Meet the Team: Lazar Tomovic

1. How do you like to spend your time outside of work?
I like to try to keep as fit as I can, so a lot of my free time is spent playing various sports. I’m
a keen footballer and used to play at a decent level in my younger years so I keep up with
that through -five-a-side football. I also really like my tennis, so I’m currently on a bit of a
tennis binge when the weather allows. Aside from that, I try to do some sort of exercise
every weeknight, be that my football, tennis, or something else like running or calisthenics.
Other interests include reading in the evenings, pub quizzes once a week, general socialising
with friends and family. The usual stuff. I’m also partial to a bit of Netflix and Amazon Prime
trash – I know it’s bad but it is what it is.

2. What’s something you’re learning or have learned recently?
I don’t know about learning, but I’ve recently started reading The Bible. I guess you can learn
a few things from that book. I’m yet to learn anything, at least I think so, but hopefully I
learn something really profound soon! I should really try to re-learn German. For whatever
reason I had a real affinity for the language at school and I can still sort of get by on my
German whenever I’m in Europe so I should really take a course and try to master it!

3. What are you passionate about?
I’m passionate about lots of things. I’m quite sporty so I’m passionate about living a healthy
lifestyle. I’d say I’m passionate about football and my football team, Chelsea. Though I’m less
passionate about them right now – if you know you know…
In all honesty, I’m most passionate about family. My two siblings each have children (that’s
three nieces and two nephews), so I like to try and help out with them. The usual stuff,
school runs, taking the eldest niece to tennis lessons, helping them with homework, taking
the nephew to football and just trying to do as much for them as I can until I hopefully have
my own one day.

4. Are you currently binging any shows?
I am partial to Netflix as I said earlier. I don’t know about binging, but I do like Netflix’s
sports documentaries – so they had the one about golf, then the one about the tennis tour
and now I’m currently watching the show about the Tour de France.
Aside from sport, I love history, it’s what I studied at university so anything with a historical
slant like Vikings or Barbarians and I’m all over it!

5. What do you do at YTS, and what would I come to you for help with?
I am the Head of Bids & Solutions at YTS. You should come to me if you have a recruitment
challenge, it can be anything from finding better talent to retaining current talent, to saving
on recruitment costs or setting up a graduate programme. Whatever it is, whatever your
challenge, whatever your pain-point – reach out and I’ll work with you to see how we can
alleviate your problems and make you look good to your peers while we’re at it.

6. What one thing do you wish you knew when you started working at YTS, or what advice
would you give the new person?
I don’t know what I wish I knew about YTS to be honest but my one piece of advice to a new
person would be embrace it! Things are genuinely done differently at YTS. We’re all super-
focused, super-hardworking individuals that all come from backgrounds at big corporates,
and we know what it can be like at those places. The mantra here is one of “work hard but
enjoy work” and that’s the biggest thing that I’ve taken from my time at YTS so far.

7. What’s your biggest accomplishment?
I don’t like questions like this, but my proudest accomplishment is probably having achieved
my degree in history. In terms of other accomplishments, they’re all sort of in the pipeline… I
hope… But another accomplishment I am sort of proud of is having lived in London for 10+
years and forged a career down there from scratch. It’s made me resilient which I think is
probably one of my biggest strengths.

8. What advice would you give to hiring managers right now?
My biggest piece of advice and something that I have seen crop up time-and-time-again is
remote working and how best to adapt to it. Whether we like it or not, there has been a
huge shift towards remote work and candidates/employees know this and are leveraging it.
So, my advice is embrace virtual working. Utilise Teams and SharePoint etc. and don’t miss
out on the best candidates or lose out on your best talent. The shift has happened so adapt.
And it’s not a one-way street, you’ll personally save more time to fulfil yourself. You know,
spend more time with your children, your parents, your grandparents, your friends. Life is
too short and you’re not suddenly less productive because you’re sat at home, that’s a
fallacy!

9. What advice would you give to candidates?
Everything is online and digital these days so, refine your online presence. Ensure that your
online presence, particularly your professional profiles on platforms like LinkedIn, accurately
reflect your skills, experience, and achievements. Also, make sure you’re visible. Like, share
and post content so that recruiters can see that you’re there and that you exist. You can also
use keywords relevant to your industry to increase your visibility to potential employers via
your About You section. This is something else I can help people with if they’re interested
and would like some advice.

Additional Questions

Generations in the workplace

1. What advice would you give to organisations about hiring millennials, Gen Z and other
generations
My main piece of advice would be to embrace generational diversity. We’re in a watershed
moment in the UK in terms of age-groups in the workplace and we’re about to, if not
already, experience a pretty seismic shift as the torch, so to speak, is handed over to my own
generation. Recognise and value the diverse perspectives, skills, and experiences that each
generation brings to the workplace, and most of all, take as much as you can in terms of
knowledge, wisdom, acumen – call it what you want – from the outgoing generation as their
skills and experiences will prove invaluable.

2. What is the best thing you’ve heard about that’s aimed at keeping different communities
or ages happy and engaged within an organisation?
There are lots of things out there, some quite gimmicky, some quite useful. For me, if I’m
understanding the question correctly, the best way to keep everyone engaged and on-
board, regardless of age or any other unalienable characteristic, is by fomenting team spirit.
This can be done in a number of ways, both professionally and socially. For example, in my
experience, workshopping with an age-diverse group allows differing viewpoints and
experience-levels to challenge one another but also to learn. The older team members might
learn something technical or digital from a younger team member. And the younger team
members might learn a life experience or a nugget of wisdom from an older team member.
I always say that wisdom cannot be learned, only experienced. So, in my career, I’ve always
tried to mingle with my older colleagues – with all due respect – there’s very little I’m going
to learn from someone my age whereas I can draw from the experiences and/or wisdom of
my elder colleagues and use those in my career moving forward.
Other, more fun, ways to keep different groups aligned and engaged are social activities. Be
that a work night out or some other activity. Don’t forget, we’re not robots and we all need
to let some steam off so by enjoying time together, outside of a work context, you might
enable your staff/colleagues to better understand each other on a personal level and
therefore potentially work better together and be more productive.