EMEA recruiter

Job boards -> reccomendation: SELL

2008-06-26T12:43:00.010+01:00

In schools we all learn that all of the future empires were hungry in the beginning and it was keeping them driven to expand beyond their borders (some were more hungry then the others). After expansions there were usually golden eras and those golden eras were making empires happy and... lazy... and arrogant. When arrogant empires were oppressing their people, angry crowds were growing bigger and bigger to do not bring down the empire but to bring the change. Changes in the empire might make the empire grow bigger, wealthier and better for it's people (rarely) or they will bring empires down (most of the cases). Since history is my hobby I can come up with tonnes of examples from Mongolian Horde to Rome, Ottoman to Austro-Hungarian, Soviet Union to Microsoft .... but it's not a blog on history so I will stick to job boards.

Rise of the empire(s)
The ‘new economy’ of the late 90s created job boards. The place where you go to if you want o find a job –> you type keywords, narrow the search and there you go –> you browse the great job postings, you send your resume, you register your profile etc so simple ... :-) Job boards back then were so eager to build up the content and the critical mass that majority of them were under the water for few years giving out postings for free and advertising practically everywhere (outdoor, press, TV). Of course some of them didn’t manage to secure the financing to keep up with the competition and they went bankrupt. Others had financing to secure non-profit life for many years and some of them were keeping on growing organically.

Golden Era
In late 90s there were loads of people who believed that 10 general job boards is not enough for medium or large European country …… of course they were wrong. Today the biggest markets in EMEA have 3-5 generalist job boards but many successful niche services. Never the less internet dream (actually the nightmare) made e-recruitment market more realistic in 2000-2002, making some of the players being takeover by others (like hot jobs taken over by yahoo), some changing hands almost every year (monster) and other having stable financing and no reasons to worry (jobpilot). This crisis left some of the countries with 1-2 players taking over the staff from bankrupts and building their presence sometimes trough acquisitions sometimes growing organically. This left loads of recruiters from particular markets having no choice but using job board x or y and job boards started to pump up the prices (I know a portal in EMEA asking eur 500/posting!). Job portals being present in the markets couldn’t ask for more …. (almost) no competition, European economy speeding up leaving almost no unemployed and billions of EURs in recruitment budgets.

Fall Of The Empire (in progress)
Greed caused the arrogance of the job boards. Some of the job boards’ investors cashed out at their businesses peak, others started to crate cartels to keep their oligopoly across the continent and others became warm and comfy enough to terrorize their customers. Some job boards are telling their customers to move their applicant tracking to their systems because they don’t want to write simple xml scrip to interface with their current system (in fact they want to be market’s biggest recruitment application), others started to increase their fees so they would be just slightly cheaper then agencies and others decided to do nothing but charging for the same product ignoring job seekers’ and employers’ needs. Job boards business is product driven which means you have to be more useful and friendly to job hunters and meeting employers’ needs. Majority of the players are focused on squeezing as much money as they can from the current operations (getting bigger piece of the cake) but they are not trying to grow the market with new products and services (growing a cake).

Most of job boards in European market those days do not meet the needs of neither job seekers or employers what make more and more recruiters turning to other channels of communication. In mid and long term perspective I can see job board becoming advertising space for SMEs with large corporates seeking other ways to bring in more candidates. Besides that future seems to be shaping in niche colours meaning that narrowly focused portals (for software engineers, catering staff, doctors, cleaners etc). On top of the job boards there are more and more recruitment budgets targeting social/professional networking sites like linkedin, xing and facebook.

That said if you’re an investor I strongly recommend getting rid of job board companies from your portfolio. In coming posts I will start presenting other tools then job board to generate traffic of candidates.

Eventful week in Google Krakow

2008-06-23T12:48:00.008+01:00

I was all of last week in Krakow doing loads of recruitment stuff but on top of that I saw few other things happening there in parallel:

1. GoogleServe - I was very positively surprised seeing Googlers from Krakow contributing beyond they day-to-day work (from ecology to supporting those who need help the most) - picture below: Krakow SWEs are playing Rock Band with kids from the local orphanage

2. Sergey Brin visited Krakow office (together with Jeff Hubber) to see the stuff engineers are working on (heard that some product presentations made very good impression on both of them)

3. My colleges from recruitment team managed to invite around 20 female SWEs to show them how we work (and it was Sergey opening the event and then joining for networking/mingling session)

and on top of that I had my work to do so there were loads of stuff to deal with + rich after hours life of Krakow SWEs always keeps me busy :-)

I'm currently running couple of projects on how to generate traffic to recruitment website without using external parties (like postings on job boards or banners) so I will write couple of posts soon on the stuff I can expose to public - stay tunned :-)

Google Krakow in Rynek - new office - new pictures

2008-04-14T10:18:00.008+01:00

Just got back from Krakow where I had a chance to see the new Google Krakow's spaces. New office is in Krakow's Main Market Square and it's in 14th century tenants house just opposite of the Wierzynek restaurant (serving pierogi since 1364). From now on Googlers from Krakow will be operating in this and the 'old' office in Krupnicza. The distance between the sites is less then 5 mins walk and of course bike is the bast way to commute.
Few pictures below:

The building

view from the office

but some prefer to stay focused

mikro kitchen

finally someone to make sure engineers are not hungry - meet Mariola

Mihai is happy to have all of those snacks

I want to work here! Where to apply?! :-)

conference room

Krakow Googlers do not drive to work

table tennis room

chill out

reception area

beer gardens in the Square

Postcard from the Square

Street performers at the Square

Interviewing recruiter - part 2

2008-04-01T12:05:00.003+01:00

I recently exchanged few emails with my readers on the interviewing recruiter post so I decided to add few more. One of the questions below is not mine (and I hope that author will not mind making it public):
- Case study 1: You have to hire 100 Software Engineers in 3 months. How would you do that?
- Case study 2: You have to increase diversity hirings (for the diversity you can put whatever is your target group) to be 20% of the total (it's 10% now). What do you do?
- Case study 3: You don't have enough active applicants via website and job-boards, you can't engage agencies and you don't have bandwidth to source by yourself. How will you increase number of applicants?

Good luck!
ms

Wrong interview

2008-04-01T11:32:00.003+01:00

Since it's fool's day it's time for something serious.
So there were 2 men sitting at BBC reception in London some time last year - Guy and Guy.
Guy 1 was a cab driver coming for a job interview and Guy 2 was invited to BBC to comment on Apple's court verdict so in the end of the day wide audience could see something that probably every recruiter had at least once in a lifetime: Is it really the right guy (Guy) I'm interviewing? :-)

best
ms

Search: Google salaries -> Did you mean: Great place for Software Engineers?

2008-03-04T15:09:00.013+01:00

I noticed that some % of the searches that end up on my blog are related to what Google pays (with one of the most popular - 'google krakow salary'). I decided to write few words for those who believe that all answers are on the web:

1. It's not that it does not happen but with 000s of people applying to Google I spoke to over last 2 years very few asked me about the wages in the beginning. I cannot remember anyone asking me monies question and getting hired. Advise: stay focused! :-)

2. Do you believe salary info you can find on the internet is reliable? I saw few posts about what Google pays in Krakow and tonnes of experts on the matter (usually claiming that they turned down offer from us) posting some completely false numbers. For those who claim to be one of those (or claim to know someone) who turned down offer from Google Krakow - we had only one person turning down our offer up till now (so why there are dozens of you posting from different IPs ;-)).

3. Do you really believe that Google is looking for cheap labor/cost cutting offshore centers? Look at the location of our offices and where are those offices based in those cities (NYC-9th ave, London-Victoria Station, Krakow-Krupnicza/Rynek). I would jump here to logic conclusions :-)

4. and last but not least: Maybe instead of looking for information about salaries at Google try to find ex-Google SWE who left due to the monies? :-)

best
ms

Google Russia - GMail TV commercial

2008-03-04T14:53:00.005+01:00

Google Russia works on promoting GMail in Russian speaking countries/territories and here is TV commercial (you don't have to speak Russian):

Few pix from Google Krakow - 3rd biggest SWE site in Google EMEA

2008-02-12T16:12:00.000+01:00

I told you that Google in Krakow is running out of space but on the other hand with more and more engineers joining us we have more perks onsite (massage chairs, fussball table, Google bikes, Wii, 20+ kinds of snacks in micro kitchens etc ;-)). There will be more facilities arriving in coming weeks (with new office space) since Krakow is, as of last week, 3rd biggest SWE site in Google EMEA.

Here are few pix I took a week ago (shots were taken with mobile so they are not top notch quality):

Using linkedin when working for remote location = building strong network overseas

2008-02-12T15:38:00.001+01:00

Recently I had a couple of interesting chats with my colleagues about sitting in different location that you recruit for.

Majority of the recruiters in EMEA faced challenges of working with markets they don't know much about. Don't worry building a local network does not have to be that difficult as you think - how to do it in 3 steps:

1. Send email to everyone_country@yourcompany.com with a quick intro: 'hi my name is, i'm your recruiter blah blah. I would like to find top talents for position_XYZ and for that I would like to build a network in your country. If you have linkedin account i would like to connect with you and browse your connections (don't worry - before spamming your 1st degree connections will let you know, but i will focus on your 2nd degree connections) so please accept/send me invites'.

2. See who from this site is on linked in and send them invites

3. Browse the connections/referrers/companies and...

...there you go - you didn't know anyone in the country week ago and now you have 1000+ connections just after linking up with few colleagues

Good luck!

Google Czech Engineering Team - Ahoj

2008-02-08T13:06:00.001+01:00

... and another great moment in Google's history in EMEA. We just had first people starting in our Czech Engineering Team and we're gearing up to build great products targeting Czech market as well as contributing to our global product portfolio. Czech Engineering Team will be led by Jan Sedivy who joins us from IBM labs in Prague and I'm looking foreword to things that he and his team will deliver :-) This team will be based in Krakow for the time being.

We're still looking looking for Czech / Slovak speaking Software Engineers, Senior SWEs, Tech Lead Managers and Engineering Directors so if you're interested in being one of the first engineers in this taskforce please apply here.

PS. Speaking of Czech Google -> Tania Le Moigne just made it to the cover of Hospodarke Noviny's weekend insert - here is the full article (in Czech)

PS II - Answer to: 'Does it mean that we can expect more detailed maps of the Czech Republic in google maps soon?' Don't know - The team that is responsible for quality of the maps' scans is distributed globally and I don't know what criteria they use for some parts of the world being in better/worse quality...:-( It would be logic is the criteria would be number of zoom-ins on countries/regions (more zoom ins the better quality pictures they have)

Fortune: aaaaaand the winner is....

2008-01-29T18:14:00.000+01:00

.... Google ... again :-) Great job Jude!!!
Do we have to wait for Fortune to have Polish edition to have a list of the best employers in PL to work for?
So far Google PL topped the only poll we took a part in -> Corporate Diversity Index organized by The Gay and Lesbian Economic Society in Poland.

Recently I asked one of very experienced Google engineers why would Software Engineer leave Google.... and the answer was 'to retire' :-D

Google Krakow - high performence recruitment or simply recruitment animals ;-)

2008-01-08T19:42:00.001+01:00

Despite I wasn't too active on this blog in recent months I kept on recruiting engineering staff for Google office in Krakow.
Google's engineering center in Krakow starts to turn into significant point on Google's world map and it's not only because of the size but also due to quality of the job that is being delivered by the team... and get this -> there was no Google Krakow 9 months ago ;-)
We achieved some hiring milestones and we want to keep it that way next year:
Milestone no 1 - we managed to find tonnes of talent in Central Europe. We knew about the talent pool in advance but we weren't sure if we can convince local engineers to apply
Milestone no 2 - we have female Software Engineers working for us. If you ever worked for technology company you know that male/female ratio is always an issue. Well we're still behind 50/50 ratio but we have living proves that you can be both successful software engineer at Google and be good mother ;-)
Milestone no 3 - we managed to attract engineers from both Central European region as well as from other parts of the world to apply to Google Krakow and with 12 nationalities we're still behind Mountain View/Zurich/NYC but soon it will look like some UN agency ;-)

I do recall empty spaces of Palac Pod Orlem in June but now I feel proud that we don't have almost no free space left 6 months later ;-)

Here are few of pix from Google Krakow from June 07 (there was still some space left)

working hard

.... and harder....

.... and harder (guess who has such a fine swing ;-)).

and few pix from Krakow old town:

back after a while

2007-10-12T16:45:00.000+01:00

yeah, yeah I know... my activity on this blog was relatively poor over last 9 months but I had a load of non-work related stuff on my plate.
I'm slowly coming back to my 100% work capacity and I'm hoping to keep on contributing to this blog... see you soon ;-)

2nd meeting with Dave Mendoza

2007-04-03T11:22:00.000+01:00

Met with Dave on Sunday again and he motivated me to start networking with my fellow recruiters in CEE. ... well I was announcing doing it many times in the past but it's the first time I will actually do something about it.
You will hear about new networking initiative very soon - here I come...:-)

Why is it so cool to work for Google?

2007-03-30T13:44:00.000+01:00

Because we have new exciting travel policy ....;-)

Meeting with Dave Mendoza

2007-03-30T12:36:00.000+01:00

I met with Dave Mendoza yesterday since he decided to have short holiday break in Prague.
We had a long and very interesting conversation on loads of stuff including utilizing text messages for sourcing, LinkedIn cheats, JobMachine prospects in Europe as well as what chances do we have to loose our jobs during bubble 2.0 ...:-)
I'm a big fan of what Dave and Shally are doing and I think that they have a decent chance of success.
I hope we will be meeting more regularly from now on.

1 click answer from Answers.com and sourcing diversity candidtes trough LinkedIn

2007-03-30T12:00:00.000+01:00

1 Click Answer from Answers.com

When being a technology recruiter you need to stay up to date with technology, but does that mean that you need to get CS degree?
No it's absolutely fine if you know how to use the tools that will keep you stay updated. All you need to do is just download this add-on and you're able to look almost anything in word/pdf/HTML resume to see what this technology does using Alt + right click.

How to qualify female engineers trough LinkedIn?

Since the beginning of the times men were fighting to have more women and in XXI this war turned into 'war for (female) engineering talent'. Every technology organisation struggles to get enough diversity staff so diversity sourcing/recruitment is ussually one of the hardest tasks. I recently found a list of female names on the internet (not perfect and not too long but still better then nothing) and I keep on updating it with new names.
How do I use it with LinkedIn? Try keywords like: Mirella, java or Anna, C++, or Lisa and Unix etc Of course not all results are perfect but since there is no any perfect web sourcing methods for diversity this one seems to be one of the best and LinkedIn is where I started but there are more and more other sources you can use your names list with (search engines, metasearches, other networking sites etc)

good luck

Google in Krakow - growing fast

2007-02-26T18:32:00.000+01:00

Sorry for being quiet for a while but rapid growth requires lot of sacrifices.
Just spend some time in Krakow helping to grow the office.... now time of offers comes ...;-)
Will do my best to write few words about batch interviews in coming days - it's a good experience to have.
Google office in Krakow is an astonishing Austro-Hungarian palace - very posh - cannot wait to see some warmer interior.

Another complain about job boards

2007-01-22T23:28:00.000+01:00

I groan a bit and complain about everything but I'm 20th day into my nicotine rehab what I use as a perfect excuse for everything I do wrong...;-)
I was reviewing, recently, few job boards in CEE and I noticed that almost all of the players do not allow advertisers to post jobs by themselves and they do not allow credit card payments.
Bright example (surprisingly) comes from Serbia what proves my 'young market dynamics theory' (there was no job boards in Serbia 2-3 years ago). Well done! I just hope it's going to be while before Monster will eat you (like they did in the neighbouring Croatia).
Looks like there is a space for another interface between customer and the buyer (and another commission). Maybe instead of complaining I should open up a job posting media house and start collecting those commissions.

Fortune names Google the best company to work for!!!

2007-01-15T16:21:00.000+01:00

THE BEST COMPANY TO WORK FOR

I wonder what we should do to keep it that way next year...:-)

Interviewing recruiter - hints on interview questions

2006-12-19T17:14:00.000+01:00

If we say that recruiting is very important for organisation then organisation needs to have top-shelf recruiters to recruit top-shelf staff but they need to have more top-shelf recruiters to recruit more top-shelf staff...
....anyway how to qualify top-shelf recruiter during the interview?

It's been always a nightmare to interview guys that are used to tricky questions and they pass them along among each-other.
Since I interview recruiters for our team I have few of my favourites. I usually shoot 2-3 questions and 1 case study to see what is his/her (real) experience like and what is the way my fellow recruiters think.

Questions:
Q1: What is the difference between good/the best and bad/regular recruiter?
Q2: What are top 5 important things that recruitment team needs to have in order to be successful?
Q3: Give me an example from your non-professional life that shows that you're a good recruiter?
Q4: Give an example from last 6 months when you made an impact on how recruitment works in your company?
Q5: What was so far the most challenging positions you had to fill?
Q6: How would you present an offer to candidate taking into consideration that his base salary will be 20% lower then current one but with potential bonus it might go as high as 120% of current annual pay?

Case studies:
CS1. Company has a strong product brand but is not among top 10 employers of choice. How would you increase number of applications they do receive?
CS2. Start up company has stable financing, innovative product but pays 75% of market average. How would run recruitment strategy and how would you sell company to candidates?
CS3. You work for a company where policy does not allow headhunting/approaching candidtes directly, you need to fill 30 senior positions per year but with your budget you can retain 10 positions with agencies only. How will you fill all 30 positions?
CS4. What position do you recruit for? What keywords would you use to find person like that on LinkedIn/search engine/ATS?

Good luck with interviewing recruiters!!! :-)

So cool!!! I want to be in HR ;-)

2006-12-19T13:08:00.000+01:00

Communities within corporates = Referral 2.0

2006-12-07T22:49:00.000+01:00

I'm more and more engaged in building Google's presence in Krakow and there is a decent number of referrals coming in from day one.
As you might guess we receive number of referrals from Polish (or Polish origin) Googlers who do have number of community contacts in their neighborhood (like Bay Area) and number of ex-colleagues, friends, schoolmates in the 'old country'.
This is a kind of eyeopener for me and shows that building successful referral system should start with encouraging or even driving communities within the corporate. This might be also used for other then international recruitment assignments - let's just take an example of struggle that every engineering organization has with attracting women-engineers -> maybe driving community effort is the good place to start.
Referral is not enough -> we should move to REFERRAL 2.0

Google in Krakow

2006-12-03T20:51:00.000+01:00

After being pinged few times I do confirm Google engineering center will open in Krakow.
For those interested in applying I recommend this link.
As for what Google will do in Krakow.... hmm as usually we're looking for people who do like challenges in computer science so we can give them some of the most challenging tasks in CS...;-)

Monster needs a shake up!

2006-12-03T14:06:00.000+01:00

Few weeks ago I read in RED HERRING about some changes @ Monster.
I think I'm not the only one who sees this service in Europe as poor, over-priced and not efficient.
Hints for new Monster's leadership:
- create jobserve like, contract, up to 200 characters adverts for contractors
- clear up your candidates database - you have so much trash!
- make posting user and price friendly + introduce some personalization
- make your service locally available. Besides of UK & Italy your products offering across EMEA is awfully poor
- where are your mobile products?!
- do something with you UI (again -> jobserve = good example)
Why do I want you to change? Because you're the only global provider and if I would have a choice I would go with someone else but I do not so please ... change.

Accenture sourcing - utilizing brand potential

2006-12-03T13:32:00.000+01:00

I met with my BetterHalf's boss on Friday and we had interesting conversation about the way Accenture does the stuff. I'm must say it's a shame that while Accenture has such a good employer brand in Central Europe it has problems (OK she did not say problems it's my conclusion) with graduate sourcing and with headhunting.
Graduate sourcing - I remember from few campuses that Accenture advertises as a consulting organisation while they do not advertise themselves as an employer openly - there is a space for improvement in that matter
Headhunting - I was surprised to hear that Accenture does not allow their internal sourcing teams to headhunt. In this global hunt for talent I don't thing that this strategy pays off in along run
Master Yoda would say: On your sourcing problems meditate I will

PS. On Prague recruitment chamber meditate i will too

Pracuj goes east!

2006-12-01T23:39:00.000+01:00

I learned 2 days ago that Communication Partners - owner of pracuj.pl is taking over rabota.ua - looks like a good move. I think that there are few other opportunities to investigate I would try Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania + pracuj did not utilized it full potential in Poland as well - where are the local temp jobs?
I'm curious what is happening with ONREA initiative these days - I would expect some integration here.

it's a cool dilbert day!

2006-12-01T13:07:00.000+01:00

ride a bull in emerging markets.. WHOA!

2006-11-30T13:32:00.000+01:00

No matter what your experience is with emerging markets is I'm sure that 'challenging' pops out with every second sentence. I will try to focus in future on particular markets from Central & Eastern Europe (home sweet home) and maybe give you some ideas how to crack into them but let me start with genesis of this 'challenging' situation.

1. Poor information flow - growing up in a western democracy you're pretty much used to good access to information anytime anywhere even before the Internet revolution, while in my native Poland in mid-80s where communistic censorship was strong (can you imagine newspapers with blank columns?) main source of information was word of the mouth. Despite almost 20 years of free media, 50% of population using the Internet still word of the mouth is the most trusted source. How come there is a place for only 2 large job portals in 40M people country? (pracuj.pl and monster owned jobpilot.pl) -> because people do not tend to look for information that does not comes from friends/family/colleagues (my kid-brother recently found a student, part time job trough a recommendation because he thought it's going to be better then the one he can get thought an advert). To get a real life example how hard is it to find any information in CEE region I recommend figuring out the directions on the Moscow tube -> if you don't speak Russian (meaning you cannot ask for help) you're lost!

2. Me too strategy! There is nothing wrong about going for attractive investment opportunities especially when they benefit all sides = end user gets better/cheaper service, country with FDIs gets jobs, investor makes money. As no-one is so enthusiastic about word off-shoring anymore there is alternative one near-shoring. Corporate language is often confusing so let me explain: near-shoring is off-shoring in a location when any moment you can get in the plane and smack your off-shoring team for not following the SLA. Near-shoring in Central Europe is on the rise for last 5-6 years (4 major examples: Accenture in Prague, Hewlett Packard in Wroclaw, Diageo in Budapest, Microsoft in Bucharest) and others do follow. Following players like that makes perfect sense because if HP spends loads of money on McK people to set up their operation in Poland it means that they know what they do. So we will make the same, let's do it, let's do it now!... but my questions is: Do you know where it ends? Are you sure you will find 300 Dutch speaking graduates every year in Hungary?

3. Fast growth > pool of candidates = high wages Russian market is a very good example for that. So you have a GDP growth hitting a roof but at the same time you have university producing the same number of students as they were in early 90s (when Russian GDP was decreasing). When you notice that the barrel is somewhere around USD 60 and all of corporates want a piece of the action they start to raise the wages and lower hiring bar -> in the end of the day you have a part of the population that is making enormous money (comparing to total population) while having lower skills then their western counterparts. At the same time you have bloody hunt for talent because everyone want to have them on their ship. Another example: AD 2003 SAP in Poland (40M population) was making EUR X/year, SAP Denmark (5.5M population) was making EUR 0.75X. SAP consultants population in Poland estimated: 1000 vs 1000 in Denmark -> AD 2006 SAP PL revenues = 2X vs. 0.8X in SAP DK, consultants in PL = 1200 vs 1100 in DK. That's what I call a charm of emerging markets.... scary!!!

... but in the end of the day what recruiters are for ... aren't they to overcome the 'challenges'.... take emerging bull ride ... WHOA...but don't fall off ... those who fall might end up in local hospital and it's not a secret that hospitals in emerging markets are often in poor condition

PS. My colleague from Moscow just sent an email explaining that they have power outage for a 2nd day in the row so he cannot work... extreme blind date recruiting?...;-)

Shally's idea... so simple

2006-11-29T18:32:00.000+01:00

I have an appointment with my BetterHalf's boss who is running recruitment effort for one of big 4 consultancies. She wants to decrease dependency on external agencies but she does not have an idea how to build sourcing capabilities but there is on thing that she definitively needs to read - how to keep sourcing team happy.
I have never met Shally Steckerl in person (although we worked together in MSFT at the same time) but I believe he's one of the sourcing professors.

BTW: According to his blog Shally left MSFT recently and is planning on consulting corporates how to build own sourcing capabilities... sounds like a plan - Good luck!

EMEA? hmmm Where is that?

2006-11-29T17:25:00.000+01:00

When our bosses/colleagues from the other side of the big water say EMEA they usually mean: Germany (and neighborhood), France, UK&IE, South (Iberia + Italy), Eastern Europe + Russia & CIS, Scandinavia/Nordic, Middle East and Africa or even more simplified Europe, Middle East and Africa. In fact from what I learn EMEA region is much more complex and it's hard for (usually) US corporates to understand where this complexity comes from. Europe itself has complicated history that started with ancient Greece, Roman Empire and then moved to Byzantium, Franco-Germanic Roman Empire, Ottoman and Napoleonic wars, Austria-Hungarian Empire, Raise of Russia's Tsars, 3rd Reich and soviet domination and all of those historical events created specific place on Earth that is absurd and hard to understand for anyone from outside not to mention that a lot of Europeans don't understand that either.
What I'm trying to say is that corporates, if they want to be successful in their operations have to get to learn the territory better then putting everything in one EMEA basket. The same applies to recruiters working in this challenging geography.
My recommendation is as follows learn about the geography you work with, learn about it's history, review the few recent headlines to know what is happening there then go for a gold!
I know that it might sound stupid or at least naive to spend time reading about Austria if what you need is a DBA that is willing to work in Vienna but from my experience it's very helpful in a long run.
Good luck
PS. Taking into consideration how many recruiters I know are after political sciences/journalism I think that they might have basic geography knowledge but no matter what I always have map of E MEA in front of me...;-)

first post - welcome!

2006-11-29T17:04:00.000+01:00

I'm a recruiter with 7+ years of experience in IT recruitment in EMEA. Over my career I worked on both sides of the fence with 20+ markets in EMEA so I have some overview of the industry and day-to-day job.
I created this blog to share the best practices in recruitment in EMEA region, things I figured out myself and tips & trick I learned from the others.