In the ever-evolving world of work, Alexandre Hernandez has boldly navigated from traditional office life to the freedom of remote entrepreneurship. Leaving behind a secure job, he embarked on a bold entrepreneurial journey with a partner he had never met in person while embracing the challenges of a global pandemic.
Today, Alex is the co-founder of Jobgether, a pioneering platform dedicated to remote-first companies. His story is not just about adapting to change but thriving in it. In this insightful interview, Alex shares his invaluable experiences and perspectives on remote work, offering practical tips and demystifies common myths. Join us as we travel together into Alex's remarkable journey and gain a deeper understanding of what it truly means to work remote and working smart.
Alex what made you start your own business?
Back in February 2020, I was working as an employee for a traditional head hunting company, an English company. I was living in Paris, which I didn't like, and I was bored of my job.
Despite earning a really good salary and having a good team and everything good on paper, I had enough.
So I decided to quit in February 2020. I had the idea of setting up my own company, but I didn't want to do it alone. But I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I wanted to have more freedom. So I quit and a week later locked down a ride. I should have maybe kept my job, but it was too late because I was about to move to Spain.
Madrid is a really active community. I joined a club called French Founders. It's dedicated to C-level, and connect you to other people of the club. I had a few calls with people in Madrid, and one day they told me: “ We have someone called Juan, he's based in Brussels, he's part of French Founders in Brussels; he wants to talk to you”.
We connected, and Juan was explaining to me that he just quit his job - He was a financial director for a big company, and he had an idea and a vision for starting a startup in human resources.
But he didn't want to be alone, he didn't know how to sell, and he had zero knowledge of the recruitment market. So he was looking for a co founder and someone to start a project with him.
We clicked straightaway and we shared a similar vision, that most people are not happy at work.
Due to many reasons; bad management, poor salary, and more.. Yet these people usually stay because they don't know how to find a job that suits their needs, staying in places where they spend, what? 60, 70, 80% of the time with people they don't like or at the company don't agree. It was clear we shared the same vision.
How did you come up with the idea of having a fully remote startup?
We didn't know where the world was going in March 2020. I was locked down in Paris. Juan was locked down in Brussels. We just had two Zoom calls. And despite my family and friends telling me to get a permanent job quickly. I decided to start this project with Juan in March 2020, dedicated to our mission and vision in times of uncertainty.
That's how we started the company: I didn't know Juan. I didn't meet Juan, but I thought it would be fun! And I still work with him today. So, of course, we had to start a company for the remote. It was full lockdown, no prediction of when would be over.
After a few months, we started to hire people in Colombia and Venezuela. All remote, obviously. It was working for us and we could access to a much larger talent pool because were not looking for people based in Paris or in Madrid, we were “free” in a way that remote would made it easier.
We were just looking for the right person, wherever that person lived. And we didn't mind if that person was living in Ukraine, India, Lisbon, Sweden, or Chicago.
What matters to us was having the right person for the project. That's how we started the company. And today, we pivoted after two years, I'm glad that today we have the largest job search engine dedicated to remote work. And we are now becoming not just a job search engine, but a global remote talent platform.
Can you name some challenges in setting up your own remote business?
First of all, it's changing, but still probably 90% or 95% of the people you will hire have never worked fully remote before. They want to work remote, but never worked fully remote.
Having a full remote company means that you have things that you do differently. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but being fully remote is in my opinion. You need to trust your people.
Everything I'm going to say technically would apply to any company on site or remote, but even moreso for remote, you need to trust your employees. When you work remote, I don't think you can (or should tell people) to do things like monitoring employees. Even though apparently in the US something like 80% of the companies use monitoring tools to see when the workers are actually working. Which I think is really wrong. You should check just one output and not input. You shouldn't check what time they start working, shouldn't check if they take an hour break or a 30 minutes break, shouldn't check if they go to the gym at lunchtime or not, shouldn't check how many phone calls they make, you shouldn't check how much time they work.
You should only check what they do, what they actually deliver, and if what they deliver matches what you want them to do.
You need to trust your people;
You can't just go to the people's desk and say, hey, can you do this for me or can you check this?
You just can't. So communication is a really important aspect of a remote company, especially asynchronous communication. When you are a remote company, you might not have everyone in the same country in the same time zone.
Do you have any strategy to be efficient with your remote team?
For example, at Jobgether we have colleagues from Índia, Madagascar, Israel, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Colombia, and Venezuela who are working on different time zones. So when it's 04:00 p.m. In India, it's probably five in the morning in Colombia. So if our talent in India needs to collaborate with the person in Colombia, they rarely match their working hours. That's when comes down to asynchronous communication, meaning you write to someone but don't expect the answer straight away.
For effective asynchronous communication use Discord and Slack channels. We have a rule internally at Jobgether, messages have to be answered by 24 hours. Often I write to people in South America at 06:00 p.m. They will get back to me around two in the morning, which is fine.
So communication should be key, which is why we use voice channels on Discord for example. We have several different channels. I have one; I call it Madrid. And when I'm working, I'm connected in this voice channel. I'm on mute. But if someone wants talk to me, my co-founder wants to talk to me, he can just come to the room. “Hey, Alex, do you have two minutes?” Maybe I do, maybe I don't. But if I hear him; Yeah, let's take two minutes.
We try to recreate this unprepared, like communication as well. But communication is probably the most important part of company documentation, because you don't have physical eyes in the office or you, you know, the people are not next to you.
Communication is probably the most important part of company documentation, because you don't have physical eyes in the office or you, you know, the people are not next to you.
What tools do you recommend for maximizing productivity and efficiency in a remote work environment?
Notion, ClickUp and Confluence are great tools. In our case we use ClickUp.
You store everything, and whoever needs should have access to the onboarding plan, the sales strategy and other important information.
But I think transparency and documentation is important because people need to have access to everything at any time, to guarantee optimized workflows and efficiency. They are very likely to be working in a different time zone, and you might not be available.
So they should be autonomous and just check by themselves. Like on site renunciation is also really important because, yes, most of the time we are fully remote, we don't see each other. However onboarding for example, could be interesting to participate on-site so new hires can meet their colleagues, and from time to time, twice a year, three times a year participate in a company offsite.
It's important to meet your colleagues. When you work with someone, you easily spend 8, to 9 or 10 hours a day with that person potentially. In order to create trust and to improve the work relationship, I believe that meeting your colleagues is really important. Not just to work, to brainstorm, but to also have fun and exciting like... Karting, sailing, whatever you want. I think it's important, that as a founder, you allocate budget for the purpose of meeting the colleagues. Us, for example, we participate in off-sites two to three times a year. We usually meet per region.
In order to create trust and improve the work relationship, I believe that meeting your colleagues is really important.
How do you see the potential of AI in enhancing and optimizing your business?
Jobgether is a job search engine. That means we aggregate all the remote job postings in the world. On our website we have always something around 200,000 remote job postings, accommodating talent looking for a remote job, with the ability to find their remote dream job.
We realized when someone was looking for a job on our platform, they always had between 105 hundred results. If you are looking for a job and you see 500 options, it's a nightmare because which one are the most interesting ones? Which one actually match your profile, your aspiration, your soft skills, your culture, your mentality, your salary, you don't know.
So in a way we were creating a push for people to apply randomly to a lot of offers, which has a negative impact on talent because they get frustrated, they might receive zero feedback because they are applying to the wrong roles, and we are creating a frustration for recruiters who receives hundreds of applications.
Now we have implemented an AI powered matching tool which is helping both talent and companies to find each other. If talent comes to the platform looking for a remote job, instead of showing you 500 options, we are showing you which one are the best options for you according to your profile and what the company is looking for. You will see my 'top match is 92%'. Okay, maybe I should apply that because the company will see a 92% match.
However, and if I'm only matching at maybe 42%, maybe I shouldn't apply there. So we are helping talents to apply better and better. Which other companies, they are more likely to be hired or at least interviewed. On the company side, the company is also able to see which are the best talents. So yes, we are using AI. And for us, AI is a way to identify better the remote job opportunities for the talent.
How do you balance work and personal life with the demands of your role?
I don't believe it when people say you should separate your work life and your personal life. I don't believe it's possible even as an employee, because work is part of your life. But I think personal and work life is, you know, it's connected for everyone.
I personally try to disconnect by blocking time slots on my calendar. For example during the week I have my daughter, I blocked every morning. 8:00 to 9:30am. So no one can schedule meetings. My colleagues know I'm not available and I put what it is so they can see it says - “Olivia. School”; “Lunchtime”…
I'm going to block time where people can't schedule meetings. Sometimes I take holidays where I completely disconnect and I don't check my emails. There are some holidays sometimes when it's less days, I would just say, look, I'm not going to do any meetings, but I'm just checking my emails or messages. If it's important, you can text me. I will not reply quickly.
When I want to fully disconnect, I fully disconnect. So I guess as a founder, I always have my company in my head and I always have ideas for the company. So I'm using Notion when I have ideas on a weekend for example, I would just write it down for me not to forget for Monday. I'm always trying to make connections.
I think that's maybe the downside of being a startup founder, is you have your company on your head all the time.
Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I think as soon as you know how to put some limits and the people around you, for example family, should know that it's something that's taking you in a way, you know, bandwidth and I think need to be aware of that.
And it's a thing to accept, but also to discuss because the balance has to be signed, not to be completely obsessed with your company and lose your friends and your family. I've never reached that point and I don't think I will. So I think it's good to discuss that.
Do you think remote work is just a trend or here to stay?
No, it's not a trend. Some people, like Elon Musk, think it's a trend, but it's not a trend. As I was saying before, remote work is here to stay. Some people still are against that, and that's fine. People have different opinions.
However, companies will have to become more flexible and more remote because soon, they will be struggling to hire people if they don't offer more freedom to people. Covid made us realize that we don't live to work. There are things much more important at work.
Friends, family, health. And remote work allows people to have a much better balance between their life at work and the life outside work. Not everyone feels comfortable to go for drinks every Thursday. Not everyone feels comfortable to walk around more people. No one likes to commute for an hour every morning in a packed tube.
Remote work allows people to decide where they work the best, whether it's from the living room or the desk, or the garden or co working or whatever hotel lobby. People with disability, for example, might find it much easier to work remotely. Maybe because they are in a wheelchair and the transports are not good enough for them. So no, it's not a trend. And the talents have the power to make remote stay and grow. And this is already happening.
So I think as an employer, if you don't understand that remote work is here to stay, and if you don't make the necessary changes for your company to allow people to work from home, it would be really difficult.
Covid made us realize that we don't live to work. There are things much more important at work.
What advice would you give to someone who has never worked remotely but wants to start and make a significant life change?
First you need to identify why do you want to work remote and are you ready to work remote?
If you like to go for drinks every week with your co-workers, make jokes all the time in the office, or need to hear people around you to motivate you, remote work is probably not for you. However, if it's for family reasons, personal reasons, work reasons, and remote work is what you need. Then yes, you should start to find a remote job you need. But I guess that would apply to any job, not just remote.
You need to know what you can do and if remote work allows you to do that job. Because of course if you want to become a waiter, work in a hotel or a restaurant, remote work is not going to be possible. If you're ready for a remote job, in my opinion you really need to have a top notch LinkedIn profile. - Why? Because recruiters will go and check your LinkedIn profile and in my opinion it's better than a cv because it gives much more information.
So you should have a top notch profile. Then you should decide where do you want to work from? Do you want to work from the country that you already live in? Do you want to work from another country?
For example, if you are European, you are French like me, and you want to work remotely from Spain or Portugal.. Do you have the rights, the legal right to work from there? You need to check what you need in order to work for a company that is established in another country. It's not because you're European it means you can work as of tomorrow. In each country you have rules, you have documentation to prepare. You need to be aware if are you ready to work in a country where you want to work. If you want to work in the United States of America but you don't have a green card. Forget about it. No company will hire you remotely from the U.S. and sponsor a visa because they probably have a thousand applicants already in the United Sates.
You need to be realistic where you want to work from then what do you want to do? Like any job search, you need to know what you want to do, which job you want to do and make your searches in. Are there a lot of remote roles out there?
Jobgether is the website with the largest number of remote roles today.
You should go and check it out!
Many know LinkedIn as a more widely known job board. However, for remote roles it's highly inefficient with many false remote jobs listed, which are hybrid realistically. This is causing a lot of time loss for both recruiters and remote job seekers.. With Jobgether you can create your certified profile and show directly which roles are the most are the best matches with your profile. And then you just need to stand out of the crowd.
Can you share some tips on how to stand out and shine in a competitive field?
Sending your CV through the ATS is a necessary step, but it's not enough to get a job. You need to understand that companies receive between 300 500 to 1000 CV's every day when it comes to remote work. So if you just apply like 'one more', your chances of being seen and hired are really low. Meaning you need to stand out, for you to stand out you have different options.
You can start to publish your knowledge and your experience on LinkedIn, which I recommend everyone to do. You should also follow up your application using LinkedIn with the potential hiring manager and/or the recruiter. Which means if you apply to Airbnb or a marketing position, you should try to find out who would be your potential manager. Who is the marketing manager and who is the recruiter hiring for the role?
To increase your success you should sell yourself to these people first. That will show you motivation if you are good doing it. If you are good selling yourself, your cv will end up on top of the pile and you have much more chances to be seen and to be interviewed. So yeah, that would be my recommendation to find a remote job.
If you are good selling yourself, your cv will end up on top of the pile and you have much more chances to be seen and to be interviewed.
Looking for a 100% remote job or remote first job?
Start searching for a remote first job, increase your success and save time with the help of AI matchmaking via Jobgether.
Follow Jobgether on Instagram.
Join the movement and connect with Alexandre Hernandez on LinkedIn.
Is your team looking for a remote team offsite and/or company retreat?
Driftawave can help by designing a tailor made workation, team and/or company offsite based upon your objectives, needs and desires. Get in touch via WhatsApp +316 33 04 7991 or inquire via info@driftawave.com
Are you looking for a startup partner / co-founder but unsure where to start?
Join Techstars, a platform and network dedicated to the success of startups. They provide a stage for early startup founders, connect them with potential co-founders, mentors and/or investors. Make sure to give them a big shout out.
This interview is brought to you by Rita Vieira, currently learning how to become great at Marketing and Driftawave's favourite remote intern. If you enjoyed this read I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn.
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