Job Market Digest: October 21

This issue: a global company's layoffs land on its Ukrainian office too, a former Mintsyfry CTO takes a digital transformation role at NovaPay, a study pokes at the old "no photo on your CV" advice, and KAI with MIT open a free engineering program in Lviv.

PandaDoc's layoffs didn't skip the Ukrainian office

American IT company PandaDoc let go of 103 people as part of a business restructuring, according to the Telegram channel "Підслухано в ІТ" and co-founder Serhii Borysiuk on LinkedIn. Before the cuts the company employed roughly 700 people globally. Details on DOU.

If you work at a product company with a Ukrainian office, a restructuring announcement abroad is not automatically irrelevant to you. Keep an eye on your own team's signals (frozen hiring, delayed reviews, parent-company earnings calls) and keep your CV ready to send, quietly, before you actually need it.

A former Mintsyfry CTO takes a digital transformation role at NovaPay

Oleksandr Savchenko, former CTO of the Ministry of Digital Transformation's team, has joined NovaPay, a non-bank financial company in the NOVA group, as Chief Digital Transformation Officer. In the new role he will work on the company's digital transformation strategy and the development of its digital products. Details via DOU.

Big private companies keep pulling senior digital transformation people out of the state sector, which tells you this is becoming a real, named career track in Ukraine, not just an engineering sidestep. If your background mixes strategy, ops and tech, it's worth tracking openings with "digital transformation" or "CDTO" in the title at large employers, not only classic CTO roles.

A study pokes at the "never put a photo on your CV" rule

Recruiters have long advised leaving photos off a CV to avoid bias. A new study by resume platform Enhancv, covered by HappyMonday, found that among candidates who actually landed a job, a CV photo showed up noticeably more often than in the candidate pool on average.

One study is not a reason to rebuild your whole CV strategy overnight, especially if you're applying to US or UK companies where a photo can still work against you with ATS systems and bias-averse recruiters. If you're sending a lot of applications anyway, this is a reasonable moment to split your CV into a with-photo and a without-photo version and see what actually changes your callback rate.

KAI and MIT open a free engineering program in Lviv

The Kyiv Aviation Institute (KAI) and MIT have opened registration for a free 10-week program, Ukraine Innovation and Engineering Lab, in Lviv. It's based on a real MIT course adapted to the Ukrainian context and is expected to take in more than 100 participants: students, engineers and developers. Details on DOU.

A free program with an MIT name attached and a real project at the end is a rare, concrete line to add to your CV without spending money. If you want a credential that stands out from the usual online-course list, this kind of program is exactly the thing to apply for early, before the spots fill up.