"It's a special challenge if you’re taking on the role of the lead within your team."

Meet Martin Wysterski, Team Lead UX Research, who made the switch from individual contributor to lead within his team earlier his?year:

What’s your current role at idealo??

I’ve been at idealo for almost 4 years now. Back then, I started as a Senior Researcher and in early 2021, I became a Team Lead in UX Research. Our team collects and provides user and customer insights to our various internal stakeholders like the Product & Technology and Brand Marketing departments.?

What are your and your team’s main tasks and responsibilities??

Since earlier this year, I’m leading our team and want to make sure that every member is able to leverage and develop their strengths further as well as grow on a professional and personal level. As we recently added two more people to the team, I was involved in hiring processes a lot. Apart from my work as a Team Lead, I coordinate and work on user insights requests from various departments within idealo. We don’t just work closely with Product & Technology for UX projects but also provide Brand, Customer Experience, and other stakeholders with insights allowing all of us to make our work truly customer-centric. Furthermore, we’ve joined forces with our Data Analytics colleagues to work on our Customer Journey Map as well as with our International Teams to extend our user tests to all idealo markets. Recently, we’ve started adding all the onsite user survey insights into our Data Lake to connect them with other data like onsite behavior which allows us to get a more rounded picture of how we can, for example, improve our product. It also enables us to analyze certain aspects that might be too extensive or complex to ask in a user survey.?

It's a special challenge if you’re taking on the role of the lead within your team.

How was becoming a Team Lead for you???

I had heard about it beforehand but then it still hit me: As a lead, you must give up most of your operational work. Of course, you can still take over a project from time to time when needed – and it’s one of your responsibilities as a lead to jump in and do that to support the team – but we’re 12 people now so it’s not realistic for me to be heavily involved in our daily business anymore. Over the last couple of months, I also learnt that the way I intended to lead only worked for a team of a certain size and I had to adapt my style to accommodate the needs of a bigger team. In hindsight, I wouldn’t change a thing about how I went about it. It's a special challenge if you’re taking on the role of the lead within your team. One week, you’re peers, the next, you're their lead. It’s a fine line I had to walk to navigate this change, but I listened to my gut a lot and hope that I did a good job. Becoming a lead is a process.?

What technical challenges do you have in the team??

The integration of data into the Data Lake was quite a challenge but thanks to the support from the Data Lake Integration Team, everything worked out fine in the end. Apart from that, user tests are quite prone to technical difficulties as there’s always a chance that a laptop, WIFI, click dummies etc. might suddenly not work as they should.??

What do you think makes your work at idealo so exciting? What motivates you??

I’ve never been at a company that puts its employees in the focus like idealo does – and I’ve been part of the workforce for 25 years now. Also, my Team is a big source of motivation for me.?

Why should someone join your team??

Because we’re the wildest one! (laughs) Okay, that wasn’t an adequate answer to that question. Being a part of this team allows you to really make a difference for our users. We’re basically the representatives of our customers and our goal is to make them heard and take them into consideration as much as possible when developing our platform further. However, priorities can change which requires a certain flexibility on a regular basis. So, if you’re up for that and are interested in working with a funny, diverse, and motivated team, we’re the right team for you! Also, there’s always cake, cookies, and other delicious candy in our office space. ;)?

Thank you, Martin!

Ready to start your own journey at idealo? Check out our open positions?here .