A day in the life of … Head of Research, Katya Martynova
If you ever wondered what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a Head of Research in a fast-paced product company, then meet Katya. Today, she is letting us in on how a typical day in this role looks like, what are the daily tasks on her plate, and which tools help her to structure a productive day.
My name is Katya and I’m the Head of Research team at Preply. I manage a team of mind-blowing product and market researchers. In my humble opinion, my team and I have the most exciting job at Preply because we get to interact with our learners and tutors on a daily basis (my team is a bit more than me, but I’m helping them to succeed). With Preply’s rapid growth and research being in high demand, our biggest challenge as a team is prioritisation and research innovation. We’re constantly trying to deliver insights as fast as possible to have maximum impact on the product strategy.
Since we have a flexible WFH policy, I try to stay social by implementing the following rituals: I work from a restaurant or a cafe on Thursdays since that’s the day we have ‘no-meetings’ policy, and once a week I work from the office. The rest of the days I work from home. Twice a week before work I attend a boxing class, that is probably the fastest way to activate my brain before the working day.
Here is how my typical day looks like:
7:00
My first alarm goes off and the first thing I do is… snooze it.
Eventually, I make it out of bed at 7:30am because I’m looking forward to doing everything that I planned for the day.
7:30
Today is Wednesday, and that means I am going to work from our amazing office that is located in the co-working space Kooperativ in Kyiv. Before leaving my apartment, I’m cleaning a bit, feeding my cat, having breakfast, dressing up and then I’m ready to hit the road.
8.30–9:30
I take the metro to get to the office. I use the time on the road to plan my day and prepare for it. For that I use the MITs method: I’m trying to define what are my 3 Most Important Things I need to do today to prioritise my activities.
9:30–10:00
We have a barista in the office, so I come half an hour earlier, ask for my double cappuccino with non-lactose milk, take Nutella (I abandoned all these attempts to build my summer body) and chit-chat with my beloved colleagues.
10:00–10:50
Time for an interview with an applicant for the research role at Preply. I conduct technical interviews and participate in the case study presentations. I love this part because I have a chance to meet researchers from all over the world that face similar problems, and that share my passion of talking to users. For example, last week I had an interview with an applicant who is testing cars’ usability, and with an applicant who’s researching the device for patients with stroke.
10.50–11:00
10 minutes to submit a scorecard after an interview, and get in touch with my partner in crime, recruiter Ash, about the next steps with an applicant.
11:00–12:00
Time to read messages in Slack, check emails, and scan chat-bot responses of my team about their priorities for the day. Recently, I was really overwhelmed with the amount of incoming messages and requests I received, but the “if-then” technique helped me out with this problem. I have updated my Slack status, and mentioned “if you have an urgent issue, please WhatsApp me”. That triggered a focused behavior instead of a distracting one, and now I don’t constantly feel worried over my full inbox anymore.
12:00–13:00
I have two 1:1s with my team members today, so I’ll take 30 minutes for each to prepare for them properly. For that, I’ll check their 15Five check-ins (we use this tool at Preply to keep track of our quarterly & weekly objectives). I add my talking points based on their priorities, and check if they have added some talking points to prepare for a productive discussion. Mentorship is really fulfilling for me, and I really enjoy conducting these meetings with my marvellous team members!
13:00–14:00
This is my lunch time and on Wednesdays I use it for my Spanish classes. Preply offers us a cool perk — $200 to study anything you want on our platform. Right now, I’m learning Spanish with Daniela, she’s originally from Venezuela but lives in Vietnam. Our classes are so much fun, and after a year of taking 1 lesson per week, I was able to travel to Mexico and easily communicate with locals. This is unbelievable! After our language class, I grab a quick bite to eat.
14:00–16:00
This is my time blocker to work on some strategic initiatives such as research strategy, headcount, repository improvement, research innovations, research projects with my involvement, stakeholders management, etc. The exact scope depends on what has been planned for this week or what’s the most burning issue at the moment.
17:00–17:30
I’m hosting an onboarding session for a newcomer. Whenever someone joins the Preply team, and is supposed to work with insights, I onboard them on the research processes, how to cooperate with our team, what studies we conduct, how we plan them, what tools we use, the structure of the team, etc. Today I’m onboarding a new product designer who joins the Supply squad — super excited to meet him!
17:30–18:00
Demo day time. This is a biweekly event where different team members show us what they’ve done, what tests they’ve launched or what learnings they have. My chapter opens this event with some interesting research summaries. I love this part, watching how my stars shine is something indescribable #proudmommagoose.
18:00–19:00
Last hour of my working day I dedicate myself to the follow-up activities and try to make sure all the talking points after meetings are acted on. I have a Consistent Capture System with the 3 primary areas (to-dos aka tasks in my Gmail, appointments in Gcal, and Mac notes) to keep things organized and easy to find.
19:00–20:00
Finally it’s dinner time! Since I don’t usually have time to cook, I order food delivery, eat and run to the DJ class in the evening. And as Wednesday is a small Friday, I might meet my friends for a cocktail afterwards.
23:00
Lastly on my agenda for the day is to cuddle with my cat and plan to go directly to bed… but sometimes Netflix can lure me in and my plan fails.
We’re actively looking for talented candidates to join us in building the most effective language learning platform to help customers across the world. If you’re excited by this challenge apply to one of our open positions!
