box thinking
Out of the
This week, we get Up-Close with Virginie Cornu, the Vice President of Data at Jellysmack. With its ingenious platform, Jellysmack empowers creators to cultivate thriving communities and unlock their full earning potential across a multitude of social media platforms. Get ready to be inspired by the extraordinary journey of Virginie as she spearheads this groundbreaking enterprise.
When I spoke to Jellysmack’s CEO, I was instantly interested in the company, however I couldn’t find a great deal about the organisation online which made me nervous. To ensure I had a full understanding of the company, I spoke to every VP and C-level person at the time and I found that Jellysmack was in a unique domain; it was speaking to diverse communities, was very modern and the more I found out the more I realised that it was an incredible business. From a technical perspective, Jellysmack already had lots of amazing AI products which is rare to find given their size – Jellysmack was actually a data driven company and had more than a dozen AI products already in production.
What drew you to join Jellysmack as VP Data?
“Diverse teams foster out of the box thinking”
What have been your priorities since joining Jellysmack?
When I joined Jellysmack, the company was five years old, they had an amazing AI product but no one was owning the data side. My first goal was modest: to bring a data picture to the business. My biggest challenge was to realise this goal, I had to bring the company from a basic data mindset to the future in a short time. I set up the tech foundations for data, hired a team and grew them to enable them to reach the future – both in the human sense and technologically. I took the team from 10 to over 100 people in one year to achieve analytics and to setup the datamesh intiative necessary to the hypergrowth.
Hooking people into a relatively unknown company is a challenge. I leveraged all channels by releasing blog posts to explain what Jellysmack was doing and the challenge we were solving, however I needed to ensure that this strategy wasn’t at the expense of becoming more visible. I have also spent a lot of time industrialising the hiring process, ensuring that there are well written documents around benefits and job specifications. We have invested a great deal of time into how we assess candidates – we are in the process of rolling out concrete assessment practices. Data positions are relatively new and can still encompass different responsibilities depending on the company. That's why it's reassuring for candidates to have clear expectations of each role when they apply thanks to clear job description and assessments. I think that's also why we attract good candidates: we show that we know our domain and the specificities of each role.
I have ensured that throughout our recruitment process we show a lot of respect to the people interviewing, that they are engaged in the right way and we give them the opportunity to learn through sharing tangible feedback. We ensure that we hire nice people who can work together – this is even more essential given we’re a remote first company. We’ve also focused on protecting our internal culture that’s based on humanity, ensuring that every hire is a strong cultural fit. This commitment to the culture is an attractive proposition to prospective candidates: we have built a space that is safe enough for the team to freely express their fears and doubts. When you create this space, something clicks.
How have attracted amazing talent to Jellysmack?
Curiosity – data is unpredictable, we need people who are naturally interested in exploring what they’ll find in a data set. People who are constantly exploring and curious about their environment make great data talent.
Creativity – out of the box thinking. Being excited by the fact that they don’t know what answers the data will bring.
Rigour – ensuring results are not biased and numbers are not manipulated to make them say what we want them to say as human being.
Diversity – we pay extra attention to the diversity of our teams as we want to ensure that algorithms replicate human behaviour... but not their biases.
What do you look for when hiring data talent?
“Be perseverant and resilient”
In your opinion, what are the top three attributes of a data leader?
A great listener – someone who really understands the challenges across their teams, clients, partners, competitors and industry. From this listening, a leader can then clearly have a vision and set goals for their teams. It is essential for the leader to not only set the vision but also be authentic with it and play a big role in delivering it.
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Flexibility – particularly important in the times we’re living in. It is essential that leaders are able to rebound in hard times and be able to change direction.
Story telling – being a data leader is a new domain and a new job. It involves a huge amount of taking senior management on a journey around what they do and what their teams do, translating is a huge part of the role.
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“Data is not a new field, however, at the time, data teams just weren’t a thing”
How do you feel the role of data leaders has evolved in recent years?
Data is not a new field, I studied for my Computer Science and NLP degrees 20 years ago, however at the time data teams just weren’t a thing. In the past 10 years, data has been at the forefront, it is the new oil and it has evolved tremendously. At first, data teams sat under technology leaders. In some environments this still continues to be the case, however, in companies with a more mature data mindset, their data leaders are independent of technology with an executive reporting line. As the evolution of data leaders continues, there is still a great variety in what a CDO does – some are focused on data governance, others on ML and analytics, others on data engineering and others look at data marketing. Looking to the future, maybe there won’t be a need for data functions as data becomes even more embedded into businesses.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learnt about the mistakes growth companies make?
I have seen a similar pattern emerging across growth companies. When a company first starts out, it’s going well with a small team, showing high velocity with a strong commitment to a vision and has a real sense of belonging. When a company moves to hyper growth mode, the hiring can start to become out of control – companies often find that their business model is not that robust when they reach the 1,000 employee mark. I think that companies make the call too early on in the process to rapidly expand when they are not proven enough. As a result of this hyper growth, companies tend to hire people to do manual tasks rather than relying on tech, forgetting about the need for automation.
“Companies make the call too early on to rapidly expand when they are not proven enough”
In your opinion, why does diversity matter? What can leaders do to help solve the challenge of limited diversity?
It is important that teams are representative of society and the world that we are living in. Diverse teams foster out of the box thinking, providing a range of ideas which are much more interesting.
I personally give courses at universities, to help inspire the next generation of tech talent. I find it so encouraging that at the university I work with, 50% of the students are now women, however they are all from the same upbringing and ethnicity bringing a similar format of thinking – this is something that I would like to try and change. In my own team, given Jellysmack has a multicultural audience and set of clients, it is important for us to replicate this internally. Starting with the hiring process, I ensure our talent acquisition managers are highly trained and work with specialist D&I recruiters. I also impose quotas at the sourcing stage to ensure that in every three candidates that we interview, at least one is a woman. I also ensure that across my team I create a culture that encourages diversity.
Career highlight to date? How has this influenced you as a leader?
It’s really difficult to pick one as my whole career so far has been a highlight. I came from a disadvantaged background; when I was younger my ambition was to get any job at the minimum wage to survive. I didn't know that someone from my background could achieve more than that, and therefore it was hard to see beyond. That's why my whole career is a highlight, everything has been a bonus from the start. When I was 18, I met someone who believed in me as a human being and built my confidence - they encouraged me to pursue my passion for technology. When I first went to Computer Science school, I was the only woman in my class and there weren’t even female toilets! From there, I became a software engineer which was a huge highlight for me. I loved it and it allowed me to earn money for my next degree.
Another highlight for me is transitioning from big companies to small companies. I love technology so much that being part of smaller environments where I had to code and play a part in the start-up adventure was amazing. Most recently, the Jellysmack journey has been a true highlight – it’s not common to find an opportunity to grow a data team in such a dramatic way. I am really fond of my team; we have had great times together. I am lucky to work with real A players who are genuinely nice and welcoming people.
I’ve learnt a huge amount about myself over the course of my career and the move to working with growth businesses has taught me how to be an entrepreneur rather than purely a contributor.
