How to Find an HR Job in Europe: Networking, Visibility and Career Strategy

People leader Marina Paych explains how she combined LinkedIn applications, direct recruiter outreach, HR communities and personal connections to secure several offers and relocate from Madrid to Berlin. The conversation also covers startup due diligence, executive education and scholarships, managing energy during career transitions, and building an authentic professional presence through LinkedIn, Telegram and real community relationships.

Marina Paych · Head of People & Culture at Endel
Hosted by Ksenia Izotova and Timur Novopashin

Marina Paych is Head of People & Culture at Endel and a People and HR leader with more than 11 years of experience in technology companies. Before joining Endel in Berlin, she spent more than six years at Purrweb, progressing from the company’s first HR professional to HR Director and a member of the top management team. Her work spans people strategy, organisational development, hiring, employee experience and connecting HR decisions with business results. Marina also writes about HR and careers, mentors professionals and builds communities through LinkedIn and her Telegram channel.

Connect with Marina on LinkedIn
Visit Marina's website
Follow Marina on Telegram

To find an HR job in Europe, use several channels at the same time. Apply through LinkedIn and company websites, reconnect with recruiters, tell trusted contacts that you are open to opportunities and participate in professional communities where roles and local knowledge circulate. Define the outcome you want before choosing tools, and do not treat one successful route as a universal formula. Networking improves access and preparation, while a clear professional profile and relevant visibility make it easier for people to understand where you can contribute.

LinkedIn can still produce an offer, but Marina’s experience suggests treating it as one part of a wider search. She applied through LinkedIn, Easy Apply and company websites, while also reconnecting with a recruiter and responding to opportunities shared through professional communities.

Direct outreach and network-based opportunities converted more efficiently in her personal search, but she explicitly warns against turning one successful experience into a universal rule. The practical lesson is to test channels and keep the ones that fit the target role, market and timeline.

A strong process combines a clear profile, relevant CV, selected applications, direct conversations and visible participation in the professional environment where employers and peers already know what you do.

Networking can reveal roles that are not widely advertised, turn an online profile into a real person and give candidates local context before an interview. Marina asked members of HR communities in Madrid and Berlin for advice about the company, startup stage, negotiation and what to investigate.

The first step does not need to be a formal networking programme. Start with shared professional interests or hobbies, join a community conversation, offer useful answers and invite someone to a short call. Consistency and reciprocity matter more than collecting contacts.

Networking also helps after relocation. Local peers can explain working norms, bureaucracy, employers and events, while the candidate can contribute experience in return. The relationship works best when it begins as a human connection rather than an immediate request for a referral.

A startup interview should include due diligence from the candidate. Ask about financial stability, funding and runway, the stage of the product, leadership expectations, why the role exists and what authority the position will have.

Review the offer carefully. Separate base salary from bonuses or equity, understand whether the shares are liquid or only a future possibility, and ask about vesting and exit scenarios. A compelling title or mission does not replace clarity about compensation and risk.

For a first HR hire, investigate how founders and stakeholders understand the function. Marina’s interview included a discussion with several leaders about what HR should do, giving both sides a chance to test expectations before the offer.

Business education can be valuable when it closes a defined gap: local market credibility, broader commercial knowledge or access to an international network. Marina chose an executive transition programme to understand European business, finance and leadership beyond a narrow HR curriculum.

Cost needs the same scrutiny as the programme. She found a scholarship page, applied after the deadline and received a 75% scholarship. Candidates should still include travel, accommodation, time away from work and the realistic value of the alumni network in the decision.

Marina describes the experience as heavily network-driven, with business simulations helping her see how decisions affect market share, revenue and the wider company. The useful question is not whether business school is universally worth it, but whether a specific programme advances a clear career goal.

A professional brand starts with useful ideas and recognisable expertise, not a rigid publishing calendar. Marina writes when she has something genuine to say, using workplace questions, career experiences and community conversations as prompts for content.

Visibility becomes stronger when content leads to real interaction. Her approach includes LinkedIn and Telegram posts, small morning calls, monthly digests, exchanges with other channels, introductions and occasional personal greetings to subscribers.

Follower count is not the only measure. A smaller engaged audience can create more learning, referrals and trust than a large passive one. Define the goal first, choose channels that support it and make it easy for people to connect the online voice with the person behind it.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while preserving the speakers' meaning.

Timur Novopashin: Marina, thank you so much for joining us today. Let's start with the big one — you live in Berlin now and you're leading the HR function for a Germany-based company. Could you please take us through this journey? How did you get this job? What helped you? And why Germany?

Marina Paych: Yeah, sure. Thanks again for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here. I recently moved to Berlin around two months ago. It was the quickest move in my life. It took me like one week to move my life from Madrid to here, honestly, just because I got a job offer.

Just a disclaimer — we are now all on the same page. I want to avoid the survivorship bias because I'm not really completely sure how I got this job. But I'm going to tell you what I did. So I started my journey of exploring options. I chose different channels — like they also sometimes advise the clients that come to me for career advice. I really wanted to have this experience for myself so I can actually know the instruments better. I used it all at once.

I never announced anywhere that I'm looking for a job, please send me some positions. I was just casually mentioning to people that I might be open to opportunities. Since I've been living in Madrid, I also was a participant and I still am a participant of the local HR community. Since I started exploring the options, I started noticing them more because the brain is a very simple thing — if you focus on something, your brain helps you to find more and more of that.

So I started thinking about the job and then I noticed the position that I applied for maybe a couple of years ago and it didn't work out. I still had a job in the previous company. I saw that the company again opened up the same position. So I texted the recruiter like, "Hey, we've been talking a couple years ago. Something changed from my side. Maybe something changed from your side." And we proceeded to the next stage.

Shortly after that, in the Madrid community I noticed a link to a position for a remote company. I knew the girl that posted this position because we met in the coffee slash wine HR meetup that is usually very good for networking. And yeah, that was it. I was processed by two companies and it went pretty well.

I filtered out the position where you can do the Easy Apply on LinkedIn. I was just exploring, seeing what is there, because I also heard from many people that LinkedIn is not really working anymore — you apply, you get automatic rejection. But I saw the positions that I really liked. I'm like, "What do I have to lose? I already have two companies that I talked to." So I applied to this position with the CV I had at the moment.

In the morning, the person who had posted this position contacted me and was like, "I'm going on a ski vacation from tomorrow. Do you mind having a call in 40 minutes?" I was like, it's the morning, I'm just looking at my phone. "Okay, I don't mind. Let's do that."

That was actually the Berlin company. Since it's a startup, the HR position — which is the first ever HR position they have — was opened by a CFO. I was actually interviewing with the CFO for the position of HR as a first stage.

It appeared to convert into three offers that I got from those companies. I was really waiting for the Berlin one to see if they would give me an offer because I was really interested. It worked out in a way that I flew to my studies that I also had in Berlin. I flew in and it was like super time-aligned. In the online interview with the CEO, I just casually mentioned that next week I will fly from South Africa to Berlin for my studies. He's like, "Okay, come to the office for the stakeholder interview."

I'm like, "Okay. I have studies, I really have very limited timeframes because the studies go from morning to late evening most days." After my studies, I came to the office for a stakeholder interview with maybe eight people in the meeting room. They were just discussing how everyone perceives HR because they never had HR before. So it was like, how do I see that, how can I help? And yeah, that was basically it. The next day I got the offer and like next week I'm already there.

I wouldn't say that it's my first application that instantly converted to an offer. I did a lot of applications on LinkedIn because I was also interested if it's true that it's really not working. I was a guinea pig myself, just applying. Since I had this benefit of not needing to have a specific timeframe of a job search, I could afford not to be really attentive to details. I was just applying, seeing how it works — applying on the company's websites, applying on LinkedIn, applying through Easy Apply.

But my personal outreach to a recruiter and the network showed higher conversion. Not that many positions are published only in specific communities, but there it was like one out of one. I just got one position through the network, got an offer. I outreached myself to the recruiter, got an offer. This is what I would call maybe survivorship bias because for me it just worked out like this. I cannot really say that if I now again would write to a recruiter, it would again turn into an offer. That would probably be an overstatement. But for me that worked.

From LinkedIn, I applied to way more positions than this one. But this one worked out. So I cannot say that LinkedIn completely doesn't work. It works, but you really need to have a strategy that also covers other channels.

Timur Novopashin: So it's a good strategy to not rely just on one source

Ksenia Izotova: Let's switch gears and speak about education. I'm really curious to hear about the business school that you study in Berlin. I would be super excited to know about your first impressions of living in Berlin. How do you feel in the new city?

Marina Paych: I enjoyed my time in Prado Museum, I loved it so much. But how I choose where I stay is solely based on my inner feelings. Once I get off the plane, I know if I wanna stay here or not. It's just a feeling that I have when I'm in the city or in the country.

In other Spanish cities I felt differently. Madrid was not my cup of tea. There are a lot of dog owners, a lot of very open people — I like this a lot. It's very beautiful, with incredible architecture in the center, and a very beautiful buzz. On the contrary with Berlin, I have this instant love. Every time I was here I had the feeling that it would be really fun to live at least a couple of years in Berlin. Now I got the chance to actually check it out. I feel aligned with the city. Berlin has its ups and downs, like everybody who's been here can say, but for me now, it's a perfect match. People who meet me here kind of say that Berlin suits me in some ways. I feel like I'm embedded in the picture.

Ksenia Izotova: What about the HR community? You mentioned that in Madrid you were a part of the HR community. What about Berlin? Have you already checked this part out?

Marina Paych: I actually checked it even last year when I was still living in Nuremberg, also in Germany. I came to Berlin for a day to join the meeting of a local Berlin HR community even last year. I already knew some people. When I came for studies, we also had a small meetup. It's a gathering in a cafe. I love both communities — Madrid as well as Berlin. The people are super open.

What I did was ask for advice: "I'm now interviewing for this German company. Could you please share your experience? What's important, what's not important? The specifics of the company is this, the stage of development because it's a startup." I needed to clarify that. They gave me advice on how to negotiate, what to ask, what to pay attention to. It was really nice and a lot of support.

I will still wanna mention that networking is a source of answers to so many questions. If you're not investing into your network, please start doing that. It's not necessarily have to be a very structured, huge investment. You can start with something fun. You can find another HR in your network that also likes the same hobby that you have. You can start small — not specifically very serious and professional matters. You can start connecting as humans and then you would still have this benefit of knowing someone who knows someone who knows something that would help you.

I met this lady just in a coffee shop and then I applied for a position and she already knew who I was because she saw me in person. If you know that there's an advantage, you can use it. Even though you're not in the city where all the community meetups go, it shouldn't stop you from contacting people and calling them, asking them to do a short Zoom. Or any other connection would really make you not just an avatar on the group chat — you're a person and you know somebody.

I think it's really beneficial. It's very hard because I'm an introverted person. If it would be just up to me, I would just stay home with my dog and never go outside. But I know that it helps. I also like to help myself when somebody raises a question and I know the answer.

Ksenia Izotova: This talk about networking — I cannot help asking you about the tips and tricks your colleagues from Germany shared before you went to have an interview. You've mentioned it by yourself. Please share something that you're open to share.

Marina Paych: I wouldn't say that there was a specific checklist they provided me with. It was just some of them also had experience with startups — working in startups or working in failed startups in particular. They highlighted the aspects that I should probably check in the company I'm interviewing for: how stable they are financially, what the offer exactly is.

A lot of startups offer not just the base salary but also shares. But for startups, it's normally not the real shares that you can actually go and sell because they're not on the market yet — they're virtual ones. They helped me understand how it works and how to negotiate on that and what it really means. It was their experience, which was helpful because the company I've been working for before, we were creating applications for startups. It was like the opposite side, but I never worked inside of a startup.

Ksenia Izotova: Let's talk about education. At the moment you are passing a course. What is it? Could you tell us a little bit more about what drew you to this specific business school?

Marina Paych: It's a business school here in Berlin. Last year I quit my job and I moved to Europe. My main thought was that since I will have a gap in my CV, I would have this in-between jobs and I would really have to be still relevant to the market. There are two main ways to maintain your relevance. The first one is to become a consultant, to help some companies with HR processes. But I wasn't really sure because I knew that I'm going to change countries a lot and I didn't know if it would be possible for me to find clients in between those two jobs.

The other way is normally education. It is the other way to explain to future employers why you were out of the job. I wanted this education to make me more relevant for the European and German market but still, in case I would travel, it would be understood by other markets and countries.

I started researching. Business education in Europe is not cheap. Even if I could afford some of it, I felt irresponsible to commit to a long-term, high-priced education without even knowing my next step in terms of work. I didn't know when my next paycheck would come. I was just researching pages and crying in my soul because it was so expensive.

Then I found — I wanna encourage everybody — I found a scholarship page on one of the school websites. I read about education. I didn't quite like the program because it didn't fit my journey in the way that I would like it to. So I went to the general scholarship page of this business school, and they actually provided the scholarship for the flagship program of the school, which was called ETP — Executive Transition Program.

They teach people to become CEOs in this program. I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'm not a CEO, but actually, I was more interested in the CEO position at that point." It was really interesting to me to know how business is done in Europe, to know the business ethics, to know the financial part because my background is in marketing and HR. The financial part — accounting, sales, macroeconomics — was somewhere very long ago in my life. I got really interested.

But I saw that the deadline had passed for the application. All good decisions come to me in the middle of the night. It was the middle of the night. I'm like, "Okay, the deadline has passed. But what do I have to lose? Let's be honest. You're out of work. You don't know what you're going to do next. You don't even know in which country you're going to live. Let's be honest with ourselves." I applied.

A couple of days later, I received the invitation to the interview. It's Germany, so I didn't really expect it to happen because Germans are really punctual. I didn't expect them to even consider me, but they invited me to the interview. They mentioned that they do not have the 100% scholarship anymore because they already gave it away. But they're willing to make a spot for me for 75% scholarship. I was like, "Okay, it's still not free." Together with the education fee, even though just 25% I needed to cover, plus travel expenses and living expenses because the first module was in Sweden, other modules in Berlin.

I was thinking thoroughly, trying to connect the math. But then I decided it's an opportunity. I wouldn't call it a once in a lifetime opportunity, but still it was such an amazing opportunity for me. I decided to do that. The first two modules have passed already. It's half a year of education — equivalent to postgrad education. The next module is in May, and then I will graduate.

They heavily advertise the community around the alumni of the school. They have an alumni event once a year. Also quite a nice entrance to the European and worldwide network. In my group it's an international program in English. Germany has a very good system of providing education from the state, but it's all in German. My German is not that advanced, so I also needed the English option. In my group there are people from the United States, from Brazil, from all over Europe, Switzerland, a lot of Germans since it's a German school. It's really interesting to get to know European and international business approaches.

Ksenia Izotova: Is there anything that you learned at this business school and you apply in your current position or maybe you're planning to apply? Let's be realistic about that.

Marina Paych: I haven't completed it yet, so I cannot say for the whole program. It feels that the business education is like 70% access to the network and maybe 30% is the knowledge. I expected that. The first module was the easiest in terms of content — we were bonding. It was a remote village in Sweden with a lake and a sauna. We walked in the forest, had some sessions. The second module was a bit more advanced in terms of the information. The third module I still await.

In terms of the knowledge, I can say that we learned a lot about HR — we don't really have the focus on that during this education because it's an advanced management course. What was particularly interesting to me is the business simulation that we had in between modules and also on the first module. The whole group was divided into four smaller groups. We were all competing in the same market with a very advanced business simulation platform. We were running automotive companies — international automotive companies. We were responsible for the whole business operations of the company. Each round we saw the results — who has which market share, who did how much revenue.

It was so interesting and insightful for me because before that I thought that I would never actually be a CEO — it's so advanced and complicated. There, when I first looked at the simulation, there were tables, tables, data tables, a lot of tables, a lot of data. Oh my God. Then round after round, I felt that it's actually doable. It's not the easiest job in the world, but it's doable. I'm really grateful for that insight — I can push my limits even further and I cannot be afraid.

Also the international perspective on how the world economy works. It's not really necessary for me in my job as HR to know what economic growth we're expecting this year, which countries are more advanced, less advanced. It's just for me personally genuinely interesting how it is all connected. Now we see a lot of macroeconomic changes in the world and it was really interesting to discuss it with people who really know about it a lot.

This particular education — when you become a CEO — now what I can do with it, I can actually advise the current leadership of my company on some approaches to management and leadership, alignment of expectations of employees with expectations of leadership. We got some insight on that.

This education helps me because it's called the Transition Program. I'm going myself through the transition — countrywise, jobwise, all this stuff. The big part of education is also how to deal with the transition, how to make it easier for a person or for yourself to change, and how to monitor how many transitions are you going through at one period of time.

I think everyone was in this situation when you, for example, promote a developer to a team lead and then everyone struggles and it's so painful. Everybody's like, "Why? Why is it painful? He knows how to code, right?" But nobody actually pays attention that you have to help the person do the transition from one position to a leadership position. Everybody expects that it's going to be easy since the person is very long in the company or very long in the field. Sometimes even the person themself dismisses the severity of the change. If you dismiss it, you might miss the point where it starts to damage your mental state. Since I'm now going through a lot of transitions in my personal life and professional life, it's beneficial for me personally to self-help.

Ksenia Izotova: When you are going through a transition, I know that it's important to maintain something on a permanent basis, some constant things, daily routines that you do on a super regular basis. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Is there anything that you do on a regular basis — maybe your morning routine or something that you read — not depending on the city where you live in or the job that you have?

Marina Paych: The first that comes to mind is my dog. No matter what happens, she needs to go outside. It doesn't matter if I feel bad, if I'm sick, if I don't wanna go, if it's raining, it's cold — it doesn't matter. I just have to do that. Apart from that, I don't do any rituals or routine that helps me because especially when you move so often, it's very hard to set up the routine. The whole setting up the routine actually takes a lot of energy. If we are into saving this energy, it's not about building the routine — at least for me.

What I do is I imagine that in the morning I'm assigned a glass of water which represents my inner strengths, inner energy and resources. I know that by the end of the day, I should either spend the whole glass of water or part of it, but I never should spend more than one glass during the day. Once I go below zero resources, it's going to get worse and worse. I try to maintain the amount of energy I have not below zero every day.

That's my life hack. I tell people, imagine you have a glass of beer in the morning. Everybody wants to sip a beer during the day — the job is to protect it. Jokes aside, that really helps me to know which level of energy I have. Is it like zero? Should I add more? What gives me energy? Do I have to add something during today to raise up the level of my energy? If I spend too much, if I talk too much, how much time do I need to recover?

My personal coach says that if I go to an event that takes eight hours, I have to assign myself 16 hours of recovery somehow. I'm like, "Yeah, but it's too much." She's like, "It's not too much." I never actually follow this recommendation precisely, but that is how it works. For example, now we are having this recording for two hours. Based on this logic, I have to assign myself four hours of something that would fulfill me. Now I'm giving the energy and I'm glad to do that, but then I need to give it back to me. I don't necessarily have to take it from somebody, but I have to return it to myself.

Ksenia Izotova: How do you return energy to yourself? What are the activities that give you energy that boost your energy?

Marina Paych: One good side of living in Europe — I walk a lot here. It really helps. Walking makes me feel good about myself. I'm taking care of my health. I'm not a very fit person, but walking always helps me move my dog. If I feel down, I can see how she wiggles her tail and it just boosts the mood.

I read a lot. I have my own challenge for this year to read a lot of books because I haven't been reading a lot recently. I want to read maybe 20 or 30 books and see what will change and actually see if reading books really helps you advance professionally. For now, I think I read maybe 10 or 11 books this year. I wanna check if it helps. I read one novel and one professional book at the same time because if I read just one of those, it feels a bit out of focus for me. That's my experiment. It also helps me feel better about myself and decompress. I do scroll like everybody else.

Timur Novopashin: I got stuck on the doom scrolling part because that's what we do. I believe there is a new type of doom scrolling, which is LinkedIn doom scrolling. Especially when you're looking for a position — open vacancy doom scrolling. But let's not spend much time on that.

What I really wanna discuss with you, Marina, is that you mentioned networking and the power of community a couple of times. Let's talk about personal branding. You've got thousands of subscribers and followers across Telegram and LinkedIn. I'm curious to hear your perspective. What's your take on positioning and personal branding? How do you approach a personal brand?

Marina Paych: This is also the part of my life that I forgot to mention, but it really helps to do something permanent that I have. I never had the goal of growing my Telegram channel or something like this. It just happened. It was very funny because I used to have maybe a couple of hundreds of subscribers. I would post whatever I want — financial advice, travel life hacks, how to save up on buying flights and stuff. Then something happened and I grew from 700 to 1400 in one day.

I got so scared because I was like, "What do I do now? I have twice as many people. They don't know me. What if they don't like me? What if they don't like what I post anymore?" Before that, I knew the people — they mostly came from my Instagram, people that I know. Now it was 700 absolute strangers. I didn't post for a couple of months because I was scared. I was completely freaking out — "What will I post next so people would actually find it interesting?"

Then little by little I started doing this again because I just like putting my thoughts into writing. I don't really do Instagram reels because I like to write more. If answering the question — did I want to develop my personal brand for some particular goal professionally or personally? No. I just like to write stuff. And then it somehow turned into subscribers, which I really appreciate.

The most happy feeling that I have is when my posts gather comments. Likes, great, shares, cool — but when people really want to say something to discuss it, I really love it. When I open up my Telegram channel and there are 20 plus comments, I'm like, "Yay, people like it to the extent of actually saying something."

Right now I just maintain it as it is. I work mostly on engagement because when the channel grows, the engagement gets slow. Even though I have subscribers which I love to have, I sometimes feel so shitty that the engagement gets slow. I'm like, "Okay, they subscribe, but they don't read. What can I do? So they read it." That's my challenge right now. I'm working on engaging them more.

On the LinkedIn part, normally I would just translate the posts that I have on Telegram and then post them on LinkedIn. Someone helped me to translate almost all my posts on Telegram and just schedule them on LinkedIn. They just get published according to the schedule. That helps my LinkedIn visibility. I check my SSI rating from time to time. I know that if I post consistently, I would probably get top 1% in two weeks probably. If I need it, I can just implement this strategy and get the result.

I cannot say that once I post on LinkedIn, the next day I get three job offers in my DM. My theory is that if you are a technical specialist — a web developer or QA — and you post a lot on LinkedIn, that might add to your visibility and incoming reach from recruiters. But if you're in HR, other HRs would probably just read your posts. I haven't checked this one.

I enjoy having talks like this one or at conferences. This is where personal branding actually helps because you can present yourself as a professional with some articles, materials, podcasts that you have already done in the past. For organizers of conferences, it's easier to invite you because you had some background in this. But I can't say it's the only way to get invited to speak at a conference. When I started, I didn't have anything at all. I was obsessively applying to speak at conferences and that led me to speak in the United States, in Europe a couple of times when I was still in my twenties. I was living in Omsk, working at my first job, and I still went to the States to speak at the conference. I was freaking out completely because it was so scary to speak English to native speakers from the stage.

If you don't have a personal brand and you don't wanna have it, don't have it. It's okay. There are other ways. If you want to have visibility or a professional brand, it depends on your goal — to be famous, to find a job, to monetize advertising? Then you select the tools that would help you achieve your specific goal. I don't have a goal. I just post my posts.

Timur Novopashin: I love the part when you mentioned that you were stunned when a lot of new subscribers subscribed to your channel. There is this fear of, "Oh my God, how should I deliver? What should I deliver?" I can totally relate to that. Especially the next step from that when you see people in person and you meet people who read you or watch your videos or read your LinkedIn posts on a regular basis. For a minute — because I was in this situation a couple of days ago — there was an HR meetup in Amsterdam, in person HR meeting. We are so used to working from home right now that we're not used to meeting a lot of people in person these days. Even if we work in a hybrid setup, it's usually a small team or a number of people that you already know. When you meet people who know you from LinkedIn, from Telegram channel, from any community, they know you, but you haven't met them or you interacted with them only virtually. When you meet them in person, you can also be stunned — "Oh my God, why do these people know me? What's happening? Why does everyone know my name?" That's the next level.

What I'm particularly curious to hear — you mentioned there is no special strategy, you just like to write and share your perspective. Is there a content plan? How do you approach posting?

Marina Paych: No content. No plan. Just a path. Go with the flow. I tried to do a content plan last year. I launched my own support group for overworking people to balance your work-life balance, not to go crazy from too many projects. Then I had some ideas, some plans like what I would like to post to engage people more. But other than that, I just feel like sharing something.

I have in my drafts a post that I came up with last week because we had a conversation with one of my colleagues. She said, "You are HR, so you're on the side of business, right? So you're not on my side." I'm like, "Kinda, I think, but..." I was like, "Okay, which side is HR on? And which side HR should be on? If HR is on the side of business, does it mean that HR is against the employee? Probably not." I drafted it out. I need to put my thoughts about it. I haven't posted it yet, but that's what I'm going to do probably this week or next week.

The same is with the topic — for example, I got a job offer. I'd like to share that with my audience. I haven't done it because I'm actively procrastinating. This podcast helps me to actually put my thoughts together and maybe come up with a post on my channel. I have zero content plan. What I also like about my channel is that it's not something that I have to post every week and squeeze the content out of myself. I only post when I have something to say. I like to think that people actually can benefit from it and it's going to be genuine and not AI generated. I'm really grateful for people to actually dedicate time to read what comes out of here.

Ksenia Izotova: You really do have a very sincere and a very nice Telegram channel.

How do you work with engagement right now? You mentioned you're not working on the number of participants, but you are working on engagement. What do you do?

Marina Paych: I implemented a Telegram bot that I use. I really need a content plan. I don't have it, and that's why I don't do the full potential. I have the bot that gives away materials that I created — articles or guides. Once a month I would do a newsletter with the most popular posts of the month so that people would receive it and probably drive engagement back to the channel.

I also implemented some touch points where I can actually engage with the audience — morning calls to discuss some topic. Not a lot of people come, but some come. I can share the outputs and others can see that they can actually interact and ask questions. I think I did some giveaways maybe a couple of years ago. That helps.

I also partnered with other channels to do partner posts. It's not particularly advertisements — it's just I mentioned them, they mentioned me. Sometimes, from time to time, I do shout-outs for the channels of my subscribers. I have these forms. If my subscribers have their own channels, maybe smaller or big — I don't care the number of subscribers — I would do a shout-out of these channels and they would do a shout-out for my channel on their channels. Sometimes I do this for channels with 30 subscribers because I know it's important to have some boosts in the beginning. The people that have channels with 200 subscribers are very much engaged. Those 200 people are very engaged. For me, that is win-win.

For me, every person is valuable. It doesn't matter if I have one subscriber — if this one is really engaged in comments, I'm very grateful for that. Sometimes if I have time and the right mood, I would actually greet my subscribers personally. I would text them when they subscribe and say, "Hi, you subscribed. Thank you so much. You can reach me out if you need something." I don't have time for this every day, but sometimes I do that. It really helps to also get insights on what my audience is looking for. Some people think it's spam, some people think it's automated. Some people think, "Are you a bot?" I'm like, "No, I'm not a bot. That's my real account."

Sometimes years pass and someone texts me to apply for a position that I'm promoting or to ask something. For example, now I moved to Berlin and I text somebody and I see that I actually greeted them as my subscriber many months ago. It's just cute. I would really love to do it more.

Ksenia Izotova: This is super cute. I never thought about greeting the subscribers. Timur, do you do that in your channel?

Timur Novopashin: That's a very good question because there are a lot of biases and stereotypes. First of all, it depends on the platform — LinkedIn, Slack, Telegram, Substack. What type of content you're producing and on which platform. That's the first thing to consider. If we focus on Telegram, I think when you're building a community, there's supposed to be a connection. This is the only way the community will last — if there is a connection. I've seen so many chats with thousands of subscribers and zero or close to zero engagement or full of bots.

When someone applies to the International HR Club — our platform for Russian-speaking professionals working internationally — I check the application personally. I reach out again personally. I send navigation, all the information they need, answer all the questions. If someone is leaving, I reach out and ask, "Could you please share your feedback? What happened?" In the beginning, I was taking it personally. Each person that left — I reached out and was like, "Yeah, what can I improve?" I was taking it personally — "Oh my God, something was wrong with me or something is wrong with my platform." That was years ago when I was just starting out. Now I have developed a sense of tolerance.

You can find very curious insights when you reach out to people. 98% of people who left the community — it's 10 people, not that big amount. Usually it's, "I decided to switch my professional field — I'm going from recruitment to quality assurance or something like that." The most popular reason was, "I'm leaving HR completely" or "I'm starting my own business."

We touched a lot of topics today. We talked about relocation, your crazy geographical situation with South Africa, Madrid, studying in Omsk, Sweden, Germany. I see the journey. What I'm curious to hear from you — what is one key takeaway that you would like a listener, an HR person, to live with? What's one key takeaway or advice that you can offer to the audience?

Marina Paych: As we talked about personal brand, job search, choosing the location to live — I would advise on first clarifying the goal as much as possible. There are a lot of things you can do in your personal brand, a lot of things you can do in job search, in moving, whatever. It really helps to know exactly how your desirable outcome looks like first because then you can really shortlist the tools and instruments that would help you get there faster.

I have this step zero — goal setting. If you want to achieve something, you first clarify that and then you see what can help you. Probably reach out to your network as a first step to ask for tips because it can also help you find shortcuts. Life is hard enough as is. If you have any opportunity to make it easier on yourself, you can do that. You can ask other people who came through the same as you're planning to do and ask for some tips and advice. It might be related to anything — German bureaucracy, LinkedIn introduction, way to attract more subscribers to your channel. Somewhere in the world, there are people who have already done it and they probably would love to share with you some shortcuts and ideas.

Goal setting, then selection of instruments, then reaching out to other people because they can support you. If you look for a job and you don't know where to start, I would normally start by telling everybody that you're looking for a job. You don't make everybody else look for the job for you. You're just letting it out. It is in the environment, in your group of friends, in your ex-colleagues. People know that you're open to opportunities and they might know somebody. People actually feel good when they can be helpful to other people.

If I'm approached and asked, "Marina, can you recommend me a good quality assurance engineer?" and if I have a connection, I would be so happy that I was useful in this moment and that I helped two people actually. If you're looking for a job, tell as many people as you can. The same applies if you want to build your personal brand — tell as many people as you can that you want to build your personal brand. Just discuss it and get the thought out of your head outside. That probably would boost you up because first you start talking about it yourself, your brain would focus on it more, and other people would actually help you.

I like to think that we live in a friendly world. Sorry, maybe it's going to be a bit of a naive ending for the conversation, but I really like the fact that people are generally good.

Ksenia Izotova: Marina, thank you so much for being such a great guest. It's been a really inspiring and insightful conversation.

Marina Paych: Thank you so much for inviting me. I really enjoyed it as well.

Timur Novopashin: Thank you so much.