From nonprofit to hi-tech recruitment — Alon’s story

If you’ve ever gotten a text from your mom with an article she says you “must read”, Alon Rockowitz, a recent monday U graduate, can relate. 

This time, however, that article did have something to offer — monday U. When he got that fateful text, he was finishing up his degree in Behavior Science at Ben Gurion University, with no guide or roadmap telling him what to do next.

Fast forward 3 months and Alon completed the monday U program in hi-tech Recruitment and is now working as a Global Talent Acquisition Partner at monday.com.

But maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. 

We recently sat down with Alon to hear his monday U story. It went like this.

So, first things first, how did you find out about monday U?

So the story you mentioned is 100% true. My mom sent me a text with an article from The Marker saying monday.com was running courses for people who aren’t from the hi-tech world to help them get their foot in the door.

I read the article, found it interesting, and checked out the monday U website. I read a bit more, saw the programs that had open registration at the time, and just found recruiting the most interesting. So I applied!

What was it about the Recruitment program that caught your eye?

I recently finished my degree in Behavioral Science, which is very people-oriented and I’ve always been curious about different cultures. Reading about the hi-tech Recruitment program and how much it would be about human interaction — it just felt right.

What kind of work had you done before monday U?

Until now, all the jobs I’ve had were with various NGOs. I was mostly working with different communities like teenagers with eating disorders, refugees, and kids on the autism spectrum.

So this whole world of hi-tech is very new to me, and I wouldn’t have been able to get into it without monday U.

Aside from your mom sending you that article, had you ever thought about working in tech?

Until monday U, I always thought of hi-tech as this term people would throw around at dinner with friends. But for me, my impression was that if you work in hi-tech, you sit in front of a computer and you code all day. 

It was so foreign to me, I wasn’t even aware there were non-software development roles in tech. When I saw the programs for hi-tech Recruitment, Customer Success, and Business Development really made me say, “Okay, this is something that I could find interesting.” 

How would you describe your monday U hi-rech recruitment program experience?

I’m going to say eye-opening. Throughout the program, and now working on the “inside” at monday.com, I just saw—and continue to see—a lot of passion and professionalism. 

Especially seeing my program’s lecturers in action, on a day-to-day basis. I really see how passionate they are about what they do and also how professional they are in their work. 

In the NGO world, I saw a lot of people burning out or kind of losing hope that they can really make an impact on the projects they’re passionate about. And here you see this epic mentality of people wanting to be the best at their job — and I love that. 

Any other words you’d use to describe monday U?

I’d say it’s very practical. The program wasn’t just theoretical, but really answered questions like — How does work get done? How do you get better at your job? What are we looking for in an interview? How do you even conduct an interview? You can definitely say that the hi-tech recruitment program really tee-ed me up to jump into my role with confidence. 

What does a day in the life of Alon look like?

It’s very diverse and I love that I get to work with people from all sorts of cultures. Like, for the past hour and a half, I was talking to an agency in Japan about what we’re looking for in candidates and how we can best work with them.

Then I was able to further work on the interviewing skills I learned from monday U during a phone interview with a candidate. Something I like as part of the screening process is hearing from them about how areas in which they want to grow professionally, and the kind of manager, team, and company they think will help them get there. 

Later today, I’ll also be working on open positions we have in the US and London before I sign off for the day. 

Overall, it’s very, very fast-paced, which is something that I like. Every day is different from the last. 

I should mention that there are so many different roles and it really requires me to learn about each department that I recruit for very, very well. It’s like learning a whole world.

That way, when I interview someone for instance in the marketing world, they think that I come from the marketing world, even though I didn’t really know what marketing was until three months ago.

What piece of advice would give to someone who’s considering making the move into hi-tech?

You should definitely consider monday U and just be yourself! 

Actually a funny story, during the application process, I needed to send a one-minute video introducing myself and I decided I’ll try to be as me as possible. So…I did it in a lemur onesie. 

And it worked! Apparently, I left a positive impression and I guess—as they say—the rest is history.