Australian tech execs reveal what they look for in employees

The chance to meet senior recruiters at Australian tech unicorns, including Afterpay, is coming this Wednesday, October 23, at Career Hack: Australia’s Tech Careers Fair, in Sydney.

The expo will feature dozens of leading Australian tech startups, and their recruiters, including for Canva, Airtasker, Safety Culture, Athena, Deputy, Employment Hero, Zip, Afterpay, Koala, Prospa, Morse Micro and more.

Career Hack is part of the Spark Festival and is being organised by Zambesi.com in conjunction with the ACS and Startup Daily.

It will be held at the Sydney Startup Hub, Level 1, 11 York St, Sydney, October 23, 6pm-8.30pm. Tickets to attend are $12.50, available from Eventbrite here.

Startup Daily spoke to leading executives from Afterpay, Employment Hero and Expert360 about what they look for in the people they employ, as well asking them to their company culture. Here’s what they said:

Frerk-Malte Feller, Chief Operating Officer, Afterpay Touch Group

What’s the key thing you look for in a potential employee for your company?

Wanting to change the world. Drive, curiosity & can-do attitude. Extraordinary talent and capabilities. We don’t care as much for experience.

Describe Afterpay’s culture and why it’s important to its success.

We have a culture of high performance.

To us, that means: High performance is a choice you make to show up and be the best you can be, trust in your team, be grounded in reality and work together to achieve the extraordinary.

Together, we will revolutionise how people make lifestyle choices, deal with money, and live a responsible financial life (ie not have debt and not pay interest!).

Jennifer Mumford, Director of People & Culture, SafetyCulture

The key things you look for in a potential employee?

Customer-obsession, strong self-awareness and hustle-factor/GSD (get s*** done) attitude.

Describe SafetyCulture’s culture and why it’s important to its success.

Candid, customer-obsessed, caring, fun, team-oriented, ambitious. This influences who we attract and hire, how we work, how we interact. It is who we are and why we are here.

Nick Best, Enterprise Sales Manager, Expert360

The key thing you look for in a potential employee?

For us it is a growth mindset. We like to hire people who see problems as challenges and failure or missing the mark as learning opportunities. We are constantly changing and adapting as a business so having people who enjoy this and can be adaptable is one of the keys to be successful here.

Describe Expert360’s culture and why it’s important to its success.

The number one thing we hear from the team, whether they are one week or one year into their time at Expert360 is that the place is one where they can bring their real self to work.

This is driven by many things including brilliant people managers, having a strong vision/clear goals and celebrating success as a team. This means everyone knows the direction we are going so can just focus on doing great work.