Meet Jiaxin, our HR & Finance Ninja

From intern to full-time employee, Jiaxin is now our HR & Finance Specialist.
She has a very positive personality and her name means “happy” and “good” in Chinese.
Jiaxin studied Finance, however, has many interests, since she finds the world to be fascinating. She is cautious at work but adventurous in life.
She loves winter more than summer, loves watching LoL (League of Legend) games rather than playing it, and she fancies crime and deductive TV series.

Hi, Jiaxin!

• Let’s start with an easy one. As we all at savedroid know, you are not from Germany. Where are you from, then?
• I come from China and my hometown is Xi’an. It’s actually a very historical city. It has more than 3000 years of history and the city is very famous for its Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Qin Dynasty Empire. I believe it’s one of the world’s 8 wonders… something like that. So we have a lot of treasuries from quite early years. It’s a very unique city, I would say.
• We are always struggling when pronouncing your name, Jiaxin. But we also know that there is a meaning behind your name in Chinese. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?
• Sure, so [G-e-a-xing] is the correct way to pronounce it. But like I said I don’t expect anyone from other countries to pronounce it just like Chinese people do, ‘cause there’s a very different cultural system here. “Jiaxin” is actually my first name. Just like in every culture, your parents will want to input some very good meaning in your name, so “Jia” actually stands for “beauty” and “precious” and “Xin” represents for “happy” and “good”. “Yang” is my family name and it is a Chinese popular tree.

Jiaxin, our HR & Finance Specialist

• Only good stuff then. Do you recall any name that has a bad connotation in Chinese?
• Actually, there are some really cute names in Chinese, like we use “small” in our kids’ names.
• Cute? Ok, so it’s is not actually a bad connotation then.
• Yes, there are some very special names in China — we put an opposite meaning, like a denial in your name. For example, when we name our kids, we can name him/her “not regretting”. Let’s take my last name and add “not regretting” — “Yang bu-hui” — , that means I won’t regret.
• What? *shock*… Wow! That’s new for me.
• Yes, yes, this is very special and there are some very famous people in China that have this kind of name.
• Ok, always learning. You lived in China and even worked there, and then you moved to Germany. How did this happen? Was this transition hard?
• Absolutely, I have had in China some internships or part-time job experience. Basically this is what happened: my husband and I met in our university; after he graduated from his master program, he got a scholarship from the Chinese government and he just moved to Germany for his PhD program. So at that time we were thinking if we were going to keep a long-distance relationship or we are going to do something together. I decided I should visit Europe for the first time. I traveled in Germany, in France and I was like “this is a place where I need to stay at least for 3 years”. After this experience, I realized I really want to explore the outside world. Then, I started preparing myself to live and work in Germany.
• You’re a Finance student, but you started at savedroid as a HR Intern. Very recently you were hired as a full-time employee at savedroid and you’re also, besides HR, taking over some finance responsibilities. First of all, congrats! Second of all, how are you feeling about it?
• I feel very good actually because when I applied for the internship it was mainly about the company, not only about the position. And then, since it was my first experience in Germany, I wanted to see how the HR work is like here. When I got my hands on HR work, I found that HR is actually very interesting and working in a startup as an HR person is fascinating. I get to interact with every applicant and, for example, learn how to think and how to interact with a developer. Different people and different positions have different characteristics, so my internship was mainly about learning and improving and adapting to the German environment.
• And now that you became a full-time employee, what are your expectations?
• My expectation would be, because I won’t be 100% focusing on HR anymore, I will be dedicating myself to the company with more of my expertise. I learned finance for 7 years, so I will dedicate my expertise and what I learned into the company and I will help the company. Instead of taking something out of the company, I’d like to help the company improve, I’d like to grow with the company.
• As you know, AI is a huge part of our products. Not so long ago I read this article mentioning applications of AI in HR, like face recognition, body language of the candidates, if they are feeling comfortable, if they are maybe trying to trick us. What do you think about this?
• Actually, I believe if we use AI in the right way, it can definitely help us to make our lives easier and make our hiring process easier. But as for the interview itself, I don’t think that AI can replace what I’m doing here. A job interview is about asking the right questions, it’s never about if the candidate is the best or if he’s acting like a pro or if he is giving us the perfect answer. It’s about how you interact with the person. Sometimes our candidates can be very nervous at first, AI can’t encourage them to be more confident and to be more open to this interview, only people can do this. We can encourage them to express themselves. As for facial expressions, we are not looking for a specific personality because, as you can see, we have all kinds of personalities in our company, as well as nationalities. We respect and value different personalities. People handle things differently.
• What was the trickiest question that you’ve asked someone in an interview?
• I’ve never tried to make our candidates feel awkward because I would never on purpose put some very tricky questions to leave them speechless or something. From my experience of interviewing people, every time I ask them about what do you know about savedroid and if they downloaded our app, they will be like very guilty and start apologizing for not downloading our app. I can understand that they didn’t have time or they didn’t make an effort to download our app or even have a basic knowledge of our company. But imagine you are in the middle of an interview, the interviewer will ask you this question if you’re applying for this company. So if you’re not prepared for this question, you will feel like this question is tricky. But if you are prepared for this, you won’t feel uncomfortable.
• Good. Last question. What advice would you give to candidates on how to stand out?
• Back to our last question. You can just maybe spend half an hour googling our company and maybe you can download our app, you can check out our products. Because the interview is not a one-way interview, it’s a mutual conversation. We have to know a little bit more about our candidates and in the meantime our candidates have to see if the company, if everything works for them. And I always enjoy a lot to discuss with the candidates what they think about the company, it’s not only about “oh, your company is so good, so cool, I love this, I love that”. We value everything: from our customers, from our potential users and from our candidates as well.
• Thank you for the interview, Jiaxin.