Interview with Michelle Pepe, Senior Technical Recruiter at Conductor

Michelle recently completed TechMap and we wanted to hear about her experience.

Michelle's backgeound

Michelle is a Senior Recruiter Team Lead with over a year of experience in her current role since May 2023, based in New York City with a hybrid work arrangement. She manages the full life cycle recruitment across the US, Brno, and Berlin for various departments, including Product, Engineering, Go-To-Market (GTM), and General & Administrative (G&A). Leading a global team of three recruiters, Michelle works closely with the CEO on high-level searches, showcasing her strategic involvement in talent acquisition at the highest levels.

So Michelle, why were you interested in the TechMap course?

So, we don’t have a tech recruiter here at Conductor. We’re all corporate recruiters. But the tech function needed our help, and I had the bandwidth, so I really wanted to jump in and help them. But, you know, it’s a different language. I really wanted to gain the confidence when speaking to candidates—knowing what all these words meant, the lingo, and the difference between various coding languages. I wanted to understand what these terms actually meant.

I think you or one of your teammates had emailed my boss at the time, and she said, “Oh, wait, this might work for you.” So, it was kind of the perfect storm.

And how is it to learn on TechMap with its feedback & coaching?

I liked the feedback from coaches, and for the ones where maybe I missed the mark, the coach would say, “Maybe look at this again.” I also liked how you could read other people’s answers—not to cheat or anything, but as a learning exercise. Some articles I read would leave me a little confused, and then I’d think, “Let me see what other people are saying and what they’re getting out of it.” I feel like that, personally, is a good way to learn. It’s kind of like being in a discussion group, but you’re writing instead.

How has TechMap impacted you in your day-to-day life?

When it comes to the programming languages, I was meeting with our CTO, and he was telling me how a candidate needs to have Java. He started talking about the different languages, and he said, “Yeah, but you know JavaScript’s not the same as Java,” and then he mentioned C++, but that’s not the same either. I immediately thought of the chart from TechMap in my head, showing how some of the languages are related and some aren’t. That was a great example where I realized, “Wait, I know what he’s talking about!” because I used to think Java and JavaScript were the same thing.

And what does it feel like to learn on TechMap?

I personally like things that are interactive, and when you showed me the demo, I saw that some sections were articles, some were different questions to answer, and some were videos. You don’t have to tackle all of it. There were one or two sections that I skipped because I knew I wouldn’t need to know that information. So, I thought, “Okay, let me just focus on what I need to know,” rather than putting more information in my brain that I don’t need right now. I liked that you could skip over those sections.

Well done Michelle for completing TechMap 👏