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Honest conversations with the engineering leaders, CTOs, founders, and engineers building real software with real teams. No fluff, no hype — just the messy, human side of getting great products out the door.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (00:06)
Joshua, thank you so much for joining us at this episode of Built by People, Built by Humans. I started this podcast several months ago. The idea is the target audience would go to our technology leaders, but unlike other similar podcasts, we don't get into technology. I think there are plenty of people that do, and I like to focus on more of a conversation about
people, teams, what it really takes to build one. And again, the idea is it takes more than technology, right? It's not just writing code. It's about how do you build that magical team? How do you get people to work together? How do you work within your department, across different departments, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
My background, a lot of it is in technology. I've been running engineering teams for over 30 years. For the past 11 years, I run a technology services company, Mirigos, where we help our clients hire really best talent in Latin America and Europe. Our tagline is we fixed what's broken in outsourcing. And the whole idea is we're not an outsourcing shop. We found a way to blend the best of both worlds where people...
really want to hire locally, but they want to have access to talent elsewhere. And let's be honest, to save money by hiring elsewhere. And so we provide identical experience to hiring locally, but with people that are remote. So that's a little bit about us. Tell us about yourself, about your background, and what you're doing these days.
Joshua Moore (01:36)
Of yeah. Well, first of all, I just want to start off with saying that I think that your mission and vision is absolutely amazing. And I'm excited and thankful to be here on the podcast to collaborate and to talk more about kind of the important things that you're saying around performance and building high performing teams, particularly in this technology sector. A little bit about myself. My name's Joshua Moore.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (01:44)
Thank you.
Joshua Moore (02:00)
And I have a pretty robust history within HR, talent acquisition, workforce, intelligence, things of that nature. Previously, I was a VP, senior group manager at Citibank where I managed, or helped manage the North American team for cybersecurity specifically. And that, I grew a lot through my time and tenure there at Citi. That was a wonderful experience.
and it gave me a lot of very raw hands-on leadership experience on how to meet needs of clients and different business stakeholders there. And now in my current role, I'm a director of technology solutions at Seismic, which is a technology company based around and focused on life science, data science, engineering and software engineering. We have...
a taxonomy that is proprietary and probably more elaborate than any taxonomy to date that's been created in those spaces. And beyond it just being a taxonomy, it has an ontological understanding of how the skills relate one to the other. So it's very smart and it continues to learn, which kind of gives us a competitive edge. And so that taxonomy underpins everything we do at Seismic. And as a result,
we have been able to build successful applications on top of that really strong foundation to meet the needs of individuals, industries and institutions. So we kind of work with all different sectors there as a flow of data to connect everyone because that's really, that's what I found is incredibly important. It's kind of interesting, if you do AI and data correctly,
It actually humanizes the experience more because you're able to automate some of the lesser tasks that take up a lot of time and unfortunately just rob hours out of your day whenever talent attraction individuals want to be engaging and doing the things that they love and hearing what missions and visions resonate with you. And so that's, I think that that's really important. So that's kind of who I am in my background. And so happy to talk more about those things.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (04:01)
So you spent all these years in recruiting, HR recruiting. You've been on both sides. For Citibank, know, Fortune 100, if not less, company, and now you're working for a much smaller, I don't call them startup. What's easier? Or what are the differences? What's easier? What's harder? What are those things when it comes to recruiting?
And I myself in the past work for large corporations. Most of my career has been with startups, but I did some large corporations, mostly through acquisition. But I can tell you it was very different from my side, but I'm curious how it was from your side or how it is from your side.
Joshua Moore (04:37)
Of course, yes. And you know, this is the beautiful thing that I like to talk about at, know, whenever I'm recruiting, I'm looking for talent myself to say, now tell me what you would do, but what have you done? And I want to speak to that experience. And I, to your point, I've been on both sides of the spectrum. Citi is a magnificent organization. It is an enormous, you know, it's the third largest firm in the world when it comes to banking. And it is just, there's so many different unique challenges.
Not only with organizations that are that size, but leading in those spaces where it's so segmented because you get hyper specialization and silos tend to develop and there's not a good methodology of cross talk whenever you're so large. I always used to say city had the best of everything, but nobody knew where it was at because you know, it was just a sea of amazing resources. But who was the stakeholders who held those resources? How do I get
access to those things. And so there was a lot of times, sometimes there would be like duplicate efforts and, and, you know, there was this more efficiencies that could be gained here being now in a smart, in a smaller company, there are much less politics and kind of these, these things that would unnecessarily hold up timelines. And it's really full throttle focused on productivity. And
You know, there's not as many regulatory barriers in place. There's not as much bureaucracy and things of this nature. so, but you know, there is a common underpinning theme between the two of these. And this is what I found. And that is whenever you're developing teams for performance, it doesn't matter if you're working with 200,000 employees or 20 employees. The biggest thing is, is making certain that
that they're involved with the process. If as a leader, I do everything for them, or if I have to constantly look over their shoulder and they have to seek my approval, that is not a healthier performing team. That is what I have found is being able to trust but verify so I can empower individuals to be key stakeholders in certain areas and trust that they're going to do a great job.
always come back and have touch points to make certain that we're hitting the highlights and the things are where they need to be. But that fosters a relationship of based on trust and not fear. Because, know, unfortunately, I've seen too many leaders in our space lead with do this or, you know, there's the door, hit these metrics and, you know, or, you know, or, or you're done. And the reality is, is 99 % of people don't want to show up and say, I want to fail today.
So we have to understand what barriers are in place. Is it the process that, is there something broken in our process we need to identify? Is there something that I'm doing as a leader that is putting a roadblock unintentionally in their way? The very last thing whenever I see someone underperforming is to look at just their motivation directly. And so that's what I found.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (07:26)
So you just said something that I honestly never heard anybody say and it's something that I repeat constantly. People don't get up in the morning thinking today I'm gonna do a bad job. Most people get up and show up for work thinking they're gonna do a good job. Now, whether they do good job or not, that's a different question. And sometimes it's their fault, but a lot of times it's not.
So a lot of times it's the organization, it's the process, it's very broken misalignments or broken alignments that results in big misalignments. ⁓ So it happens all the time. And we can talk a little bit more about that. But before we do, thing, talking about hiring again, so you've seen hire succeed, hire processes succeed, and you've seen it fail, you've seen it work and not work.
Joshua Moore (08:02)
Mm-hmm.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (08:17)
What do you think most organizations do wrong and why it fails in so many times? And it does, unfortunately, fail.
Joshua Moore (08:24)
You know, I think that this is a really, really important question to ask ourself in the workforce intelligence and talent acquisition space specifically for organizational development. I think that there's a couple of reasons. One, companies have budget, but they are not necessarily thoughtful about how they're strategically building out the organization. So they'll say,
you know, you're assigned X amount of dollars. And then so the hiring manager will say, I want the most headcount possible. So then that means that they're not going to be able to hire top tier candidates. Maybe they could have one top tier candidate, or they could have two intermediate or maybe three beginner individuals that they train. And so whenever you start focusing on this budget, it's how you're strategically designing out your organization. And each specific role has to be
defined for that hiring manager. the thing is hiring managers are really great at managing teams. They have great emotional intelligence, but they may not leverage their TA partners effectively to get the buy-in from the HR to say, here's your team, here's your budget. Let's be thoughtful about where we're putting these people because what happens is, is they'll find somebody that's overqualified, but say wants to be a part of city.
So let's say somebody is applying to a role that's beneath their ability, but they say, I'm gonna get in to see, I'm gonna work hard and I'm gonna get promoted. That's not exactly how that works because there has to be an opportunity for that growth to occur. so what happens is you get somebody that's overqualified, now they're underpaid, they're being underutilized and that will persist for a short period of time, but you're not getting the most out of that person, they're gonna disengage and more than likely it's gonna result in attrition.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (09:47)
Right.
Joshua Moore (10:01)
Similarly, you get folks that come on and say, I want to be a part of this organization and they're swinging kind of above their weight, if you will, and they underperform. There's additional stress on them. It becomes a negative environment. And those things are also cancers to teams that you can't allow. to your point, hiring effectively really comes down to businesses. Business units have to engage TA and organizational design teams more effectively, or they're going to fail because there's not a clear path.
or understanding of exactly where they need to apply their efforts and search to augment the existing team. And then I think on the other side of that is hiring fitment. Do their skills align specifically with the role? They're not over or under qualified and understanding that because hiring managers, again, they see that overqualified person and it's gonna be like, I'll use a baseball analogy, but it's like a high fastball. You wanna knock it out of the park, but.
Don't do it, don't go for it. You're not gonna get your hands up fast enough. Same thing with this. It looks like a grade higher, but they're not gonna stay. And because they're thinking on their side selfishly, I have less to train here. And so that just, it doesn't work that way.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (11:06)
Right.
Yeah, it's a two-way process, right? It's two-way street. You have to be happy with their performance, but they also have to be happy with the opportunity. So there are multiple ways, and this is interesting segment or interesting segue into this conversation. There are multiple ways how companies approach hiring. One is we'll call it skills first. The company will put on paper,
Joshua Moore (11:14)
Yes.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (11:31)
The person must have this skills and unless they have all of them, we're not going to talk to them. And then there's another one that is I'll say capabilities first, right? Not necessarily skills, but are they capable? They have at least some skills, right? You can't have somebody without any. In my business and in my, so I used to be hiring manager in engineering, right? I spent 30 some years doing that and now running the service company with our clients.
We have both, right? So we have some people that come in. The most difficult client we have, it's funny, right? So people say, what's your most difficult clients? Probably they give you all this very complicated list of people. And they say, no, my most difficult client, we have one that says, get me a strong engineer. That's their skill. Just get me a strong engineer. Because they don't care about specific language, programming language that they know. They know that if you're smart, you'll figure that one out. But if you know the language, but you're not smart or you're not...
Joshua Moore (12:21)
You
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (12:25)
curious enough to learn something new, then you're going to outgrow the position as soon as they change something down the road, maybe possibly a few months. in our role, we always try to find, we focus on skills, obviously, right? So we focus on, hey, here's the requirements, but we also try to focus on, is it the right person? Is there a right opportunity? Is that the right growth? I'm not going to, honestly, right? If I'm hiring for startup,
and somebody spent last 20 years of their career at Citi or a large Bing institution, I am probably not looking at them. Because if they were happy at Citi Bing, again, just picking on that from your history, but if they spent 20 years there and they were happy, they are not likely to be happy in a five or 10 people organization where it's very disorganized, very chaotic, no processes.
Right? At Citibank, as you said, we have it, but we don't know where it is. We're in a startup. Not only we don't have it, we don't even know we need it. Right? So a very, very different mindset. How do you balance that? Like in your experience, how do you, like, what do you think is the right approach? How do you find that right hybrid?
Joshua Moore (13:34)
I will and fortunately I can say with confidence, know what that mixture is. And so it's the same thing that you need to look at whenever you're looking at candidates. Okay, so they have skills, you mentioned skills first approach you. They have the requisite skills to do the rudimentary skills for the foundational role. But then also understanding, which is where a great talent advisor comes in. This is what separates poor talent advisors and great talent advisors.
And that is the ability to understand the individual's motivations. Do they align and do they resonate with the values and the mission of the organization that they're a part of? Is this just a paycheck to them or do they care about what they're doing? And so, you know, for me, it was in both instances. So whenever I was incredibly passionate about cybersecurity, I loved the fact that I was protecting.
city's customers by making certain that we were hiring the best and the brightest and championing forward thinking. For example, prior to leaving, we were hiring individuals already for quantum computing or for quantum encryptions and technology because we know that that's on the forefront and we want to protect and encrypt all of our customers' data and make sure that they're safe. I was very passionate about that. And so that was wonderful. Similarly here, I have a degree in science from Purdue.
And that was kind of my, you that was my first degree. And whenever I saw that I had an opportunity at Seismic to tie in STEM, talent, attraction and technology all in the same place, I said, I can't turn this down. I have to take this forward because I know just how important all of those things together are to make companies thrive. And so to your point,
It, you know, the size of the company, yes, it has a different feel. but there's trade-offs. you know, you have less oversight, less approvals needed. If you're somebody that wants to drive initiatives by all means, you know, but if, if you want to kind of, if you're an individual that wants to sit back and you want to have a couple of layers between you and maybe the ultimate decision maker, but you got some good ideas and want to bubble things up, maybe corporate America might make more sense. but I was always a take ownership kind of person.
And, I wanted to drive change, innovations and ideas. That's one of the reasons why I was a culture pillar lead at Citi was just because, you know, we wanted to hear from, from our team. What, know, what, you know, what made them happy? What, you know, what made them want to work, and to, to, you know, push this mission. Same thing with Seismic. It's palpable. When you're, when you're on a call at Seismic.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (15:58)
No.
Joshua Moore (16:05)
you can see the passion, the fire in our bellies to hear, okay, what's holding you back from advancing this therapy? What's holding you back from protecting our agriculture from bioterrorism? What's holding you back? so, and how can we leverage the technologies and the taxonomies that we have to augment and to give synergies there? And so that's really essential.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (16:27)
What do you think is the, so I sort of have two questions and they are somewhat, I'll actually ask both at the same time, even though they're two different questions, but I think they're linked in a way. Question one is what do you think or what are the soft skills that you wish more engineers had? And the flip side or the second part of that, having worked with people in different locations.
Do you see a difference in the engineering skills or engineering skills? If somebody knows how to program in Node.js, whether they're based in US, Argentina, or Poland, Node.js is Node.js. But do you see a difference in soft skills based on locations and what sort of works or doesn't work?
Joshua Moore (17:13)
Yes, yes, cultural relevance is incredibly important. you know, one of the most valuable courses I took in college while getting a science degree is kind of hilarious. I always laugh at this, but, I took a course called interpersonal communication and I never in my life would have thought that this would have been, you know, I saw this as an elective course. This had nothing to do with biochemistry or all the things that I was interested in initially. And
But it taught me to see things through dual perspectives and to understand how what I say may not be interpreted the same way on the other end. And it brings me to a definition of communication, which is it's important for people to understand that when you're communicating, the definition of communication is the exchange of data between two parties. So if I show up and all I do is talk at you, that's not communication. Communication is when you and I have a discussion about a
about a project or about a thing and we have a shared understanding. And I think that's where there's a huge breakdown whenever we work on global teams is a lot of times we talk at each other, but we need to caution ourselves in that and step back and understand we need to have exchanges so that we have clarity around expectations, respect each other's cultural differences. These things are incredibly important. And to understand where importance lie, to say them out loud.
Because I cannot presume that what you perceive as important is what I perceive as equally important. So to articulate those things effectively, whenever you're talking in global scales, I think is essential to make certain that we hit timelines, that expectations are clear. And a lot of those expectations are based exactly, ties back into our conversation around performance. Because if you don't have those touch points and communications regularly,
How many times have we heard an employee show up on a mid-year or a year-end evaluation and say, I had no clue I was underperforming. What do you mean that you ranked me as being an under performer? Because bad managers just simply will, they want to avoid the conflict, they don't bring it up. And then unfortunately a person loses their bonus, they get disgruntled, they leave. You're doing individuals a disservice on your team. If you do not step up and tell them,
this is the expectations, this is where we're falling short. And you can do that in a kind and caring way and still get the point across that these are the expectations. And it doesn't have to be emotionally charged. It just has to be matter of fact and the clarity matters. And so, but that's a great way to manage global teams in my opinion. And to also ask what barriers or to also be inquisitive, there's something I can do for them.
You know to help achieve those deadlines. Don't just give them obstacles give them opportunities What can I also do to empower and enable this to you know work as a system and a team? It's not your Budapest or you're in Chennai or you're you know wherever It's you know, here's our goal. Here's our deadlines How can we do a follow the Sun approach and maximize efficiencies versus have barriers and obstacles in the place?
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (20:16)
I guess have one more fantasy question, and I invite you to fantasize. Companies have recurring processes, hiring processes. In some cases where it's large companies that have been around for a while, those processes might have been built a long time ago. And while they evolve, they don't dramatically change. Even if it's a startup, smaller or newer company,
people bring processes with them as they join, right? So a lot of this processes, and I'm talking about overall hiring, recruiting processes, go back to five, 10, 20 years ago, where the world has changed. We had COVID, that was a huge change. We came out of COVID, companies are remote, companies are hybrid, it's a huge change. And now we've got people all over the world where it used to be,
You know, how far do you leave was measured in minutes or miles. Now it's measured in thousands of miles oftentimes. So don't think changes. Obviously now, you know, we've got other things like AI, whatever they are. If you had a magic wand.
What would the process be? How would you just define, design the overall recruiting hiring process for a company?
Joshua Moore (21:29)
Absolutely, this is a wonderful question, a powerful question. From my lived experience, it would start before the role is ever posted. Workforce intelligence and talent attraction need to work hand in hand with business units. We are not an afterthought or a function that comes after budget. We should be the determining factor for the budget. So we can understand the dynamics and the landscapes of what's happening in...
you know, in different segments for pipelining. A lot of times, so often people are just, they're paying out the nose because they're reactive. You know, my God, now we need a hundred of these types of people. Let's employ three different search agencies. It's going to charge us 25 % more, you know, of what an individual's annual salary is because we need them right now. Well, realistically, you probably needed them six months ago. You just didn't have the four-sider vision.
to work with your workforce intelligence talent attraction team. So that drives costs down substantially, being able to pipeline and then to build out organizations strategically where that talent needs to be. And then making thoughtful job descriptions that are not cookie cutter, that are not somehow generically generated, that's truly representative of what the expectations of the role is going to be. And...
And then allowing recruiters to be enabled through technology to identify, which is what Seismic does is to identify those candidates based on the skills that are outlined in the job description. Very closely, accurately talk to them, engage those people. And you're having, this is loose markets where thousands of people are applying. You leverage technology where you can, but it will never replace the fact that you can sit down and hear the motivations of that individual. How does it resonate with your mission and vision?
The recruiters need to know the company's mission and vision. So many times folks get into this project management aspect of things where they're just clicking buttons and putting resumes, not people, they're putting resumes in front of hiring managers. And that's the thing. Whenever I submitted candidates, I got checked early in my career in this, when I submitted candidates for executive purposes and senior level ⁓ roles, I need to be able to fight and speak.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (23:31)
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Moore (23:34)
to those people, why I put them in front of the decision makers and say, this is exactly what I saw and be able to have a thoughtful conversation. It's not just me clicking a button and saying, okay, this person meets the job description, now talk to hiring manager. No, I need to know they have the certifications, the skills, the culture fitment, for what we're looking for to push them forward.
And then lastly, be able to get that buy-in, to fight for the right people, to have a voice and to say as a talent advisor, know, no, I think you have biases in place here. Ask questions. Sometimes you got to ask hard questions or really senior people that could literally end your career in the snap of a finger, but you got to be able to do it tactfully and use strong communication skills to help them think about and let them come to their own understanding of.
Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe that does make sense. Maybe I'm looking at this through a different lens. And just be able to kind of challenge that strategically. Get people into the right place and then follow up. It's not just a hire that you're doing. You're building relationships. Add them on LinkedIn. Follow up. Humanize this. This is a human business. every business around the world leverages technology, but at some point there has to be a human in the door.
make the most of those relationships because those relationships are not going to benefit you just now, it's going to benefit you later and for the rest of your life and people will remember how you treat them. And so you don't know, you don't know what's going to happen in five or 10 years. And so it's important to always treat people with kindness, respect and understand them and know where those resources lie. So you can always, you know, you can always follow up with the conversation.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (25:07)
humanize them, right? That's the key word. It's not a transaction. And I've seen this, unfortunately, with too many recruiters. They look at it as a transaction. Here's the position, here's the candidate, it didn't work out, goodbye. Some of the best hires I've made over the years of my career were people that I actually didn't hire at some point, but that LinkedIn was established and...
Joshua Moore (25:11)
Yes. No.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (25:30)
Sometimes years later, different company, different position, you go, there was somebody. Let me reach out to them. And the timing just works out. And it just happens.
Joshua Moore (25:34)
Exactly.
Right. And that can only occur
if you take time to talk to folks. And you won't have time to talk to folks unless you leverage technologies similar to like what Seismic brings to the board. Because if not, you got a thousand applicants and you end up sending mass emails or text messages and it just, it dehumanizes the whole thing and it's a poor experience for everybody and it's awful. So don't do that.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (25:43)
Absolutely.
I purposely and I will, I guess I will bring this up. I purposely left out AI out of this conversation and I did that because everybody talks about it and there's only so much you can say, but I will bring this up now in light of what you just said. So we here at Mirigas, we have built our own AI tools extensively. They help our recruiters, they help us, they help our screeners.
Joshua Moore (26:07)
Sure.
Yep.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (26:24)
So they help us in day in day out organization. I won't make a secret. You you and I had an introductory call before that call was recorded, that call went through AI and it helped me outline this conversation. Right. So it's there, but you're still talking to me. You're still talking to human being. I'm not, you I'm real, right? It's not, it's not an AI representation of me. This is, this is me. I get two questions a lot from a.
Joshua Moore (26:39)
Sure.
Right. Right.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (26:51)
from some of the people, not from our clients, but people that we talk to that potentially want, you know, we want to become clients and they go, what's the purpose? We don't need recruiters anymore. AI will do the job. AI can screen the resume. AI can analyze the call and yes, it can. We've tried something. We actually, this was an experiment. We have, so we have our recruiting calls and our screening calls are all examined by AI, but we tried.
actually replace a human with an AI avatar. It failed 100%. 100 % it just failed. And it fails at a very interesting point. People don't want to talk to it. It's not human. We're humans. We're not, I don't know what's going to happen in 10, 20, 30, 100 years, but today we talk to humans. We build relationships with humans. Even if it's via Zoom or a video platform.
Joshua Moore (27:23)
Yes.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (27:44)
but it's still human on the other side, not a machine.
Joshua Moore (27:46)
Yes. Yep. No, that's exactly right. And we crave that interaction. And it's what drives us forward. It's where we, you know, it takes us back to the roots of, of it's, and I guess it's important to name that the type of recruiting that I've historically been a part of are things that, you know, where people can really buy in and deeply matter, advancing pharmaceutical therapies to
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (27:48)
So.
Joshua Moore (28:09)
and drive curative measures, those are things that are super important to the existence of humanity. Funding, making certain, working for a bank that funds those organizations and those countries and those NGOs and the economic development organizations and all these things, that also was very important to me in protecting those things. And so, whenever I speak about recruiting, it's always...
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (28:14)
course.
Joshua Moore (28:32)
kind of through that lens, you know, and to your point. And that's why it's essential to make those connections for me personally is I want to know that what I'm doing and who I'm engaging with is gonna be a meaningful long-term relationship. You know, I want to know that I still, I maintain relationships with, you know, my old direct reports, all of them, to every person.
that I used to work with, I always make time, at least once or twice a year, hey, I'm passing through your town and I thought about you on my way to family vacation, or whatever. It's just important. I think that's something we crave as individuals. And that's where I think that, to your point, recruiting will never be replaced by AI, but I think it will be dramatically augmented. I think it will help us identify the people that we need to talk to.
But understanding, hearing the inflections in people's voices, hearing those hesitations, seeing and knowing those red flags, knowing the questions that pull on years of experience as a talent advisor to say, hmm, there was more pause there than I would have preferred. I wonder what's going on. Let me ask another question for clarity. Those are the nuances that make you an okay or mediocre TA advisor versus a really great one. And AI is just not there.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (29:42)
100%, absolutely. Joshua, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. It was very interesting. Definitely have a lot of experiences that, you know, we've been around the block and we've seen this and it's an interesting thing to do and to get it right. Thank you.
Joshua Moore (29:51)
Yeah.
Well, thank you for your time and thank you for having me.