Our founder Marco Pincho spoke with Fabian Sokoll from globaldatanet, a German company that builds and optimizes cloud-native applications on AWS using DevOps. For Sprint CV, globaldatanet is more than a client: there is a great relationship of trust, feedback, and transparency. Whenever needed, they are there for each other.

We’ve discussed globaldatanet business and future plans, as well as how Sprint CV helps their team to be more efficient and focus on their growth.

Marco Pincho: Hi Fabian, thank you for making time to speak to us. Can you tell us about globaldatanet and how is your business going? I’ve heard that you opened a new office in Serbia. It seems like this hectic period is not stopping globaldatanet from thriving.

Fabian Sokoll: Hi Marco! Yes, we got used to this new situation but, of course, it was challenging in the beginning. We kept on growing and we decided to move to Serbia. In general, Serbia is a super exciting country, with a lot of IT talents living there. AWS technologies are also increasing so we decided that this was a good place for our first foreign location. So now we have offices in Hamburg, Berlin, and Belgrade.

The Sprint CV experience

Marco Pincho: You are basically opening a new office per year. It sounds challenging to maintain a harmonized culture and you seem to be doing a great job! So, expanding so fast you realized you had a problem with the CVs. Can you explain how your collaboration with Sprint CV started?

Fabian Sokoll: At the time, our CEO, Marc Schröter tried to find a solution to manage our CVs automatically, since we would like to make it easier for the team. Marc came across Sprint CV and was very impressed from the beginning.

Marco: Our first meetings were very easy, I must say. We brainstormed on how to improve your existing template, maintain the structure, and include the skills report. The communication between us was clear and fast. How is it going so far? Are the consultants cooperative in keeping their CVs updated?

Fabian Sokoll: In general, yes. On my side, I check the profiles from time to time and, if I notice there is an entry missing, I ask them to update it. We implemented the Sprint CV update process in our typical structures so that when we hire a new colleague, one of the onboarding tasks is to create the Sprint CV profile with past experience. Also, when a project ends, we ask them to update it too. This way, we ensure the profile is always updated. Sometimes I have to remember but I guess it’s quite normal.

Marco Pincho: There was a time you needed a new template – and it was a very urgent request and we managed to help you very quickly. How is the implementation going?

Fabian Sokoll: It’s going very well. This new template was created by you overnight so in the morning after we had a perfectly implemented second template, which was more than we expected. We were super happy to adjust all our CVs to this new template.

Marco Pincho: Are you already using the multi-language feature? Generating CVs in English and German?

Fabian Sokoll: We are mostly using it in English for now.

Marco Pincho: Can you imagine yourself going back to the paper and updating word documents?

Fabian Sokoll: No, never again. Before we used Google Docs to manage our company profiles but there are, of course, many benefits of using a constant framework. For example, in Google docs or Word, if you change a table or paragraph, the file will not look the same. With Sprint CV, you just type the information and it updates automatically. Also, you can add the skills and technologies and it adds it automatically – so consultants don’t have to do it themselves. Also, it is really useful to have a suggested list of typical services we use, making the whole process easier.

Marco Pincho: Having a profile pre-populated from the parsing was one of our main goals so that you can save more time. We know that you are also using the talent report, which gives the big picture of the skills of your team or the full company and making hiring decisions based on this data. Are you also using advanced search?

Fabian Sokoll: Actually, not yet. We mostly use the talent report to understand the skills of our consultants.

globaldatanet – next steps

Marco Pincho: Regarding globaldatanet, what are your plans for the short-term future?

Fabian Sokoll: Right now we have 21 people on the team. Our team in Hamburg is fine, we definitely want to grow in Berlin and Serbia – expand them to the size which we have in Hamburg right now. So around 10 more employees would be the goal. Maybe it’s too ambitious, but we will see.

Marco Pincho: What about AWS implementation, are there a lot of demands?

Fabian Sokoll: In general it’s been quite good. Right now we are working on some super exciting projects and developing marketing strategies to focus on specific industries, such as logistics.

Marco Pincho: And with Covid, logistics is growing a lot, everyone orders online which is a big boost for the economy.

Fabian Sokoll: Yes, the demand it’s definitely growing especially for cloud, not only AWS but in general, still on the rise.

Marco: Are you currently hiring?

Fabian Sokoll: We are always open-minded especially in AWS Cloud Developers or AWS Cloud Engineers. People can check our Careers page and we are also very active on LinkedIn and social media as well. The easiest way is just to apply directly or just reach out to either me or Marc directly.

Marco Pincho: I can see you are very active on social media. Between posting about AWS and beer, it’s a quite fun combination and shows your company culture, showing that there are times for work and others to relax and have fun. In terms of clients, if they need help with AWS setup, optimizing their business in general, and move it to the cloud, how does globaldatanet help?

Fabian Sokoll: Mostly we are building and optimizing cloud-native applications but also immersion days, which are workshops for external customers. We have the status of AWS well-architected framework partners so that we can also review the architecture in terms of the best practices and design principles.

Marco Pincho: Awesome, thank you so much for your feedback and your time here.

To know more about globaldatanet, you can visit their website and social media channels:

Linkedin

Instagram