Flexibility, emotional intelligence ability to learn new things are the key to successful careers. Anna Mazur, founder and managing director of the Happy Monday career portal, and Denis Brodsky, HR expert and Chief People Officer for the TBI Bank in Sofia discussed the latest trends in the job market. 

Nowadays, change is the name of the game. It is the right time to master the new profession, or new skills, or achieve success in the new career. There are no boundaries of any kind for distance working. However, it challenges managers. Both speakers agree that managers cannot efficiently control their people but they can give people a sense of what they are doing.

-Many multinationals are searching for talents in Ukraine. That means that people can find jobs in any geography without leaving their homes. It is the best time for ambitious pros fluent in English. Processes get automated and digitalized. Our Happy Monday portal lost 85% of openings in a week of the lockdown. Those companies that did not remove their positions, did not answer the phone. Currently, Work.UA claims that they exceeded the peak of 2017, said Anna Mazur. 

However, different industries have drastically different opportunities. Creative professionals who can work from anywhere have abundant opportunities, whereas tourism, hospitality, and manufacturing were damaged. Top management suffered as well because it is difficult to run things online.

- Creative professionals are now in the best position. Management requires interactions. In my opinion, distant management does not work. I did run virtual teams and did that successfully but face-to-face work would have been much better. If you are after a corporate career, you can’t make it online. You need to have physical access to the places where decisions are made, Denis Brodsky explained.  

Age does not hinder career prospects anymore. You can land a good job if you are 50 or 60. But people need to be ready to embrace the newest trends. Denis advises to get rid of the suits, buy a good camera, install good lighting, and learn the emoticons to decipher colleagues’ messages. Camera and light are important to convey all your non-verbal signals that make 70% of your impression to the audience. 

- Boundaries are set by your readiness to learn and develop your skillset. If people cannot tell about their latest professional discoveries I don’t want to hire them, Denis says. 

- The issue of control is always pending. Distance undermines control. People feel freer outside offices. It shows how efficient people are on one hand and makes employees more responsible on the other hand. Partnerships become the new form of relations between the boss and employees. We’ll soon see whether control dominates together with presenteeism, Anna thinks.