Johnny Beverton
In our latest Empiric Insights episode, Empiric Director Andrew Manion sits down with Robert “The Duke” Fedoruk, a respected voice in the ServiceNow ecosystem. Known for his candor, practical wisdom and ability to explain complex ideas in plain language, Robert has built a reputation as a mentor and go-to voice in the ecosystem. We were thrilled to speak with him about what truly defines world-class ServiceNow talent.
From Beginner to Industry Voice
Robert describes the early days of ServiceNow market as…
“It was a time so starved for credible resources that everybody had to make their own. I fell into the ServiceNow because I was the least useful person in IT at that time - they just said, Robert worked with ticketing tools before, let’s put him on that.”
His career has since covered almost every role on the platform - developer, customer, consultant, pre-sales and now working at ServiceNow itself. That mix, he explains, shaped how he sees talent. “Don’t try and copy people of a certain age, the ecosystem has radically changed.” What matters now (besides capability), he says, is “an ability to tell a story… that’s what really bridges the gap between technical expertise which you can learn and getting where you want in the world, by delivering outcomes for people.”
Modernising Release Management with ReleaseOps
Today, Robert is the product manager for ReleaseOps, a ServiceNow app focused on modernising how teams move changes across instances. He points out that most of the ecosystem still relies on update sets, even though the wider software world has shifted towards practices shaped by GitHub, version control and automated quality checks. "We're not going to be able to just snap our fingers and everybody's using GitHub tomorrow - we still have this deep need for automation in that space."
ReleaseOps is designed to solve that gap. "The act of saying these five update sets are ready is a manual act - ReleaseOps takes all the previously manual stuff of literally moving the code, and adds all of these excellent quality control mechanisms we've developed this past decade and makes ReleaseOps the central hub for planning, assessment and moving code between your instances."
He highlights the goal in simple terms: “push more stuff, more often, with a lot more confidence, and a fraction of the labour”
The Three Characteristics of Top-Tier ServiceNow Talent
Robert believes great professionals share three core traits: capability, communication, and agency.
Capability:
For Robert, capability shows up in how someone reasons about the platform and explains their choices. As he puts it, “one of my favourite questions is what’s your favourite part of the platform to use and why?”
The answer reveals whether someone understands the tools they’re using, how they apply them, and how they think about trade-offs in real situations. This, he explains, is very different from surface-level recall. “You’re not talking about, tell me the definition of something.”
He favours compare and contrast questions, or even opinion questions because they show how someone thinks in practice, not just what they’ve memorised.
Communication: Robert break’s down Communication into several subskills. “Can they do a talk back to demonstrate that they really understand what you said?” shows an ability to identify and inquire about missing or misunderstood information.
“There are going to be times in the ServiceNow person's career where you're not going to come to an agreement - can you be persuasive enough?" shows that they can align stakeholders with their vision.
He also stresses the ability to adjust to different audiences: "Can you understand your audience and what they need? Are you going to be talking about nth level technical detail, or break it down for somebody who's not there?"
Agency: "How much managerial energy do I have to use to direct you to do stuff? are you the kind of person that can find the things that need doing and then use capability to actually do the work?"
He finishes: “If you can get the communication, the capability, and the agency, now you’ve got somebody who is top tier - and all of those things are testable with the right questions.”
Robert also explores these themes in more detail on his CJ & The Duke podcast. Two relevant episodes include Find Top ServiceNow Talent (while knowing little about ServiceNow) and Interviewing ServiceNow Talent. The podcast is available via RSS and on YouTube.
- CJ & The Duke podcast: https://feeds.transistor.fm/cj-the-duke
- Find Top ServiceNow Talent (while knowing little about ServiceNow): https://share.transistor.fm/s/83714a4c2
- Interviewing ServiceNow Talent: https://share.transistor.fm/s/53d3e8b6
Storytelling Over Certifications
"People ask me: what certs will get me hired?" Robert’s view is simple: proof beats paper.
"I'm not saying they're not valuable - but the cert is a token of the capability. It is a useless token if you have not the capability."
He encourages candidates to put as much focus on telling the story as executing build: "You have two and only two levers: capability, and the narrative around that capability."
He recommends using what he calls the X–Y–Z formula: by doing X, I achieved Y, measured by Z.
"Nobody cares you can write a business rule. Tell me about what you did with the collection of tools that demonstrates that you not only understood how to wield the tools, but the deeper purpose of wielding the tools in the first place."
He adds a warning for not honing narrative skill: "All you are demonstrating is that you can do what you're told. And guess what? The AI agents can do that."
Lessons for Hiring Managers
Hiring in this space demands more than checking technical boxes.
Robert recommends, evidence-backed questions: "Tell me about the hardest thing you ever built in ServiceNow and what made it the most difficult." He notes that even outside your own technical expertise, you can tell by "bearing and cadence of speech" whether someone is speaking from knowledge or guessing.
He advises avoiding definitional questions to rule out fakes: "Somebody with decent cognitive recall can have precisely that amount of experience and still pass those tests."
He pushes for opinion, comparison and scenario-based questions instead: "What’s your favourite part of the platform to use and why?"
From Learning to Doing
Robert’s final message to new professionals is blunt: "Doing over reading is the number one rule - you will not swim a single lap in an Olympic-sized pool in your entire life if all you do is read about swimming."
He urges candidates to build relentlessly: "Stop reading about a tool and start using it - ten times, fifty times, a hundred times more time must be spent doing the thing than by reading about the thing."
And there are no barriers to entry: "That can be done on a PDI. You don't have to be in mentorship programmes... you yourself can build stuff in ServiceNow."
That hands-on drive, he argues, is what separates good candidates from those who stay stuck. “Reading will get you the vocabulary. Doing will get you the job.”
Building Teams and Careers with Empiric
Our dedicated ServiceNow team connects organisations that depend on ServiceNow with the people who make it work - those who combine technical excellence, clear communication and personal ownership.
If you’re hiring ServiceNow talent or exploring your next role, get in touch with our expert team today.
Be sure to connect with Andrew Manion and Robert “The Duke” Fedoruk on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.
Robert regularly speaks at ServiceNow community events and hosts content for professionals across the ecosystem - follow him online for updates on future talks and resources.
Explore Empiric’s latest ServiceNow roles and industry updates at https://empiric.com/disciplines/servicenow
