sometimes we forget about that human part. So Dmytro, excited to hear about all the awesome things you're doing, even more excited about the impact you're having.

Are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

Dmytro Gryn 02:57

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm ready to speak with the community.

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Gresham Harkless 03:02

Yeah, let's get started then. So to kick everything off, what I wanted to do was rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Dmytro Gryn 03:11

It all began in 1996. I was a little boy and for the first time in my life, I saw the programming language called Turbo Pascal, and I was completely stunned with the opportunities. I recall that I created a little like a piano that beep through integrated beeper of of the old computer. And that day I decided that I love writing code and we'll definitely do that for me.

10 years after that, I joined Jooble as a software developer and working as a developer I understood that my true passion is not just Writing the code my true passion is delivering some kind of value beyond the code. So I started my journey as a leader and manager to maximize the impact I have on the value created by company.

And after being a team leader, scrum master, chief technical officer and such here I am today. As a manager, as a top manager of the company.

Gresham Harkless 04:13

Nice. I absolutely love that. And so, I wanted to drill down a little bit more here a little bit more about how you're serving your clients, how you're making your impact. Can you take us through exactly what you all are doing there?

Dmytro Gryn 04:23

We decided someday we decided that there is a plenty of websites with jobs on the internet. And if you are trying to find a job you need to visit like a few or maybe a dozen. In Ukraine. That time it was like 30 big enough sites, worse mentioning and worsening. So we decided why don't we build the product which will allow everyone. To spare some time and to look through the old jobs in one place.

So we work as a job aggregator right now we are indexing like tens of tens of thousands of websites in 67 countries. And this approach should not only allow to save time looking for a job, but right now also to reach some unreachable opportunities because we can get the information of some small local job boards, niche job boards, or even local companies, which you will never think to visit and to search for on your own.

So we started in Ukraine and constantly entering new markets since to thousand six, we are, we started from Europe from European markets. And now we are actively engaging into North America. United States and Canada, of course. If you own a website and you want to promote your jobs online if you work as a marketing manager, you can became our customer and to promote your jobs on Google.

So that is the way we monetize. And speaking of how we serve customer we are not the company trying to. Sell you something. We are trying to be a partner. We are trying to to give you insights and to give you the most meaningful offering. Even if that means that we will not get some kind of money from you.

Gresham Harkless 06:16

Yeah, and I feel like it goes back to what you talked about in terms of being able to provide that value, which is, it's so important to be able to do that. So what do you feel is it's, and you might've already touched on this. It's just like your secret sauce. This can be for yourself personally, the business or a combination of both.

What do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

Dmytro Gryn 06:33

For job seekers key is personalization. We are an extremely data-driven company. So through years, we were gathering enormous. amount of data all GDPR compliances. And I can't recall the name of the, of this law in states.

Yeah. So I'm going to buy us data, but this data allow us to understand the intention of people and to build great personalized system of of search and recommendation and such. And we do store all these data and each day our system became became stronger. So we are definitely building some kind of AI through years.

And, for our customers who are job marketers who want to provide the candidates to do the jobs for all the jobs online, we can deliver the large volume of high-quality applicants, high-quality candidates. Based on previous point on based on our great matchmaking as we called it system. Also since we are Ukrainian company life was never been easy in Ukraine.

So, we have this. This part of our DNA working with uncertainty and surviving through crises. And this definitely helps.

Gresham Harkless 07:54

Yeah, absolutely. So wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Dmytro Gryn 08:06

Here I have, again, the most unexpected answer for a CEO. Working as a chief technical officer, I was looking for a way to improve the development team's efficiency. Once I decided to learn more about the Scrum framework, and now I'm a Scrum Alliance Certified Advanced Scrum Master. So I completed two certification courses, which need like to have at least four years of experience to get this certification.

And that's pretty unusual for CEO because my development as a scrum master taught me that leadership is possible without executive power through building trust teamwork and convincing people, not just gaining the orders. And that is great thing because from my point of view, from my experience as a manager, the executive power itself is a complete illusion.

Gresham Harkless 09:05

Yeah. And I feel like that speaks a lot to I don't even think like we were talking about the human aspect of business. And so what would you consider to be what I call a little bit more of a CEO nugget? So this could be a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business owner.

Dmytro Gryn 09:24

As I come from software development we in software development know that systems tend to become more and more complicated. really, really quick. And then it's challenging to support the complicated system and almost impossible to make level of complexity reasonable again. So in software development, we have a great thing that called the KISS principle.

KISS is an acronym stands for Keep it simple, stupid, because keeping things simple is really hard and requires dedication, but dealing with the consequences of overcomplication is much harder. So just keep it simple.

Gresham Harkless 10:08

I love that. And sometimes we are always looking for the biggest, most grand newest thing.

But I think we forget. And I think even Steve jobs might've had a quote where he talked about in order to get to simple, you really have to spend a lot of time to get there. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show.

So Dmytro, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dmytro Gryn 10:32

For me, being a CEO is connecting the dots. I know that I can do everything on my own within the organization, everything that needed to be done. So, what I can do is make sure that every person in organization understand the purpose and goals Of the organization and and his division or team or whatever.

And I can help people connect with each other and connect with the opportunities so they can achieve goals and grow the company in a decentralized way.

Gresham Harkless 11:10

I love that word connecting, and I love that word decentralized even more. Because I think so many times, I feel like we as humans, especially to some degree, are in that desire to connect.

I think especially during the pandemic, we start to see that and we start to see how that has evolved and changed. But I think we've always felt that, felt it needed, that connection piece. But I love that decentralized part because I think so many times when you have, the ability to connect. It's only in one specific way.

It doesn't feel like it allows opportunity for the decentralization. Or there's somebody that's controlling our organization. So I think that's so impactful when you can think about those 2 words and how those 2 forces go hand in hand in order to, you to create a great experience and how that's the role of the CEO.

Dmytro Gryn 11:51

Of course, there are some risks in this approach to decentralization to some strange outliers, so strange decisions in the company. And that's actually, fine. For me, it's fine. I won't blame anyone if there will be some fail in the decentralized system. And I definitely won't say, okay, the centralized system is not doing great, so let's just stop it and go to do a typical triangle hierarchy.

Yeah, there are risks, there are like some kind of things but still it's for me, I think it's the best the best way to, to, to do things the best way that you had to invent it for now.

Gresham Harkless 12:38

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that. And funny enough, I was reading, I think one of your interviews and I thought you were talking about a lot of your processes.

It was a lot. I don't know if I'm using the right word, but it was quicker in the sense that you, you started to pay attention to those impacts a lot quicker. If you were making a decision, you started to see, like, how that would impact. So it allowed you to make, I think, decisions or payments a lot quicker.

Is that a little bit of like, how you go through that process?

Dmytro Gryn 13:01

I guess I can say that it's about making decisions quick because the best thing about every organizational change and especially about building decentralized systems. It's the fact that really need you to wait. , you just need to be passionate and you be patient and to wait. So it's not so easy. It's not the point that you make some kind of decision quicker and start the process. It's about you must find the faith, in that decision. So, you will be able to wait long enough.

It becomes viable and it will bring the value to organization.

Gresham Harkless 13:48

Nice. I appreciate you, you're breaking that down because yeah, I think so many times you do find that there's always like the opportunity that you're looking for sometimes just a little bit further, that extra mile. You have to drill down a little bit further to get the gold, whatever it is.

And sometimes we stop before for we reached that because we don't have the patients. We don't tap into that. And how important that is, whether your impact or executing on another system or process, or you're trying to get a new client, or you're trying to create something, whatever it is, a lot of times we have to get so focused on our goal and understand that we're going to continue to move on until we get there.

So I appreciate you sharing that so much.

Dmytro Gryn 14:28

Yeah, because it's really easy to get distracted and and to start and try to follow some kind of easy low hanging fruit opportunity. And it's actually, it's nothing bad about getting low hanging fruits, but it should be an additional activity for the top manager.

It should be an additional activity, but the primary activity should be transition of organization to the state which you want to see.

Gresham Harkless 14:53

Yeah, absolutely. And that transitional word is just absolutely powerful and being able to see that come to fruition. So Dmytro truly appreciate that definition.

And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get ahold of you and of your team and find about all the awesome things that you all are working on.

Dmytro Gryn 15:17

I guess here I want to traditionally, thank all people of the free world for supporting Ukraine due to these hard times. Thank you.

Gresham Harkless 15:28

Absolutely. Yeah. We definitely thank you for, of course, taking time with us today. And we, of course, keep our prayers and everything with you and everything that's going on.

And we pray that everything, gets, as resolved as peacefully, as it can be. But we appreciate you and being like that inspiration and kind of like that reality of remembering there are very human things that are happening on a daily basis throughout the world, especially in Ukraine as well, too.

So, we appreciate you and leading your company, leading your organization, inspiring us to do the same too. Showing that leadership. I feel like you see when you see somebody doing awesome things, it inspires us individually. So thank you so much.

And taking that lead, doing all the awesome things, of course, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well, too, for Jooble.

So you can find out about that, find out about Dmytro, all the awesome things that the team is doing, but thank you so much again, Dmytro for your time and your inspiration.

Dmytro Gryn 16:19

Thank you. Thank you for the wise input.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I Am CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I Am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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