RSS FEED Who said there are no Jobs available? Start-ups are always recruiting!

Despite all the talk of unemployment, there are still lots of unfilled job vacancies in Estonia. The managers of three Estonian start-up companies (two of them from Tehnopol) describe how they are desperately looking for people and how all this can be a real headache.

LESSON ONE:

"The best candidates: morgue vehicle driver and sex shop salesperson"

Heikki Haldre (pictured) is the founder of start-up company Massi Miliano (Fits.me) which has received several awards. This company is developing technology for virtual fitting rooms and robot mannequins, and plans to hire several new employees this year.

"In the autumn we were looking for an employee from Estonia - we were expecting an ability to learn but not expert knowledge of our narrow field. The position was advertised as 'assistant'. Of course we placed ads on the Estonian CV web portals; we also advertised on Facebook and had a nice big advertisement in the Äripäev newspaper as well.

 The job advertisement stated: 'We are looking for a smart and creative person with a very good command of the English language, and enough confidence to communicate with major clothing brands and research institutions around the world. In your capacity as assistant, you will help prepare for meetings, search for financial figures about various companies, conduct surveys, and manage documents and communication within the organisation".

Considering the current economic situation, we were expecting a lot of candidates, but this was not the case. We eventually found our employee via the Facebook ad. But the three best candidates said their previous jobs were: a) a morgue vehicle driver - transporting the deceased; b) a sex shop salesperson; and c) a door-to-door book salesperson in the USA.

These were also the three smartest people with the most open minds, and those that took the most care in following the rules for applying. Most of the applicants apparently didn't read any of the requirements and just sent in their CVs without any of the other paperwork we asked for. At that point, there were only about fifty positions with the same qualification requirements on offer in the job search portals. A thought came to mind: if I was unemployed and my 'job' was looking for a job from 7am to 11pm, then I would actively work towards that goal.

No, our requirements were not too high. I have the following recommendations to job seekers in Estonia: please read your CVs through before sending them out. Typing errors will mean immediate rejection. Also read through the job ad carefully. If an accompanying letter is requested there, then write that letter - without typing errors. If a one-page accompanying letter is requested, then don't write a two-page one.

But as for the foreign labour force, if you want to make a product that will be used by the rest of the world and sold outside Estonia, then you have to have staff who are also outside Estonia. For this, we use head-hunters who are located in the regions where we are looking for staff.

Estonia is actually not a very good place for a technology start-up company. The region lacks a strong mentoring network, so start-ups with a wider scope than just Estonia, Latvia and Finland will remain stuck in their own habits and work culture." 

LESSON TWO:

"Finding the right employee takes six months"

Kristi Hakkaja (pictured) is a board member of the growing company Oskando, and is responsible for its sales and exports. Oskando manufactures GSM and GPS equipment and offers telematics services, like vehicle monitoring, for example.

"A technology company always has difficulty finding engineers and technical support personnel, especially if you want someone with experience in your field. This is why we train many of our staff ourselves.

Over the years, we have regularly employed university students, and in a couple of years we have trained them so that their profile suits our company. On the other hand, if we do have a need for someone with experience, we often spend six months just looking for the right candidate.

It is also difficult to find salespeople. A new member of staff can get fully up to speed with all our products in about six months. Finding a salesperson in the field of technology who also has practical export experience has been one of the hardest tasks, but we have now put together quite a good team already.

One of the most complex tasks has been working with a foreign team. At one point we had a development unit in Lithuania and we went through all the usual issues with remote working and cultural conflicts. However, this experience was very valuable in many ways.

An international company cannot function without international personnel. It is straightforward to have staff who speak the same language, and it is equally straightforward to do business only in Estonia. However, if a company wants to do business outside Estonia, it has to be able to move out of that comfort zone. And this is obviously not easy. Of course, all these people don't have to be physically located in Estonia - it depends very much on their job; it is better if salespeople are not located here. It gives me great pleasure to see that several Estonian companies now also have foreign employees; for me, this reflects their understanding of international business.

Estonian technology companies are mostly lacking engineers with specific qualifications - not so much in product development, but rather in product design. By product design I mean the final 10-20 percent of the development process when the prototype becomes a scalable and fully-designed sales item. There is very little skill and experience of this kind in Estonia.

Estonia also lacks good export sales staff, but no technology start-up will be able to stand on its own two feet without them.

For our team, we are looking for a technical support manager with experience, who will help us take our current technical support system to a new level with operational support for an international sales network. This role presents an especially big challenge, because the suitable candidate will need to have very good knowledge of both hardware and software, and also be skilled at managing a team, building processes and conducting international technical training in the English language."

LESSON THREE:

"It's easy to find staff; it's much harder to find good staff "

Alari Aho (pictured) is the founder of Apprise, a software development company. This enterprise seems to be constantly and actively developing the time tracking programme Toggl.com and other products, so there is always a demand for intelligent employees.

"It's usually not a huge problem to find staff. It's much harder to find good staff. Our experience in hiring people has been like panning for gold - constantly trying to find the 'right' candidate among a large number of people.

Campaigns to find the right people have not had much success; instead, we have tried to be actively on the lookout for staff all the time.

Entrepreneurs who invite people to work in Estonia, especially those in the knowledge industry, deserve much kudos! Alari Aho says: "One example was when we found an American marketing executive via AIESEC, and we'll keep using that channel in the future.

At present, the problem facing start-ups seems to be finding customers, at least in my circle of acquaintances. Few are engaged in active hiring.

Specifically though, we are looking for someone whose native language is English, for the position of Customer Management Specialist for Toggl.com. During the selection process, we give the candidates simple tasks to conduct on-site within 10 minutes. Mostly they cope, but we have had some funny situations as well.

One job applicant from abroad stared at the task for a long time and in the end just held his head in his hands and said: 'Oh, my head, my head is aching!' Before that, this person's performance and CV had been very persuasive and of excellent quality. A job offer was not made at that time, however."

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