Daria Rudnik (00:01.902)
Welcome to Built by People Leaders. I'm your host, Daria Rudnik, and this show is for HR and L&D leaders, those building real impact from within and shaping AI ready organizations. Each episode I sit down with people leaders to talk about how they build strong cultures and shape organizations around them. It's about HR being seen as a true business partner by business and by HR themselves. So let's dive in. Because today we have a very interesting conversation.

We had some conversations about community building within companies, but now we'll talk a little bit about something else. And I want to welcome our special guest, Timur Novopashin. He's the founder of a peer-to-peer community for talent and HR professionals working globally, the International HR Club. And he's a talent acquisition expert with more than seven years of experience in international hiring. Welcome, Timur.

Timur Novopashin (00:54.808)
Thanks, thanks for having me. Super happy to be here and discuss one of my favorite topics, which is talent community building and talent community dynamic. Yeah, so I can talk for hours. So please stop me if I go on and go on.

Daria Rudnik (01:09.09)
Okay, lovely, perfect. We have about twenty five minutes.

Timur Novopashin (01:12.59)
What?

Daria Rudnik (01:15.628)
well I'll I'll ask you like before I ask about you and your story, I wanna ask you like what's your like what's your favorite part of building or running a community?

Timur Novopashin (01:28.93)
That's actually a much deeper question that might seem from the outside. Yeah, what's your favorite part of this activity or that activity? I would say that there are several layers, of course, as to which any activity. But for me personally, this project started as a passion project, as a side project. Back in the day, so it was about a year ago, I was still working as an in-house talent acquisition professional.

and I've been recruiting for the headquarters of a quite big, let's say, food tech international organization. And yeah, basically I was proper, all in, all out, talent acquisition professional, yeah, working in a big tech company, enjoying all the perks and stuff. And at some point I realized that I find myself in a position that I would like to connect with fellow,

talent acquisition, people, HR professionals, kind of working in the same situation or same conditions as I am, that are working outside of my organization. Because obviously, usually if the company is big, they provide you with opportunities to connect and network in-house. But I was thinking, what about outside? What's happening outside of my organization? And I naturally started looking for connection.

So I ended up creating a private closed curated space, which was a kind of, private chat where I was creating professionals, HR leaders, whom I personally knew working kind of, know, the same setup and in the same situation, usually supporting several countries, working globally. So the prime business language is English, et cetera, et cetera. So.

people and professionals working in a similar situation or being in the similar situation that I am. So I started to do that and then I realized that I enjoy the connection. So the connection is much more meaningful when it's not just a brief encounter at the HR conference. When it's not just a super short introduction when you're joining a company on some all hands meeting, et cetera. When it's actually in a private

Timur Novopashin (03:51.0)
curated space where you can exchange your insights, ideas, you can ask for help, you can ask for a peer review, et cetera, and you get genuine responses from the people who actually doing the same thing or facing the same challenges that you're facing. yeah? So, kind of a long story short, in our case, story long. So this is my way of storytelling and narrating. I was looking for connection

Daria Rudnik (04:15.662)
Yeah.

Timur Novopashin (04:20.683)
with like-minded professionals, kind of working or finding themselves in the same situation as I am. And I found out that I enjoy it. Yeah. So creating this space.

Daria Rudnik (04:33.718)
That's amazing. And and I mean I do agree that if we live in a world when like people working globally, we have we lost we have pretty like a lot of interactions online like we're having right now. But still it's it's this is a they're very brief. You just had a conversation with someone and then you go. You met someone at the conference and you let go. And there's no kind of relationships between people and it's hard, especially for people working remotely.

especially when AI is there automating the jobs, we kind of become even more distant from each other. So having a community of people is is it has it has great value. And again in one of the previous episodes we talked about how to build community internally, how you you can create and nurture those community internally based on people's interests, on their roles, their challenges.

But now we're talking more about community building externally.

Why would I mean and there are many, I mean obviously. So the question is like why build your own community and not join a bigger one? Or even what do you think is better to be a part of a a smaller, more niche community than a part of like huge I don't know, four thousand people?

Timur Novopashin (06:02.925)
Again, there are several layers to this question. The first thing that kind of caught my attention is why do you have to choose? Why not join several communities, pitting your needs or your current situation so you're not in a position to choose? It's not one or the other. It might as well be one and the other and one more and one more, yeah? But let's start from the beginning. What is talent community?

Yeah, so what type of communities exist there? et cetera? And I'm gonna, so in order not to spend hours talking about this, I'm gonna specifically talk about talent communities for HR people and talent professionals. Yeah, so my niche basically, And there is a first question that every professional before joining the community ask themselves like.

Why join the community? Why do I need it? Yeah, it depends. It depends on your situation, your professional background, and the setup of the talent team, people team in your company. So also, when it comes to the types of the communities and why you're joining them, you can kind of, know, pick one or several criteria and categorize those communities based on this criteria. Yeah? Let's say location.

There are local communities, usually talent communities in each big city or country. Let me give you an example. You are an HR professional working in Berlin and you would like to join a local talent community, connect with your peers, working in the same labor kind of market, following the same regulations, et cetera. You would like to learn from them or you just like to network. You would like to establish some soft connections that

with time can become much stronger or even can become friends. et cetera. So you need people in your location. Everything is kind of up and up. It's great. You start looking for a local talent community. Usually you can find one or two, maybe several, you join. You attend their in-person events. You participate in their networking activities. et cetera. So locations might be local.

Timur Novopashin (08:25.601)
But what happens when it's global? Yeah, let's say you would like to exchange insights or learn from your peers from another country or from those who working with several markets. What happens after that? How can you decide exactly? decide? There is like a variety, like tens, maybe hundreds of tons of communities. And I would say that it depends on the type

of activity that you're looking for, and eventually what is your end game? What do you wanna get from the community and what you're ready to offer the community? If you're looking for a learning experience, you would like to get certified, or you would like to learn something very practical, or maybe theoretical, or maybe a combination, you start looking for community that offers this learning experience.

And usually when it comes to learning experiences, there are several big types of categories of such communities. First is a subscription-based community. So you pay for access. You would like to become an AI native talent acquisition professional. And you would like to enroll to a certain course, or you would like to just put together a gallery or a library of cases.

how other HR professionals are actually implementing AI solutions, et cetera, you start looking for communities and you see that several subscription-based communities pop up. You pay for access, this community either offer you variety of activities or it's just learning experience that they offer you. And within this community, they also facilitate networking, they facilitate peer-to-peer support and insights exchange, et cetera.

Yeah, so this is the subscription base you're after learning. Another situation, if you're actually looking to network, you would like to extend your network of HR professionals, people leaders, et cetera. And now you start looking for communities based on your location, if you prefer in-person networking, or globally. So usually such communities facilitate global networking initiatives,

Timur Novopashin (10:47.347)
online coffee chats, etc. So there is a variety of such activities. So after networking, you go and you look for a community that actually can facilitate that. Or you would like to become a member of a very close, kind of private, very niche group of people. Let's say it's not just a talented physician community. So it's not like a global community that brings together all the TA people.

but you would like to find a community that actually is created for talent acquisition professionals and working in Poland in automotive industry, very niche, yeah, so very, very narrow field. I doubt that such a community might exist. It's not always the case, but you might start looking for one. So just to get back to your initial question, you should ask yourself, what do you wanna

get from the community and what you're ready to offer. Yeah, because especially in the communities that are independent and not subscription based, such as ours, International HR Club, so we do not charge our members, it's free to join. You gotta kind of know there is a list of characteristics that we of course check because we also narrow fielded community, meaning that we are not open for professionals from other fields.

Yeah, so we actually creating experiences and creating a space specifically for HR talent and people professionals. Yeah, so if you're a lawyer, you cannot join. So it's this type of community. And kind of, know, as I mentioned, when it comes to choosing the community, you ask yourself why you would like to join, what you can offer, because usually, in order to get the maximum value,

for yourself professionally, personally, you also need to contribute. Yeah, because there are various ways how you can actually use or utilize the community space for your professional development, personal development, or even business development. I believe we will get to it later, but you start with the research. So just go to Claude, GPT, Google, and ask it, what

Timur Novopashin (13:12.193)
communities exist in my area or globally? What is the difference between them? Is this for free to join or should I pay? So is it like a subscription based or one time payment, et cetera? So do your research, gather your options, and then you can decide based on your goals, based on your aims, you can decide what community to join.

Daria Rudnik (13:36.054)
Thanks for like giving us the structure of how to choose the community. Like there are you can learn something, find a community where you learn something, you get certified, you can find communities for network, you can find something really, really niche places where you can connect with experts in like something specific. And obviously there are free and subscription based communities. And like you said, yes, the question is we're all very busy. And I mean

You know, HR professionals in scale ups, first road companies, things changing so fast. We're all very busy. And as much as we'd like to connect with other people, as much as we'd like to have this affidity of building relationships, we just cannot invest too much time into that. Networking is nice to have. And unfortunately, learning sometimes is nice to have. But when you can somehow connect

Being part of a community with something that you can actually implement and use in your organization at work, that becomes more justifiable. Or at least, okay, I'm in this community, not because I want to do it for myself or my personal role or something, but I do it for business. So what is that communities and especially HR talent communities can give HR professionals in terms of how they run their business, how they run their departments?

Timur Novopashin (15:00.941)
So, practical part, yeah? We've got a limited amount of time or energy that we would like to invest and we want to be smart about it. Because I totally agree with you that everyone is super busy, yeah? And a part of a professional, you know, activities, our jobs, we actually got life, family, et cetera, so we really busy. So how do you justify how much time you can spend on community activities?

and how you can get most out of it. And that's actually where talent community managers step in. Obviously nothing is for free. So when I just started running the community, I realized that even organizing one node sharing session takes so much preparation, so much time and effort if you would like to get decent quality. So if you would like to

provide attendees, speakers, and those who are going to be watching the recording after the session with a particular kind of level of quality of this session, you've got to invest your time into it. So it's a full-time job, actually, if you're running the talent community. And that's actually, let's say, the service that communities offer their participants, members. So you create a space,

where they can maximize the value that they get from the community. And also they can experiment, it's a safe space, so it's a trust network. So that's an overall comment here. So every community needs a person or a committee, let's say a group of people who would be actually making this community space, again, trusted,

curated and helpful for its members. So, but when it gets to a particular, when we step kind of away a bit from that and talk from the practical perspective, it can, you know, it can be a lot of things, how the HR talent, HR professional can get the value or justify why should they spend time on that. And again, it depends on the goals or your even like professional

Timur Novopashin (17:28.365)
situation right now. Let me give you a super fresh example just yesterday in one of our curated chat spaces and at this point we've got more than 1800 members on two major platforms which is Slack. We use it for, again, it's like our curated space for community there and also we've got a Telegram platform as well. So and all together it's 1800 members and we are actively attracting new members.

So a super fresh example, the company, so there is a company that actively becoming global. What it means that they're exploring options to open new offices in several countries in European Union. Yeah, so they are growing. And there is an HR team that supports this company, works in this company, et cetera. And when it comes to expansion,

It's a very valid and kind of expected question from company leadership, founders. OK, what locations should we prioritize from HR perspective? Meaning, how much are going to pay there? So the salary part, the budget part. How strict are immigration laws if we would like to attract international professionals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah.

So there is not a checklist, but a bulk of questions that HR need to answer before choosing in which location we would like to open new offices. And our space actually allow it. So what we've done, we created a separate conversation where people or HR professionals that already been through that or currently in this situation

can kind of gather together, discuss it, collect best practices and use it for the report, for the review, for the kind of any type of output that you would like to show your leadership. So you can solve this very practical point. Kind of know you need to do this action, it's actionable. You gotta do it. How you do it, you come to a peers,

Timur Novopashin (19:40.866)
you find peers in the similar situation on those who have been through it before you. So, and our space is actually creating, we're creating the space for that. That's a very fresh example. And in general, I would say, because I'm also a member of several communities, I'm not just running and developing my own community, which is International HR Club, but I'm also a member of other different communities. And what I see through all of these platforms,

through all of these spaces that when it comes to the practical part, there are several, let's just say four, five topics that are frequently asked topics. Let's just say, yes, so what type of questions or what type of problems HR professionals come to the community? Yeah, first, and I would say it's one of the most frequent topics and questions, we

Daria Rudnik (20:22.534)
Mm-hmm.

Timur Novopashin (20:37.907)
would like to implement an HR tech solution. It might be ATS, it might be HRS, et cetera. So any solution. And the professionals, which are experts, they are looking for peer review and they are looking for support from those who already did it. So it's one of the most frequently asked questions, topics always come up.

Because when your organization hits a certain amount of people, you do need some kind of HR system to run it. It might be ATS for recruitment, definitely HRS for core HR functions. So you need a database where you keep the records. et cetera, et cetera. also when it comes to bigger organization, it's a compliance topic, it's a compliance issue.

So it's a quite, let's say it's a quite common situation when at certain point you need to implement the system. And of course, what you do, you go to your peers and you ask for their support. And that's actually, by the way, why a lot of talent communities are actually sponsored by HR tech vendors. Because this is precisely their target audience. Decision makers who eventually would buy

Daria Rudnik (21:53.819)
Mm-hmm.

Daria Rudnik (21:57.358)
Yeah, part of such a c a few such communities here. Yeah.

Timur Novopashin (22:02.317)
their product and it's totally fine. We live in a market economy. If company invests money into community, of course they expect something in return. But getting back to this frequently discussed topic. So HR tech, we would like to discover, implement, change system. Yeah, our HR system or any other HR tech product. HR tech, the second one is actually when you're looking for a particular type of expertise.

What it might be? It might be implementation consultant, again, for HR tech solutions. It might be facilitators. It might be fractional talents, freelancers, trainers. et cetera, et cetera. So you need a certain type of work to be done. And you are looking again for reviews, for recommendations, referrals from your fellow HR or talent professionals. What you do, you come to the talent community and you ask.

And that's again another, so another quick comment on my side. That's again why such a communities are also usually a magnet for fractional and freelance talent. Because they realize that they can sell and advertise their services there. So you're looking for freelancers, fractional talent, cetera, kind of, you certain type of professionals or experts, you need their expertise. Third, that's networking. So you would like to connect

with fellow experts, HR talent professionals in your location or globally, or let's just say you just moved to another country. Yeah, that's a very common situation right now. People are a lot. So you just moved to another country and you would like to kind of get an insight from people who already done it before you, yeah, specifically, and not maybe just local people, but also international talent

that have been through the same situation or currently in the same situation as you are. So you're looking for connection and support. That's the third. And when it comes to the fourth, it actually has to do with the function that you're working in because each function has a kind of, know, field for which it's responsible for. Let's say if you're working in talent acquisition, there you would ask questions, okay, where do I find this type of candidate?

Timur Novopashin (24:26.925)
How does your recruitment process look like, et cetera? Let's say it's your function specific questions and topics. Total rewards people would discuss what providers they use in order to create their grade system, in order to determine salary ranges. et et cetera, et cetera. So the fourth.

It's not a one topic, but let's say it's function specific topics. So these are the four, the kind of know frequently asked questions, frequently discussed topics. Again, HR tech and everything that has to do with HR tech, expert selection. So fractionals, freelance, et cetera, networking and function specific topics and questions.

Daria Rudnik (25:19.79)
Tomorrow. Well, first of all, thanks for the structured answers to all of my questions. And I'll just repeat, yeah, those four things people look in in the communities. Like you said, it's SSE, you know, kind of asking questions about HR Tech or any solutions they want to implement. It's looking for some experts, fractional facilitators, sometimes lawyers. I've seen lots of different requests, like networking, connecting with peers.

And yes, questions about the faction, how to do how to find those people, how to do performance review, how to do cultural like transformation and things like that. Well, that's amazing. well, again, that lots of knowledge for like anyone listening, just take it, use it, and if you want to join a community, these are criteria where to join and what you get from the community. But what if you as a company or as an HR professional want to build

Your own community, how do you start?

Timur Novopashin (26:19.181)
You start with defining your goals. Again, here it comes again. Everything starts with a strategic vision. Yes, so you gotta be strategic about that. Why do you wanna start or create a community as a company or as an independent professional? et cetera? So you start with a strategic layer and then based on these goals,

you actually decide in which direction you go. Again, let me give you a very practical example. You would like to create a new business. So you would like to treat your community as a business from the beginning, yes, or as a source of revenue. So you would like to earn some money. And let's say you are an independent expert. You are not an HR tech vendor that creates in the community space in order to stay in touch with the professional community and advertise your

services, your solutions, and increase your brand awareness. That's a different type of story. You are an independent expert. It doesn't have to be HR. You might be a freelancer in a certain field, a designer, a product manager, any type of profession. And you would like to create a community and eventually start earning money from it. Then you sit down and you do the research. You do the research. What other communities are actually offering?

what you can do better or what is your narrow niche that you would like to target or it might be not even a narrow, it might be quite wide range that you are targeting. So you start with that strategic part, then the research and then comes execution. And this is the most challenging part and usually execution part requires several pivots. Because once you're

product, in this case, if you're building a community as a product, once your product hits the market, you will get, let's say the market feedback. Would the people buy subscription to your community if it's a subscription-based community? Or would the people join your free community in methods that you can later on monetize through sponsorships or partnerships with another company?

Timur Novopashin (28:44.073)
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, these are the three very kind of simple from the first look steps, but of course there is a lot of complexity there. Each step requires a lot of back and forth usually, several pivots, but that the commercial part. I'm a big believer in passion projects. I think if you put your mind to it and your heart is there,

you can actually create a very successful organization, product, startup, community. So in my case, everything started from the place of passion. So I wasn't looking for money. At this point, I was employed. So basically, I was earning salary, et cetera. I was genuinely looking for connection, as I mentioned, and for the space to connect with fellow HR professionals.

And at some point I realized that actually it's a kind of, know, needed type of space where you create again the trust network, you create knowledge sharing environment, and you create a safe space for your peers and for yourselves to exchange these insights. And then it took off. And all of a sudden I realized that in order to provide increasingly good quality of our events,

networking activities and content. We do need sponsors. We do need resources in order to grow. And then later I came to partnerships. Currently we've established several productive partnerships with the companies that actually support our knowledge sharing sessions. They support our in-person events and other activities.

And basically they provide us with resources with which we can make the community better. But again, everything should start with a strategic vision. Why you are doing this? What is your goal here? Do you want to earn money? Or you want to sell your services? Or you genuinely want to just connect with people? It's a pure and sheer enthusiasm, let's say. And be warned.

Timur Novopashin (31:01.773)
that at some point, if your community will get to a certain size, you would definitely, kind of, you you would need to decide whether you would like to keep it small and simple, let's say, or you would like to scale. And if you would like to scale, you would need resources. And by resources, I mean money. By resources, I mean people hours, yeah, because

when it comes to running the community. So there are different parts of the job that you're not seeing. Usually what you see as a community member. There is a chat space, people are exchanging kind of messages. et cetera. There are some events happening, or maybe there is a website and LinkedIn page. But someone needs to create this content. Someone needs to organize this knowledge sharing sessions, networking sessions.

Conferences if you're talking about the bigger communities, they're organizing conferences. Someone needs to take care of their admission. So double checking new members, Guiding them so welcoming newcomers, someone needs to take care of the ⁓ not just content creation for the LinkedIn page, but also for the development part So how how do you reach more people or more potential members of your community. etc, etc, etc. Yes, so it becomes

an institution, an organization. So even if it comes from the place of passion, when you get to a certain size, you gotta think business, you gotta be smart about it. Would you like to keep it small or you wanna scale? And if you wanna scale, you need resources.

Daria Rudnik (32:44.966)
Well, thanks so much, Timur. We talked about so many things. We talked about the the types of communities out there that you can learn something from the community, you can network, you can find something that's very niche for free communities and paid communities. We talked about the reasons people join and we talked about the benefits people get from the communities. And also the final part about if you want to launch your community, be very mindful and strategic about that and follow

Can know what you want, why you want it, and at some point you'll definitely need more resources. Thanks so much for sharing all that. How people can find you, your community, how how can we connect?

Timur Novopashin (33:24.991)
Absolutely. So I'm very proud to announce this recently we launched our website. So you can browse through our activities, past knowledge sharing sessions, upcoming events, everything in one place. So you can just visit internationalhrclub.com and find all the information there. Plus we've got a very active LinkedIn page where you can also follow the page. You can see what type of activities we are doing, what type

content we are creating. And of course, only thing on the website, there is a button which says join the community. So you can fill a short form. And after upon the review in this form, we will get back to you with the navigation. We're gonna add you in our curated chat spaces. et cetera. But you know what I wanted to also highlight? Because our conversation was very structured. Yeah, so we were talking about technical parts of building the community, et cetera.

but I just wanna highlight the human center part. Especially nowadays when AI is everywhere, everyone is talking about AI. We've got AI chatbots, customer support, business support, so AI is everywhere. And what I feel in the people long for human connection. And that's what we proud ourselves in.

and what we are creating there. So we are not just discussing HR tech. We are not just organizing some networking events. We are actually advocating for human-centered, AI-powered people processes. Yeah, there's supposed to be a human behind it. let's say when you're just starting, when just kind of starting exploring the town community scene, or you are entertaining the idea to start your own community,

ask yourself what type of people you would like to be surrounded by. And keep that in mind when you're choosing what community to join.

Daria Rudnik (35:33.232)
Yeah, yeah, that's very powerful. That's very powerful. Like what kind of people you want to be with, what kind of people you want to talk and the good thing about communities is when you talk, when you type something there, or when you ask, when you meet those people, you know that they're real. They are real people.

Timur Novopashin (35:47.416)
Yeah, yeah, so that's why it's called curated. so it's a big part of job actually for talent community managers to keep the community alive and the fabric of the community thriving. And a big part of it is actually verification. So you verify who's joining your community. et cetera. You keep an eye on all the dynamics. You make sure that there is no toxicity.

Daria Rudnik (35:52.752)
Mm-hmm.

Daria Rudnik (36:07.268)
I do.

Timur Novopashin (36:14.893)
We've got zero discrimination policies, zero toxicity, tolerance. Yeah, it's a daily effort, we have to do it all the time. But yeah, that actually helps. Again, we're creating a trusted and curated space.

Daria Rudnik (36:30.886)
Right. Well, thanks so much, Timur. We we have all the links in the notes to this episode. So please go to the website, join the community, and and let's connect. Let's let's talk to each other. Let's build this human to human relationships. And thank you for listening till the end. If you like this episode, please give us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Stay tuned for the next episodes. Bye.