Get Ready For the Next Step in Your Career - Prepare For an Interview With Datadog
💎 Going for that next step in your professional career may seem scary. Don’t miss the valuable insight from a recruiter at Datadog about their interview process!
📼 Watch this video to get key advice for the next step in your career. In this video, you’ll meet Adriana Buss, Senior Technical Recruiter at Datadog, who’ll share a walkthrough of the company’s application process and what to expect when applying for a job at Datadog.
👉 Datadog is hiring! Check out the company’s open jobs:
Senior Product Designer (USA remote!) https://bit.ly/DatadogSrProductDesignerPTF
Software Engineer (USA remote!) https://bit.ly/DatadogSoftwareEngineerPTF
Team Lead, Engineering - Compute (Europe remote!) https://bit.ly/DatadogTeamLeadEngineeringPTF
📼 Ready to take the next step in your career by applying for a job at Datadog? Get to know the application process. It starts with the recruiter interview. The purpose is to get to know you better: Who you are, what drives you, and the key elements you are looking for in a role. The company wants to learn more about you and your ideal role.. What does development look like to you? Don’t miss Adriana’s single most crucial piece of advice for the recruiter interview. “Be as honest as possible with us. Open up to us, and just know that we are your advocates. We are here to help you. We are here to support you throughout the process,” says Adriana. The better the Datadog team gets to know you, the easier it will be for them to find you the right position.
📼 When aiming for that next step in your career, it’s essential that you research the company you’re applying to before starting the interview process. For Datadog, you can go from visiting the company website to exploring the product o watching case study videos (either on their website or on YouTube). Watch some demos, and maybe go on some engineering blogs and read what people say about the company. What is it they like? What is it t they don't like about the product? Form an opinion about Datadog, about the product or the platform.
Ready For the Next Step in Your Career: Show Up As Yourself
Bring your true self to these interviews. At Datadog, they want to see the real you; they want to see who you are.. They want to see your strengths, but also your flaws because all these things are what make you great!
🧑💼 Are you interested in joining Datadog? They have open positions! To learn more, click here: https://bit.ly/Datadog_PTF
Get To Know Adriana
Adriana is experienced in leading complex talent projects and applying search techniques across a global remit. Tech-savvy with an in-depth understanding and appreciation of wider HR and resourcing issues and strategy, she specializes in recruiting Product, Leadership, Engineering, and various corporate functions such as Marketing, Content, Finance, and Legal. Currently, she’s looking for great PMs who have a passion for product craftsmanship - to make a product with care, skill, and ingenuity. If you are interested in a career at Datadog, you can connect with her on LinkedIn!
More About Datadog
Datadog is the SaaS-based monitoring and security platform for cloud-scale infrastructure, applications, logs, and more. Datadog delivers complete visibility into the performance of modern applications in one place through its fully unified platform—which improves cross-team collaboration, accelerates development cycles, and reduces operational and development costs.
0:00 Trust in Yourself
0:28 Introducing Datadog
0:36 You Write It, You Run It, You Own It
0:56 Stage 1: Recruiter Interview
1:46 Stage 2: Assessing Your Skills
2:37 The Coding Interview
3:06 Final Stage: What’s On Your Mind?
3:39 Apply Now!
#Datadog #PowerToFly #Datadogjob #workatDatadog
#interviewtips #Datadogcareer
From IC to Sales Director
Datadog's Lucy Williams-Jones' Unconventional Path through Enterprise Sales and Why She Wants You to Join Her Team
Like many of us, Lucy Williams-Jones' life has been deeply impacted by COVID-19.
Unlike many of us, that impact took the form of a four-day period of time where Lucy was so sick with COVID that she was sure she'd never recover—and a permanent career change when she somehow did.
Now healthy and resettled into a completely new role, the Regional Sales Director for cloud application monitoring platform Datadog chatted with PowerToFly from her home office in England's Cotswolds—"Where Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet were in The Holiday," offers Lucy, gesturing to the idyllic countryside outside her window—to share more of her story.
The individual contributor comfort zone
When Lucy got started in sales, she was 18 and figured she'd be in the field for the length of her gap year. She then planned to go to university and pursue her goal of becoming a sports therapist for a rugby team.
"Then I found out in that first year that I could make a lot of money!" says Lucy, who ended up staying at that company, Quest, for over a decade.
During that time, Lucy was almost always an individual contributor. She liked the feeling of being in charge of her own destiny, and in pushing herself to consistently beat her goals and keep pushing for more and more success. "I was really happy smashing my number every quarter and enjoying the kind of benefits that come from that from a monetary standpoint," she explains.
Ten years in, she did transition into a leadership role and found some success there—but two things got in her way.
First, her lack of experience. "I didn't have all the tools necessary to equip my team members with," she says. "That's why I did everything rather than teach other people. I'd basically just take on their workload and change everything so that it was fit to go out."
And second, her lack of desire to keep living in Cork, Ireland.
"I wanted to come back to London and the only way to do that and earn a lot of money, which is what drives me, was to go back to an IC role," explains Lucy. She did that, and worked at a few different companies before Datadog reached out and she took an enterprise sales role with them.
"The struggle I've had with other technologies previously is that you can't demonstrate them real-time," says Lucy. "If you have an awesome platform like we have [at Datadog], when you show it to someone, you can see their eyes light up, they can see the value right away."
She was excited by the product, by the market opportunity—"it's a product everyone needs, especially as they migrate from on-prem into the cloud," she says—and by the real-life implications for clients. "When I get an Uber and the app doesn't work, I know that if they've got our software, they're going to figure out exactly where it is and it's going to mend soon, so I'm not going to get my hair wet whilst waiting for a cab—English weather, you know—while I'm waiting for the app to reboot!" she says.
Taking advantage of her second chance
When Lucy got sick with COVID in early 2021, she immediately knew it was serious. Her blood oxygen was down at 82%—the NYC health department suggests immediately going to the hospital for an oxygen level of less than 90%—but she wanted to stick it out at home. "I decided not to go to hospital because I didn't want to not come out," she says.
Lucy says that she was lying in bed, wondering what her legacy would be if she died the next day, when it hit her: she wanted a chance to pass on all she'd learned from her 22 years in enterprise sales to the next generation.
"I've learned a lot of skills that have enabled me to be successful, to have the cash to buy a forever home, go on nice holidays, explore, and travel. And when I was lying there, I realized, 'I really want to transfer these skills to young women in tech, because I think that we're an underrepresented group, and I could actually get those young women living their best lives and earning the cash that they deserve," she says.
So she reached out to her manager and told him she was ready for a leadership position. He'd been asking her to consider taking on a leadership role for a while. It wasn't until she hit her annual number at the end of the first quarter, right after recovering from COVID, and told him she was still serious about leaving behind the responsibilities she knew so well for the more complicated and less immediately gratifying world of management that he knew she was serious.
Now, three months into that transition, Lucy is sure she made the right move. "So many people have been touched by COVID this year in negative ways," she says. "For me, I feel I'm super lucky every morning when I wake up; I've taken a positive from it."
"There's been lots of learnings, but I know this is the right career choice right now. I know Datadog will support me and that I'll earn my stripes as a true enterprise leader," she says. "My focus is on passing the knowledge that I've got to other people."
To do that, Lucy has to first shore up her own knowledge. She spent her first month on the job looking closely at the business and her team and implementing changes to help everything run better, and the second month focused on measuring the impact of those changes. Additionally, she's had to get comfortable giving up control of her own accounts—"my little family," as she calls them—and managing outcomes through others.
To help her on this journey, Lucy is also brushing up on sales leadership techniques with a few favorite books, including:
- MEDDICC: The ultimate guide to staying one step ahead in the complex sale by Andy Whyte
- The Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five Time CRO by John McMahon
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
- Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen
3 ways she's building a positive culture
As an enterprise sales leader, Lucy has both the power and the responsibility to create a positive environment for her growing team. To do that, she's focusing on:
- Being thoughtful about why she's engaging. Lucy doesn't respond to emails immediately anymore. Instead, she thoughtfully considers a three-part framework before crafting her response: "I'm analyzing, reviewing, and then offering advice."
- Not saying "I need." Communication from Lucy to her team has absolutely no unnecessary urgency, she says, which is why she expressly doesn't use the word "need." "I try to make it really about, 'This is the reason why I'm asking for it, this is the benefit it's going to bring, let's work together to get something that's going to be amazing,'" she says.
- Mentoring ICs. When a SDR in Datadog's Dublin office reached out to Lucy for career advice, Lucy jumped on the chance to help her. "She's at that roundabout of, 'Do I want to go into leadership? Do I want to be an enterprise seller?' Coaching her to be the best she can be has been really, really lovely...she's successful now, but she could be exceptional."
The 3 things she's hiring for
Lucy is doubling her team size and is looking for the next generation of sales leaders to bring onboard. If that sounds like you, make sure you've got these three traits she's looking for:
- Coachability. "That's the number-one trait I look for in someone," explains Lucy. "It's the ability to take on advice and feedback and adapt. It's not saying that my way is always the right way, but it's making sure that you understand that there are different approaches. [One] of the toughest but most important parts of life is receiving feedback."
- High EQ. Lucy is looking for people who are self-aware. "You need to understand how people are perceiving you, to understand what kinds of playbooks work for you."
- Affinity for pipeline generation. "You've got to do cold outreach to new logos, but you've also got to do it in a creative manner. I've seen people doing videos and stuff, which I think is really cool; you've got to stick with the cadence and actually do it. If you don't like PG, enterprise sales at Datadog may not be the job for you," says Lucy.
Lucy has a simple motto that she has internalized throughout her career thanks to her first MD, Simon Perce: "Leave no stone unturned."
If you'd like to give 100% in pursuit of your goals alongside Lucy, check out Datadog's open roles! "I would love to build a team of strong, capable, amazing, female enterprise sales execs," says Lucy.
[VIDEO 🎥 ] Tips on Selling During a Pandemic
Watch time: 3:40
Naomi Italiaander, Enterprise Account Executive at Datadog, gave us some insider tips on selling in challenging times and markets.
You'll hear surprising insight into how Naomi's background in investigative journalism helps her to understand customers' needs and the nuances of her market.
To learn more about Datadog and their open roles, click here.
5 Tips for Starting a Conversation About DEI at Work from Datadog’s Denise Dekker
Denise Dekker has several chapters of her memoir already planned. There's the story of her time as a line cook at a vegan restaurant in San Francisco, a section on her nine years as a buyer for an organic produce company, and definitely a chapter on "speaking two languages fluently: American English and Scots English," jokes the longtime Oakland resident who is originally from Edinburgh.
Denise is someone who has a lot of interests, as her future memoir chapters suggest, and the passion and curiosity to keep pursuing them. In addition to her professional pursuits, she's also an amateur DJ—"I love house music and 90s hip hop," she says—a masterful crocheter, and, thanks to quarantine, a newly-minted pro at making sourdough bread.
After a long career in sustainable agriculture, she decided she was ready for something new, so she went back to school. "I'd never finished my undergraduate degree, so I figured that was a good starting point," says Denise, who took an intro to programming class that she says "just sort of got [her]."
"I'm a maker," explains Denise. "I like to figure out problems, to be immersed in things, so I decided to go for a major in computer science." She graduated with her bachelor's in computer science from Mills College, where she focused on theoretical frameworks, and went on to do a stint at women-focused bootcamp Hackbright Academy to shore up her hard skills.
She found the right fit for her interests and values during an interview with cloud monitoring company Datadog. "I wanted to work for a company with a product that did something cool, that helps people improve their quality of life in some way, and Datadog felt like a really great fit from the beginning. Everyone I talked to was just the nicest, most welcoming person," says Denise.
And this year, two years into her tenure at Datadog working as a tier two solutions engineer in the company's technical solutions organization, Denise realized she wanted to make sure her workplace was welcoming for everyone.
Creating space for everyone to succeed
Denise is fully aware of the fact that while completely transitioning industries decades into her career required lots of hard work and determination, she had an easier time than other people might. "There's a lot of privilege in being able to do that," she says. "My husband was able to support us for years [of me] not working, and that's not available to everyone."
But Denise also knows that the best workplace is one that has pathways to entry and inclusion for people of all different backgrounds, from other women and late-to-CS applicants like her, to people of different racial and economic backgrounds. "Something I've learned on a very, very deep level this year is that for Black and indigenous people of color, having a work environment that feels safe and supportive is just so important and so necessary," she says.
Denise started talking to a few colleagues about how to make sure that her team's environment reflected that, and they decided to form an employee-led affinity group. It started with a slide deck and one-off conversations with senior leaders on the Technical Solutions team, and has recently become a group with regular meetings and an agenda that is on track to support DEI within the department by helping to build a welcoming environment for all employees, a pathway to hiring for diverse candidates, promotion support for diverse employees, and representation at all levels of the Technical Solutions team.
DEI work is something Denise has always supported, though she says it wasn't until she took classes in college on systems of oppression that she realized the depth of the injustice people of color were facing. "Having more of the details, it shouldn't even be a question of why we're trying to break down these barriers," she says. She gives an analogy from her background in sustainable agriculture that emphasizes the benefit in doing this work: "When you're growing crops, monocropping doesn't give anything back to the soil, it doesn't help with pest control. I am firmly in the camp that diversity provides an opportunity to work with different people, observe different ideas, and to have more empathy and humility in your work."
5 steps to starting a DEI conversation on your team
Wherever you and your company are at in terms of acknowledging gaps in creating an inclusive environment, Denise has a few ideas for how to approach those conversations.
1. Do your reading. Particularly if you're new to organizing and/or allyship. "There's some really great reading material out there that just takes you through step-by-step," says Denise, who recommends materials on how to lead and engage from the Anne E. Casey Foundation, Third Sector New England, and the voting protocol Fist to Five.
2. Network. Find other people who are thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, too, and figure out how you can work together to advance your goals. "The cool part has been meeting people across my team that I had never met before," says Denise.
3. Prioritize. Get your core group together and determine what you'll focus on. "What's important for us is keeping the scope of what we know and working locally to improve what we have and what we know we can affect," says Denise. For her group, they're focused on creating "an organization location," explains Denise, "or a place that people can recognize as somewhere they can come if they have questions, if they want to be involved, and to really elevate underrepresented voices."
4. Recruit senior employees to get needed buy-in and foster legitimacy. "For us, having the support of senior management has been really instrumental in moving the group forward," says Denise. She recommends having one-on-one conversations with leaders across your team or department. Ideally, those leaders would be thrilled to talk more about DEI, but if you're meeting resistance, Denise suggests that you "just keep building the bridges, keep talking, keep finding people who are equally as passionate as you."
5. Encourage everyone. Denise highlights how important it is to create a welcoming environment for everyone to come learn more about what DEI means at work, no matter how far along in their allyship journey they may be. "We want to welcome people with questions. There are no wrong questions. When questions are coming from a genuine place of not understanding and wanting to learn, then bring them; let's talk about them," says Denise.
If you're interested in learning more about inclusion and open roles at Datadog, go here.
