Mining Your Business

How to become a Process Mining Architect?

February 16, 2022 Mining Your Business Episode 29
Mining Your Business
How to become a Process Mining Architect?
Show Notes Transcript

So, you want to become a process mining architect? Not so fast! First, you need to know what you're up against. We can promise you that the work is both rewarding and challenging at the same time. What kind of experience and knowledge do you need to become a data scientist in process mining? How difficult is the hiring process? And what kind of traits do we seek in our candidates? All of these questions will be answered in this episode!

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00:00

Patrick:

Welcome back to the Mining Your Business podcast. A show all about process mining, data science and advanced business analytics. My name is Patrick. And with me, as always, my colleague Jakub Today, we want to answer the question, what is a process mining architect? What does this job even entail and what do we look for in a candidate that's applying for this job? If you have any of these questions, then this is the episode for you, let's get into it.

 

00:32

Jakub:

All right people, you want to hear something amazing? It has been a year since episode one of Mining Your Business podcast. A full year. That is I mean, that is insane. When we were starting out in February 20, 21, we were afraid that we would run out of the topics to talk about after five episodes or so and yet here we are, with more ideas than ever. And it's all thanks to you, really, thanks to your interest in our show, your support and the heart-warming feedback, but also thanks to our guests who are a pure inspiration for us and are teaching us on how to not only become better at what we do, that is in process mining, data science and consulting, but also to improve as people overall. I mean, seriously, what a ride and I'm very, very excited about our podcast. What do you think, Patrick? Your thoughts?

 

01:25

Patrick:

I'm right there with you. Honestly, it has been, like you said, quite a ride to get to where we are now. Like you said, the guests that we've had on, I never imagined that we would speak with those guests or, you know, that we would be able to learn so much and take so much from everybody's experience in process mining. It really, really has been a journey.

 

01:43

Jakub:

Yeah. I will say that if you are interested in what we've learned, we did an episode recently about our key learnings doing this podcast so there we essentially sum up everything that we've discussed with some of the interesting guests that we've had on the show. So be sure to check it out But today, since this is kind of a, you know, this episode really means a lot to us because again, making it through a year and keeping producing this podcast while already having so much to do is a big feat for me, personally. So, you know, we really want to go and talk today about the position itself, about, you know, the name of the episode is how to become a process mining architect. What we want to do is, you know, tell you about what you can personally do to jump on our train of joy and actually become a process mining architect as well.

 

02:38

Patrick:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, why are we doing this episode? And I think the answer is fairly obvious. We have a lot of interviews with people trying to get people to help us do the job. Help us, you know, implement process mining with clients and be the process mining architect at our company. So we have these interviews. And so this is kind of our experience our common knowledge of what that interview looks like, what we look for in candidates and also what the job will be, what the what your responsibilities as a process mining architect will be. So it's a big, big overview of what the job is.

 

03:14

Jakub:

Yeah. And also, I mean, there are people who are listening to the show who might not be interested in working as a process mining architect but are either our customers or people who are genuinely interested in process mining. They can be in academia, they can do anything which doesn't really relate to process mining, such as Patrick's mom, and this is again the opportunity to say hi to Patrick's mom.

 

03:38

Patrick:

Hi mom.

 

03:39

Jakub:

We just really want to establish this process mining architect, which, by the way, I really want to coin as a term because, you know, in our, our job postings we are usually using a data scientist or a data analyst, which in my opinion is a subset of what process mining architect really does, and we use these terms interchangeably. So what I really want to do here is coin the term process mining architect and also introduce you to it and tell you why is it such a cool job and why you should even be interested and may be tempted by applying.

 

04:19

Patrick:

Absolutely. So shall we do it? Let's get into it. All right. So why should people care about this position? I mean, in my mind, it's it's a fairly easy answer. Process mining is in its growth phase. So there's a lot of buzz. It's a fairly new discipline for a lot of companies. A lot of companies, enterprises are jumping board this and they need guidance, right?

 

04:43

Jakub:

I'm going to stop you right there. I saw recently a post on LinkedIn. And I mean, we all know LinkedIn is usually full of, you know, what I wanted to say, but I saw an interesting post where there was an estimation of today's current process mining market and the estimation going into the year 2030, which well is in eight years, which is not so long from now. And it is foreseen to be bigger five or six times than it is now. So that's five or six times more projects than there are now. And you know more insights or process mining. So yeah, as you are saying, it's really a market to be in.

 

05:22

Patrick:

Absolutely, absolutely. And it's one of those things where you get to experience so closely the internal processes of some really, really large enterprises, some companies that are actually very interesting in the stuff that they do and learning about how these companies operate and things like that is worth so much knowledge. It's really a learning position in that sense, if you know what I mean.

 

05:52

Jakub:

Yeah. So basically, you learn a lot on the job because you get the insights of these organizations and you talk to very interesting people who very often are in leading positions of their organizations and who can actually make change. So I would say this problem solving and like the knowledge fountain is really amazing and I can quite honestly say that even after four years on the job, I'm still learning so much and I haven't even scratched the surface of some of the processes that are even out there. Yeah, but it's not the only thing that's really cool and sexy about this position. I mean, we mentioned that the market is growing and for a lot of people, I mean, money is always a big topic. And let's be honest, working in IT and in a data science and in this data topics, pays well.

 

06:50

Patrick:

Absolutely, I mean, IT is where a lot of money is, and especially in process mining, that is fairly new being in the position that we are, the money is a very good perk for sure.

 

07:03

Jakub:

Knowing millennials and people in my age, money is not the only thing that they want. One of the key drivers for, you know, fresh out of the school people and new candidates is also this autonomy at a job. So knowing that, first of all, you can actually make a difference and I can already assure you that doing process mining and being a process mining architect you 100% can make a difference because you are solving real problems of organizations and you can have a direct impact on improving things and eventually saving money, saving time and helping someone. So it's huge. But going back to that autonomy, you know, when you are in a project and you already have a certain experience, a lot of things actually depend on you. I mean, you always have someone to rely on, someone more experienced, a boss or some team leader or someone, but you know, you are still kind of in the position where you have to think for yourself. You have to come up with your own solution. And while somebody can guide you, it's really your call at the end of the day on how you're going to tackle a certain problem. I know that this is something that a lot of people are really strive for and really wants to do and really want to have the ability to even make these kind of decisions and being or working as a process mining architect, can really give you this.

 

08:37

Patrick:

Absolutely. I think this really goes into some of the positive feedback loops that you get in this job. I mean, let's start at the basics. You have your code. When you write good code, it works, it runs, it's quick, it's beautiful, it does what you want it to do. If you write bad code, it's going to fail. There's errors, whatever. It's bad. That's a very quick feedback loop. Another one is the response of the clients you're working with. Some of them are very, very excited and really, really positive about the things you're doing. And that instant feedback is also very infectious. It makes you feel good about the work that you're doing. It's directly correlated about the quality of work that you deliver. And then secondly, it's also these strategic savings that you're giving these clients, this enterprise. You know, you are making an impact, giving them more opportunity to do other stuff with their saved cash or whatever it is that they're doing. So that's another feedback that is very, very directly related to your quality of your work. And that I think is very very rewarding for me and for people in this position.

 

09:34

Jakub:

Yeah. And that leads us into who is this job for and who is not for. And I think the key word in who this job is for is independent people. So people who are not afraid of the stage and who want to think for themselves and who actually wants to make some kind of an impact. I can't think of a better word than independent, obviously, I mean, it's an IT job still, even though it's not strictly, you will not be doing only IT, but it's still work with computers. It's still work with the data, with the databases and with some, you know, informational systems, so having a knowledge and a grasp of the IT piece is big. So I know it's going to be, you know, people who have some background in IT, or engineering, math, statistics, or even some of the business schools where they really learn some algorithmic thinking and some coding, will have a much easier time to apply and getting into this position.

 

10:49

Patrick:

Exactly. And also it's also related to a little bit about your interest in business processes, right? If you don't care about business processes, then process mining is probably not the right direction for you. So this is just one of those things, you need to like business processes, you need to want to get to know them, right?

 

11:08

Jakub:

Yeah. So unless you want to be a consultant or something, if we are strictly speaking about this process mining architect role, we would not recommend it to people who don't want to code at all, who just are afraid of coding or don't really want to spend their time in front of the screen all day long because it's mostly what we do, but also the people who are actually only, only excited about the coding but never want to talk to anyone, because talking to people in this position is vital because how would you solve someone's problem if you didn't know what the problem was?

 

11:49

Patrick:

Absolutely. And it's not just that. It's also, you know, you can code the best thing in the world, but you're still going to have to convince the people that you're coding this for why it's the best thing in the world that you've just done. Right. You have to be able to justify your implementations, your code to someone at some point.

 

12:06

Jakub:

All right, Patrick, let's talk about the role itself a bit. We already said a lot about maybe some people would still like to have a bit better definition of what it means and whenever I'm in an interview and I'm introducing to my candidates the role itself and what they would be doing and what they are applying for. I always love to say this this term that a process mining architect is a bridge between IT and the business. And the reason why I say that is that, you know, as a process mining architect, your first and foremost goal and task is to build up a process mining environment for your customers, which means a little bit of everything really. It means knowing what the customer wants. So that's the talking part, talking to the business, understanding their scoping, understanding their ideas, their wants and the KPIs they want to focus on and measure. But it also means that you have to actually know where to get the data from and you know, how to incorporate their thoughts into a reality being some visualization or, you know, a number representation on the frontend in the report.

 

13:26

Patrick:

Absolutely, I think you nailed it. It's that synthesizing these business processes, these ideas that people have about their process, what they want to see about their process, I mean, because most people, especially when they're new to process mining, don't really know what to expect, right? So you need to be able to translate what these people are saying to you about what their process looks like, find it in the data and synthesize out of this data, out of this ERP system, a process in the process mining event log.

 

13:55

Jakub:

And I already mentioned that in our company at least and also in our applications, we are using this term data scientist and data analyst and also process mining architect kind of interchangeably. The reason why we do that is because I see this as not really one position being a subset of other position, but I see it as this Venn diagram, right where you have these circles and they just somehow meet in the middle. And being strictly only a data scientist can mean a lot of things because also data science is a huge topic. You can work with different databases, with different computing languages and so on. And in a process mining architect role, you kind of take a little bit of everything and you just put it into one position. So you are doing a data science job at times, but you are also doing a consulting job at times that you are also doing a data analyst job at times. So that's why we like to say that these positions are interchangeable because you will be doing a little bit of everything.

 

15:04

Patrick:

Absolutely, absolutely. So this is like a kind of a give and take. And I also like to say this in my interviews, I think, Jakub, you do this as well, that it just kind of depends on what your preferences are, where you like to fall. You kind of lean more heavily into the other, right? So if you like the talking part, if you like the coding part, if you like the data analysis part, things like that, you can kind of lean into back and forth, right? So it's not a clear cut. This is what you're going to be doing forever. There's some of everything and you get to lean a little bit further into some areas than others.

 

15:34

Jakub:

Yeah. So Patrick, how does your daily routine look like and please don't say that I start with recording a podcast because that's not really what process mining architects do.

 

15:43

Patrick:

Well, this is literally my last two days here have been coming in in the morning and recording podcast episodes. But for most people and for me when I'm not recording episodes is coming into work, usually checking emails, right? Like everyone does.

 

15:59

Jakub:

So looking busy.

 

16:00

Patrick:

Yeah, exactly. So essentially there'll be some sort of tasks or inquiries from some clients saying, Hey, I want to analyze this or I think this looks a bit odd. Can you please explain this to me? Or I want to implement this further. And then we go into the data and see what is up what is the cause of the confusion, see if we can explain it, kind of pull out some examples and kind of go through it with this client and just kind of talk through it a little bit. Other times, we are or I'm in more planning or more in the project management kind of roles where I get to kind of plan a migration project with a client and see like to follow, like what steps need to be done, what the checklist is, when it needs to be done, things like that. So more of a project management type of field. I feel right. So it kind of varies by day to day, but daily tasks usually involve a lot of rummaging through code that I've written and wondering why I did it the way I did it. And others is, you know, responding to the client requests.

 

17:04

Jakub:

Yeah and one of the questions I very often get from the candidates is what is the growth from personal perspective when it comes to this role, this process mining architect role specifically? And I really like this question because there is not really a clear guidance on what you can grow into. The thing is that the learning curve at the beginning is very steep because you have to learn the software that you are doing the process mining in. And that's usually already quite challenging by itself because it's a lot of new things that you unless you worked in a BI reporting or some business analyst role before, you don't really understand or have a grasp of. Then there's obviously your coding skills. Most of these roles will revolve heavily around SQL which in my opinion is let's say I would say one of the easiest languages, if you want to call it the language to learn, but it's still a language, it's still some learning to do. And then there are other languages such as Python and we will get into that in a bit. However, it doesn't end there because if you are building the processes, you have to understand them. And trust me when I say it, you will not understand them within the first couple of months at your job. I had these moments of revelation a year into doing the job and suddenly like things falling into place and suddenly I just put the dots together and I was like, OK, I finally understand that.

 

18:39

Patrick:

Those eureka moments.

 

18:40

Jakub:

Oh, yeah, those eureka moments, like, dude, why didn't I know that? It's so obvious. It's pretty cool because, you know, with each process you implement, you start seeing different things. You start seeing different patterns and you start looking at the problems from a complete different perspectives and you just start getting the experience, which is an amazing feeling, because suddenly you are someone who can actually help and not to go too deep into that, I just want to say that while you are on the job of the process mining architect, you start seeing also your interests being shifted in certain directions. And I actually identified four paths that you could actually take on the job. The first one being a data science and machine learning expert, because as I said, since you will not be doing only that at some point you can profile yourself as an expert and you know, you have the data in your hands and you know, in data there is power and it's really up to you on what you can do with it. We have a colleagues, Oksana, for instance, who is building some very, very cool use cases in there. So she's kind of diverting from this process mining architect more into an actual developer of algorithms and some very, very cool machine learning coding.

 

20:05

Patrick:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's another path more of the project management thing, you know, that Jakub and I basically have, you know, are essentially doing right now where we know a lot of the data science part, we know a lot of what's going on about the machine learning. But I think you and I can both agree we're not the best people at this place for data science or machine learning. What we can do is we're kind of an all rounder. We can be stuck into most projects and come out on like fairly well on the other side. So we can manage our own projects, you know, delegate tasks to other people and things like that. So that's the kind of project management thing that you can also fall into.

 

20:44

Jakub:

Yeah. The next one would be the value creation and consulting. At some point, our customers want to get some results out of the tools. So, you know, somebody has to step up, those roles are more, I would say, people oriented because you already have all the implementation. Now you really need to focus on managing and handling the people and actually getting them on board with the ideas and getting them excited about the tool and, you know, just motivating them to get the value out of it. And the last part that I think is interesting, but not many of us take it as of now because we are still, let's say, very process agnostic rather than, you know, focusing on one part or one specific process and that is being a process expert where you basically know every single thing about a specific process and, you know, being on the job you usually get there, like it or not. But at some point, if you feel like that, you know, purchase to pay is your process to go for at any point of time, you can eventually be a process expert on that one only.

 

21:51

Patrick:

Absolutely. And then it will be kind of your responsibility to be the go to person, the kind of people that ask questions to about this process, or especially when new people come in and say, hey, I have never done this, what are some things to look out for? And you being the process expert can regale your experience to these people.

 

22:10

Jakub:

Having talked about these couple of roles, I think what it boils down to is to your responsibilities. And again, a lot of responsibilities will depend on what level of experience you have and how long have you been on the job and also your specific position on the project. There are a couple of responsibilities I would like to mention. The first one that you will be dealing with before you build some experience is the IT responsibility. And that means basically establishing the connection to the systems, implementing the processes, implementing the event logs and, you know, making sure that the data and the numbers that the customer wants to see are in the dashboards.

 

22:57

Patrick:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, then there's also the people management, right? I think that's also one of the crucial parts is as much as we would like to delve into that, we're all just ones and zeros. We're just robots. This job is a lot of people management. You need to be on top of communication with the person that is paying us for this job, for this process mining implementation. They want to see they want to have that connection. They want to know what you're doing, when you're doing it. And if they write you an email, it is your responsibility to respond accurately and efficiently and telling them exactly what they want to know.

 

23:32

Jakub:

Yeah and then obviously process management. So at some point you need to learn the processes and when you are discussing with customers some deviations or some things that are happening, you need to understand what they are actually saying. So this takes some time, obviously. And when you enter a new process, it's usually just starting from scratch, but it slowly, slowly builds up. And then at some point of time you just figure out that, you know, you wake up in the middle of the night and you can just, you know, name all of the SAP tables, including their fields and what they mean.

 

24:07

Patrick:

Exactly. Exactly. It also should be noted that no one is going to chop your head off if you don't know a specific process. If this is your first time, the worst thing you can do is not ask questions. So that's the one of the tips I always give. Ask as many questions as you want. No one expects you to be at the start an expert in everything. So ask away. Ask as many questions as you need to really understand what the process is.

 

24:31

Jakub:

Yeah. Patrick, next question would be what skills do you think you need to have for this job and why do you think so?

 

24:37

Patrick:

You need to have, well, generally, I think some coding experience is good. SQL helps a lot, right? It's not a must really. I mean, like you said, SQL is one of the easier languages to learn. And I think most people can master it, but essentially you need to be able to work with data, right? You need to know kind of what tables are, how they relate to each other. That type of thinking is crucial to doing well in this job. So you need to have some sort of coding knowledge, some sort of proven ability to think analytically about data. And yeah, that's what I think one of the biggest ones for me.

 

25:17

Jakub:

Yeah. And then there is this another path and that's actually the people skills. I like to call it this way. That's everything that doesn't have to do with the data. So that's how you react, how you talk to people, how you are able to manage them, manage the expectations, manage the temper, and, you know, ask them and have some sort of empathy and this social intelligence because it's not only about IQ, but it's also about EQ. Having this really helps the job because as we said many, many times, you will talk to people.

 

25:56

Patrick:

Absolutely. You need to be likable. You need to have people, well I mean, it's easier to give somebody bad news if this person likes you rather than if they don't like you. So being likable, being able to you know, if it's just a few jokes here and there or just being nice and talking with the client, remembering some things they said, it's just basic people skills. That already helps a lot. But what I also want to point out, it also helps self-presentation. I think this is one of the big ones. We are a client facing company, right? We talk to clients a lot. The ability to coherently talk to clients, to demonstrate your work in a clear manner, because once you're standing in front of the client, you're not only presenting yourself and the work that you did, but also the company. So this is one of those things that you need to know how to do.

 

26:50

Jakub:

Yeah. And we don't say it lightly or just because it's fun to say and there are situations that you will encounter while doing the job that are very negative and not everyone wants to deal with. And one of them being dealing with angry clients you know, something goes wrong, somebody gets angry, and then you just need to manage the emotions and be on top of the situation. But a lot of other things as well, you will at some point deal with someone who is not very capable. And I don't want to, you know, talk bad about people or anything, but people have different set of skills, different set of knowledge and sometimes you will encounter people who just cannot solve your problem that they need to solve and just have to deal with it. All kinds of problems or delays will always occur in basically any project. And at some point when you are doing process mining, you might also notice that there is this disengagement and disenchantment slowly, slowly coming into the project, which is also a not nice situation to be in because, you know, it's also your job to get people motivated and get them to the point where they are excited about what they are doing. And trust me when I say that in large organizations, this can be very, very hard.

 

28:19

Patrick:

Absolutely, and it's not that you will face this with every client. There's a lot of people that haven't faced some of these things but knowing what to do and knowing how to act when these situations occur, knowing to have patience with people that need a little bit more time, knowing not to lose your cool when things get a little heated. You know what I mean? It can happen for sure. So knowing how to act in these situations will come in handy for sure.

 

28:50

Jakub:

And last, there is always some pressure and stress on the job, but honestly, there is no job where you don't face any stress or pressure.

 

29:01

Patrick:

Yeah, absolutely.

 

29:02

Jakub:

Yeah. Patrick, what would you say is the goal of the job of a process mining architect?

 

29:09

Patrick:

The goal, the ultimate goal of a process mining architect, in my mind is being able to deliver value to the customer. The customer will look at this through one lens, am I getting value out of what they're providing me. If we don't get value, then it was all for nothing, right? So being able to deliver value in whatever form that the client wants, you need to be able to deliver, that is the most important thing.

 

29:38

Jakub:

Yeah, I 100% agree and I wouldn't even add anything to that. Basically, whenever I feel successful about a project is when I hear back from a customer, be it directly or through also my superiors via email or a nice remark that we did a good job and that we really helped them solve their problem. So this is really an ultimate success that I can see in a project. That said, we will now actually get into the second part of our talking here, which is the hiring process. As Patrick mentioned at the beginning, we are now growing our team in Europe, in Munich and Prague, but also in the states where we are now present on the market. And we are in this position where we are actually deciding about people's future when we talk to candidates. And I know it sounds very, very harsh, trust me, it's also not easy being in this hiring position and basically play a HR agent or something. And sometimes I feel very, very bad for rejecting some of the people. This is part of our job and we you know, we are looking for people who we want to work with. So it's also important for us to do this. And this is why we want to maybe give you some of the tips about the hiring process. And what you can do to prepare and to get ready for an application for such a position.

 

31:09

Patrick:

Absolutely. So I think it's a good idea to start, what are we looking for in candidates? Well, like, what do the candidates need to have that we say, OK, this person is worth talking to for half an hour just to see what they're about. And I can say that some experience in some science, math or something like that. So a bachelor's degree, master's degree, something like that is a checkmark and also having some sort of interaction or some sort of experience working with data, large data sets, knowing SQL, having some sort of demonstrated experience in SQL, Python is a big, big thing. If that's not there, then it's a little bit difficult.

 

31:51

Jakub:

What do you mean by demonstrated knowledge? Because some of the candidates are also asking this question, how can I prove that I have a demonstrated knowledge of the data?

 

32:02

Patrick:

Yeah, that's a good question. So you can have had a job in that, right? That's obviously proven experience. Other than that, you can have a GitHub where you can code some sample projects, things like that. So it gives us a little bit of a chance to kind of look through it. We know fairly well, you know, what are the cookie cutter projects that people do on these, you know, training sites where you can learn Python and stuff. People just upload those things to GitHub and, you know, pass it off as their own. It's fairly easy to tell if it's done by yourself or if it's one of those pre-cut ones for you. But having some sort of repository, having some sort of project that you worked in, and trust me, we will be asking about it in the interview, right? So this is not something that you can just put on GitHub and expect us not to ask you about it.

 

32:47

Jakub:

Yeah. Asking about projects, I personally love this because when you are asked about something you have been doing, it can tell many things. It can first and foremost tell how excited you are about it. Because if I ask you about your master thesis and you're like, Oh, my master's thesis, it was horrible. You already give a cues about how you felt about working on it, about the topic that you picked and everything. And if, you know, you are asked about such a topic, about some data topic and you are already disenchanted yourself, then well maybe, maybe you don't do this, because at the end of the day you would be doing this on your job. The second thing that it tells about you is also how invested you are in it. How well you can talk about the topic. How well can you present what you've actually been doing and share with us the results and how excited you are about how you actually manage to get to those results. So these are the two things that I think are a specific project can tell about you.

 

33:53

Patrick:

Absolutely. And it's also one of those things when you ask that question about what you did here and you know, I'm looking for someone that can go into the detail and tell me maybe even go like look at the code and say, this is what I did here, and this didn't work, because then I tried this because I failed doing it right, they have some experience and they're engaged with the work that they did. And they can tell you all about it, somebody that doesn't go into detail, someone that just kind of stays on the on the surface level. I'm starting to doubt whether they really get the thing that they wrote the get the thing that they were working on. Right? So I'm looking for detail. I'm looking for struggles. I'm looking for excitement. Like, you said, right? The excitement when someone is excited is very apparent on someone's face.

 

34:34

Jakub:

Yeah. Yeah, true. Even though we even despite doing the interviews remote, you can still tell because you are still looking at the person in the camera and body language tells more about you than you probably think. The next thing is actually the CV. I think a lot of candidates are very much underestimating CV's because especially in today's age where the CV is the first thing that you as a as a hiring person will see it's a first contact with the company that you make. And having a well-structured, nice looking CV cannot be underestimated. It tells a lot about you as a person because the way that you structured the amount of work that you put into it and that you are presenting yourself in the best possible manner is big because also in our job, you know, the self-presentation we already mentioned, it is very important. You are dealing with clients and you need to present your work and the amount of work that goes into your CV can have implications also on the amount of work that you would be willing to give when you are when you want to present your work to someone else.

 

35:56

Patrick:

Absolutely. I think what Jakub is trying to get at is if there's a spelling mistake in your CV, we will find out and it will look bad because essentially this is your first introduction to a company, the CV must look immaculate. We read pretty much every line of CV's that we are sent, the cover letters, we read through those. So if there's a spelling mistake, it already tells us a little bit about your quality of work.

 

36:22

Jakub:

Yeah. So I mean, not everybody's strong with English. That's perfectly fine. Listen to me and my my accent. I'm by far not an English native or anything. So if you are not certain about your language levels, just if someone proofread it. Everybody makes mistakes and that's perfectly fine. But if this is something that you are sending to your potential future employers, you need to make sure that this is correct and that you don't have errors in there. Patrick mentioned the cover letter. I love reading those because again, you can very often tell whether this is just a cover letter that's sent to every company or whether this is something that's tailored for this specific position only. And I just love reading those, honestly.

 

37:14

Patrick:

Yeah. Because it's such a more personal touch than just like a bullet point list of the things you've done. It really adds a little more personal level because at the end, we're not just hiring your skills, we're also hiring you as a person to fit into the team. So knowing a little bit more about you as a person, your kind of experience your history a little bit, gives us a lot of knowledge. Yeah. At this point, I also like to mention don't put jokes into your covering letters. Don't write funny quips. It doesn't work, okay?

 

37:44

Jakub:

It depends, I don't mind it, Patrick. I think you're being too serious.

 

37:51

Patrick:

Maybe it's just me.

 

37:53

Jakub:

Yeah, but you know, that said, when it also comes to people skills and soft skills, there are a couple of ques that we can already tell from the interaction with the candidates on how they are performing on this front. And that can be such little things as looking into the camera and smiling. You know, smile goes a long way because it also forces you to look a certain way and just looking here at Patrick, when we are recording this podcast, you know, we are smiling all along and we kind of hope that this is actually translated into also your experience and you know, smiling is for free. So you can just smile on camera and be there. Another thing is just general politeness and the way you speak, and you present. You will not be cursing in an interview or, you know, swearing and so on. That's just not something that you should do. Be on time, you know, be there when you are asked to. These are the little things that can translate in eventually being rejected or accept or at least proceed to the next round.

 

39:05

Patrick:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, if you cannot make an interview, a heads up is great. I mean, if we need to reschedule, that's uncomfortable, but fine. But please let us know. You know, it's just this politeness, this having decorum is really, really a big part.

 

39:22

Jakub:

Yeah. So, Patrick, I think let's get right into how the people should actually get ready for interview with us or with any other process mining company at process mining architect role. As I said a couple of times on our podcast before, I also do a personal finance podcast which is unfortunately in Czech, so you can listen to it. But I devoted a full episode to how to get ready for an interview, because there are some things that are easily fixed and that you can just focus on at the very beginning and that can go a very long way. And what I did is essentially I split this getting ready into four phases. The first one being the phase before you even apply, the second one being a preparation phase, the third one an interview phase, and the fourth one very often neglected, the phase after the interview. So the first one is before you even apply. And I think this is the moment where you even when you have to find your inner motivation on why you even want to do a certain job. And I know there are memes all over the Internet that you are applying for a job because, well, you don't want to starve to death because you need the money and everything. You know, it's fair. I don't blame you. We all work for money. And I don't think that if any of us had money to spare, we would even work because you know why then? But still, you have to go a little beyond that if you want to apply for such a job, because you need to show that you actually want to do it. You need to show some inner motivation and find a reason why you want to do it. And then there are obviously the other things, more technical, such as creation of a nice CV and the covering letter.

 

41:14

Patrick:

Absolutely. So and this is the motivation behind the application is important, right? Because at the end of the day, we as the people hiring need to make the distinction about why this person and not anybody else and if your only motivation is, well, I like to get paid well, everybody wants to get paid. That doesn't really make you a distinctive pick or a choice for the for this job.

 

41:37

Jakub:

True. Yeah. So just getting ready and finding some motivation and getting all the necessary documents ready so that they look nice. They are well prepared, and you know, if you're not sure how to write a CV, just Google it. You know, you will find a lot of documentation on this, lot of websites that will basically guide you step by step through the process of creation of CV. Just use it, use the templates and you can actually create amazing stuff on the Internet. That looks good and that contains all the information that people such as us or some hiring employees are actually looking for.

 

42:16

Patrick:

Yeah and this also kind of depends on the culture a little bit, right? Because the culture of CV's and what you put on there, what you don't put on there very much depends on the location, right? Since we are or I am in Germany, I'm not sure how it is in the Czech Republic, but essentially a CV in, in Germany is essentially an entire history of you. From all your certificates and everything that you've ever done to where you are now. There's nothing that's left out or at least I don't leave anything out in my CV. Just because that gives you a fairly good history of everything that I've done to this point. In the States that I've seen, a lot of people just put the relevant stuff in in the CV. So and if you haven't actually worked at a process mining job or something, you know, nothing really is relevant. So I will get some CV's that where people actually have worked but they just don't put it into their CV's and it tells me very little about some of the experience that they have and that's kind of frustrating.

 

43:12

Jakub:

So Patrick are you saying that I should not put on my CV that I worked as a lifeguard?

 

43:18

Patrick:

You should absolutely put that on your CV. That's, that's interesting information. The more interesting, the better, I will ask about it.

 

43:25

Jakub:

All right. So if you ever drowning, well, you know who's going to come to help.

 

43:30

Patrick:

Yeah, the Czech office is looking fairly prepared for the upcoming tsunami.

 

43:34

Jakub:

Oh, yeah, true, true. Because that's the clear risk in the central Europe. Proceeding to the second phase and that's the preparation and I know, Patrick, you are very passionate about this. That really comes into the research about the position, company, and people.

 

43:50

Patrick:

Oh, absolutely. This is one of those things because essentially one of my first questions will be, well, why the process by architect job? Or why Processand? and things like that. So having that answer, knowing a little bit about the job is big. The worst thing that you can do is not have an answer to hey, what do you think process mining is? The basic research about what our company does, kind of where we're situated, the type of work that we've done, you know, we have to, I know I'm just so flattering here, but listening to a podcast episode at least, I mean it flatters me for sure. But also it shows interest, it shows some sort of basic hey, I kind of want to learn a little bit. I've made some effort to listen to us two bozos talk about this job for some time. So getting prepared in that way is huge.

 

44:45

Jakub:

Yeah. And, you know, you can probably tell that Patrick really likes the praise.

 

44:49

Patrick:

So yeah, mention the episode, it's going to be brownie points for sure. But also, you know, prepare yourself, like, where are you going to be having the interview? A well-lit room, can we see you well? Are you wearing nice clothes? I know it's super, super superficial. In today's age, people should be able to wear what they want. But it's the first impression, right? If I see that you have stains on your shirt or it's old or something that already immediately as much as I don't want it to, tells me something about you, right? So just wear something nice.

 

45:23

Jakub:

It's not that much about what you wear or like, you know, whether you have a shirt or a tie or something, but it tells that for the interview and for the position for the application, you are willing to make something that's a bit less comforting for you that you would ever otherwise do. So, you know, you can still sit there in your underpants, but having a shirt it's just something that we see and it's just something we appreciate because again, it tells that you are willing to sacrifice a little bit of your comfort for actually looking and self presenting yourself in a much better way.

 

46:05

Patrick:

Absolutely. If you look like you just rolled out of bed, then I'm assuming you don't really care about this interview that much. That's the train of thought that we have.

 

46:14

Jakub:

Yeah. And obviously then translates also into how you would be dealing with the clients and everything. And this can go a long way. Moving on and getting into phase three, which is the actual interview, I already discussed this a little and there are these little things such as smile and the first impression. So being on time, trying to make an eye contact, which I know is difficult because you're looking up to a freaking webcam, but still somehow be mindful of your body language and not only the body language, but also trying to be yourself, trying to be in a moment and at least appear excited. You kind of think whatever the hell you want about us, you can already think from the very first minute that, ok, this is not the job I want, but it's fine. Maybe you just don't know that you want it yet because you know, we can't persuade you to actually really, really want it, but just try to be present, be excited, be yourself, listen. And last but not least, ask questions. I HATE when candidates at the end don't have any question because, you know, there's only so much that you can say, especially in the first round of the interview about the company, about the job, about the position itself and so on. And, you know, I almost, almost on purpose don't say some of the things because I kind of want the candidates to get interested and kind of want them to ask me about it.

 

47:42

Patrick:

There are tons of questions that you could ask after the first interview. Hey, do you have any questions? Hey, when could I start? What's the day to day look like? Who am I going to be reporting to? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There are so many things that you could be asking. If you don't ask a single one, again, I'm going to assume that you don't care about it.

 

48:02

Jakub:

Maybe there is this fear factor as well that you think that if you ask something, we will automatically discredit you. And I know how this feel, especially just fresh out of the school. You are just afraid, and you just want to get a job, that's fair. But let me assure you that it's ok to ask anything. So don't be afraid. Don't be shy and just go and ask questions.

 

48:27

Patrick:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So then another big thing, phase 4, what you do after the interview. And essentially this can be a lot of waiting right? Because, you know, we need to discuss internally about what to what to do with the talk that we just had. But one of the best things that you can do is write an email and just say, hey, what are the next steps? I enjoyed the interview and things like that. Show your motivation, show your interest in this job. The candidates that have emailed after every single interview, thanking me and wanting to set up the next one are currently employed, let's just put it that way. So showing this motivation, showing this initiative to schedule these things. The next interview. When is it? Let's go schedule it, is it next week? Blah blah blah. Getting that motivation in there is huge.

 

49:19

Jakub:

Yeah, it's just those hiring hacks that you can use in your favour and yeah, that just go a long way because again, it's the whole hiring process is just a people skill at the end of the day because you know, there will be candidates who likely possess similar knowledge of the coding, a similar knowledge of some technologies. But then if you have to decide whether you choose more or less likable person and maybe some people from HR would hate to hear this, you know, but this is just true. You are very much inclined to hire the more likable person.

 

49:56

Patrick:

Absolutely, that's just the way of life, unfortunately. I mean, and that that also comes to the fact sometimes, you know, this job just isn't for you. Or maybe just the fit wouldn't be right. And we just think that I mean, personally, I think you would be better off in another job. So, you know, it's not nothing really personal sometimes it just doesn't fit. Sometimes you just don't have the experience and then we unfortunately have to reject.

 

50;22

Jakub:

 

 

50:24

Patrick:

Yeah, it kind of sucks and as much as we wish we could hire everyone, that's not really the aim of this game. So I mean, we unfortunately have to reject and it sucks and you know, asking for feedback is completely valid thing to do. And I would encourage you to do so just to get some feedback about what you could be doing in other job interviews, you know, just to kind of get some more knowledge, you know, because any type of interview is an experience. You can learn from every single interview, successful or unsuccessful, and knowing what to do better can help you further on in your job search.

 

50:58

Jakub:

Yeah. So I would just say don't be sad if things don't work out, you can do everything right and still not be hired. It's just life. I mean, it's frustrating. I've been there as well. When I was moving to Germany four years ago and actually applying for jobs, I got rejected from 80 positions and yeah, that's a lot. I kept track of it. It was very frustrating. I mean, there was the language barrier. There was absolutely like no experience whatsoever. But, you know, I still made it somehow to Processand and now I'm talking about in podcast about how you should get ready.

 

51:34

Patrick:

Exactly. And I think this is a very good story because essentially it's just you will find a job that's right for you and that you will like and that you will fit into. And not taking these rejections personal is huge. You know, knowing that you can learn from them and that you can be better because of them and come out better afterwards is, you know, something that you should internalize and not get frustrated.

 

51:54

Jakub:

Yeah. And that said, actually, if you had a feeling that this is kind of a hiring episode, I would say that your feelings are correct, that we are currently looking for new employees, for new candidates, for new colleagues. So if you feel intrigued, just please reach out. We have job postings all over the place on LinkedIn, directly on the website. Or you could actually just write us a direct message on either LinkedIn or miningyourbusinesspdocast@gmail.com. We would be happy to hear your back from you. Maybe this was just what you are looking for and you know, just, just sign up and that said, this his is actually the end of our to looking at the episode and we have a little preview, a little cherry on top for you guys as well because you know that we are excited about the job is I think, pretty transparent, and self-explanatory, doing this podcast and everything, it's that's all there. We have decided to tell you a bit more about why process mining architect as a job and specifically also as a job at Processand is the best thing you can do. We have invited a couple of colleagues, so stay tuned and stand by and now we will go over to our colleagues. As promised, we get two data scientist or process mining architects from our company. And therefore, we got Lindsay Ryan here and Anton Ehret who will say a couple of words why they think being a process mining architect in our company is amazing job. So, Lindsay, ladies first.

 

53:31

Lindsay Ryan:

Yeah, sure. So I think the thing that I really like the most is kind of the diversity of projects that we get to work on. So on one hand, there's always a different process, there's a different industry, there's all of these different factors that are diverse and variable and keep it really interesting while still having the same kind of mindset and the same kind of approach, the same methodology that underlies all of these different problems. So I think that is like a beyond the data science challenges and all of the kind of things that are fairly standard for being a data scientist and a consultant in these days, this kind of ability to take the same methodology but apply it in different ways, figure out all the different ways that you can solve a problem, really keeps us on our toes and I think keeps it really interesting. And then also in the context of Processand, I mean, it's a great work environment. Everyone super collaborative and I say it all the time, but a lot of the times I feel really successful in my own project. We're able to create value, work with the customers, point to opportunities and really make it happen, but ultimately the kind of wisdom and the people that we're surrounded by is what makes all of these projects so successful that it really is a team-based deliverable and not just something you're doing on your own. So yeah, really positive things to say about it.

 

55:02

Jakub:

Well said, Lindsay and I'm very happy to hear all those beautiful things. And up next, we've got Anton here who actually is a working student. So Anton, what do you have to say about being a process mining architect, especially while still studying?

 

55:18

Anton Ehret:

So coming here as a more of a junior level worker, there's obviously a lot of things that I had to learn. And just this whole learning process was so, so nice and so rewarding, going from not a newb but a student that obviously knows some SQL and other data architect related topics in theory, but just putting it all into practice with the help of the team that is always supporting and always supportive, but at the same time, also challenging you. It's just really nice to have these challenges, to have this steep learning curve and at the same time be allowed to make mistakes, have fun, and just have a great team spirit. Yeah, that's really rewarding, really pushing you forward and just makes the whole thing a lot of fun.

 

56:06

Jakub:

Guys, this was, this was lovely and I'm happy that myself and Patrick didn't have to say everything again ourselves because then maybe our listeners wouldn't believe us. So for anyone who's listening, thank you for your attention. As usual, you can reach us out on miningyourbusinesspodcast@gmail.com. We are on LinkedIn and we are there to answer any of your questions. And if you are interested in a working as a process mining architect/data scientist/data analyst, you know where to find us. So thank you for listening and talk to you in the next episode of the Mining Your Business podcast, thank you and bye bye.