Interview with Izabela Dimitrova, Senior Technical Recruiter at TechPods

Izabela Dimitrova is a Senior Technical Recruiter at TechPods, where she strives to support the development of IT professionals by helping them find the best career opportunities that match their professional goals. A philosophy graduate, she has a strong code of ethics and a belief in the principles of transparency and fairness. With a proven track record in recruiting talent and building diverse and cohesive teams, Isabella excels in an approach that combines efficiency with a personal touch and attention to the needs of both employer and candidate. It is important for her to provide candidates with respect and personal attention, focusing on honesty and cooperation. She is also inspired by topics such as ethics, talent retention and employee well-being that play a key role in her career path.

• Isabella, You are a Senior Technical Recruiter at TechPods. In your opinion, how has the labor market changed in the IT sector since the advent of ChatGPT and its mass integration in organizations?

In the last year, as a result of the emergence of ChatGPT and its mass integration in IT companies, the market of search and supply of new opportunities in Bulgaria has significantly reduced. Among the most affected by its appearance are specialists who are just entering the industry and currently have no previous experience, as most IT companies are looking for professionals with proven expertise with various technologies and programming languages ​​and with the ability to deal with more serious technical problems. with which a specialist who is just starting out, for example, has not encountered so far. 

At the moment, we are also seeing a significant increase in the demand for programmers with knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence (IT), as it allows companies to develop software products more easily and with less resources. Of course, this also leads to increasing competition and the need for innovation in the IT sector, which is also a prerequisite for offering new opportunities for development in the field. 

• In your opinion, is the work for native programmers increasing or decreasing in Bulgaria? 

I believe that in recent years the IT industry in Bulgaria has been constantly changing, as well as the needs of business. After the appearance of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. and its rapid application in the daily work of programmers, in 2023. we have seen a sharp decline in jobs because of the many opportunities to automate routine tasks that a significant number of specialists until that moment performed. This, of course, is also a result of human adaptation to artificial intelligence. 

In 2024 the situation in Bulgaria is different compared to the past year, as in the last 6 months we have seen a nearly 50% growth in job positions in the IT sector. Programmers with more than 3 years of experience in the industry who have accumulated knowledge and skills remain the most sought after. Given the current market and technology developments, I believe that job opportunities are yet to increase, with the trend for businesses to be interested in candidates with knowledge and skills in more technology, and an interest in innovation.

• What methods and tools do you use to discover talent in the IT sector? Do you have experience using automated pre-screening tools like TalentSight?

Our Recruiting team at TechPods most often does social sourcing, which is our primary means of successfully discovering, attracting and hiring IT talent. The positive image that we have built as a company over the years also gives quite a good result. It has a major impact on the amount of active applications from our job postings posted on various career sites. We also strongly believe in the power of referral programs, and my experience at TechPods has shown that the majority of our peer referrals have been a perfect fit from a cultural and technical perspective, leading to a more efficient process. In our daily life, we use various automated recruitment methods that help us in talent selection, such as Recruit'em for X-Ray Search and hirEZ for Boolean Search.

• What are the most important qualities that distinguish a Senior from a Junior in the sector? 

One of the most distinctive and important qualities that a senior programmer possesses in contrast to a novice programmer is precisely the in-depth technical skills and extensive experience in multiple technologies and programming languages ​​that allow him to solve complex technical problems independently, applying the best practices in the industry. The novice professional most often has basic knowledge and experience with less technology, which quite naturally also creates the need for guidance from a more senior specialist when solving more complex problems. 

From the point of view of personal qualities, the senior programmer is significantly more confident and independent in making important technical decisions. This, of course, is based on the experience he has gained over the years. Junior professionals, for example, tend to perform specific assigned tasks and often do not consider everything related to the product or its long-term goals beyond their tasks, which for senior IT professionals intuitively manifests as strategic thinking, which is extremely important for the future of the product and the development of the company. 

• How do you think new technologies will affect the IT talent recruitment process?

To date, technology has greatly optimized the role of recruiters and HR professionals in the IT industry, and I believe that as they gradually develop and integrate into our daily responsibilities, they will further speed up and automate the talent acquisition process, and I believe they will also discover many development opportunities. Although many colleagues in the recruitment and HR industry fear that the development of technology and its integration into our work will lead to the disappearance of our profession, I do not think that our role is limited to our routine duties such as screening, sourcing, interviewing, etc. 

A valuable quality of recruiters that could not be replaced by artificial intelligence is creativity in communication. It allows us to convey our message to our target group of candidates in order to get the most out of each of the parties. This, in my opinion, would be difficult to automate, since the human has a key role in situations with people who are always different, and creativity is always needed to reach a desired result. This type of communication also builds valuable long-term relationships, builds trust and above all conveys emotion, which is important for each person when making a decision about their future. 

• Final: What features or enhancements would you recommend we add to our TalentSight platform? :) 

As I've already shared, social media sourcing is a key method for successfully recruiting and hiring talent in any IT company. The more accurate the results against the various KPI metrics for technical roles, the faster and more efficient the TalentSight platform will be. For me, as someone whose work goes through LinkedIn a fair percentage of the time, for example, it would be interesting to use a feature that allows for larger-scale talent sourcing across other social networks as well, then aggregating the results. This would significantly reduce the time I would spend on the sourcing process, while at the same time allowing me to be more productive and quicker to get in touch with people who fit the criteria for the particular IT role.