Dear friends,
As you know Relocateme.eu has taken part in the HR Tech World competition recently and it was a great opportunity to expand our horizons and long-term perspectives. One of the best things that any company could possibly do.
I am sharing our history, plans and aspirations in the interview for Faye Holland, HR Tech World.
Andrew Stetsenko, a founder of Relocateme.eu, a company bringing together the available software engineers in the market and arranging appropriate relocation.
FAYE: Who are you and what do you do?
ANDREW: My name is Andrew, a founder of recruiting agency named Relocateme.eu. We are looking for software developers who want to relocate and companies seeking to enrich their diversity. Our team knows the difference between Java and JavaScript and is proficient in all sourcing techniques (using Github, Stackoverflow, Boolean Search, etc); we know what internet companies need.
My background – I’ve started to learn programming on Delphi, Mathematics and Algorithms since 2003. I’ve got a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering. Having engineering predisposition, I was always driven to create something new, that would be valuable for humans and cause my pride with seeable results. By accident, my sister offered me to join her IT Recruiting Agency in 2009. So I’ve started my career as an IT Recruiter then, combining an engineering mindset and restless desire to invent a new “Human-oriented” service.
FAYE: Let’s go through each of the offering in turn. First of all can you share how the IT recruitment side works?
ANDREW: The reality is that almost 216 million people, about 3.15% of the world population, live outside their countries… and software developers are among them. Tech companies always need new talent and are often limited by the size of their local market. We are constantly looking for software engineers from all over the world, who want to relocate. Our recruiting team is supporting our candidates/clients during the whole process: from the first contract signature to checking how the things are going with our candidates in a new country after half a year. Sometimes this process could take from 9 to 12 months. Our sourcing team is engaging with passive candidates and our data team is working with huge amount of data and provides us with structured long-lists of potential candidates/clients.
FAYE: And secondly would you share how the relocation offering you have assists both the employee and employer?
ANDREW: Have you yourself ever thought about relocating? The relocation often includes lots of stress and uncertainty. That’s why our technical recruiters can best be described as relocation consultants. We help our candidates (employees) with the full relocation process, informing them about property prices, taxation rates, schools, searching apartment beforehand, arranging work visas and even moving your cat. We also help internet companies (employers) with the full relocation cycle and constantly discuss and educate them about the importance of their help to the person, who is relocating. For making arrangements for such kind of support, we have local employees/partners in 7 countries who can speak German, Dutch, Swedish, etc.
FAYE: How do you differentiate yourself in the market?
ANDREW: We are offering a solution for tech companies when they need to find hard-to-close positions, especially if they are located in small cities (not as popular as London, Amsterdam or Berlin). The only way for them to get tech talent is to hire employees from other countries. On the another hand, we help software developers to get a new life-changing experience and a unique opportunity by moving from one country to another. Their requests to Google usually start with “relocate/relocation” instead of “job/work”. However, we have to be quite selective in our tech companies choice, as the first impression from the new country could be associated with a new job. So we prefer to work with the most progressive internet companies who think about their employees first.
FAYE: Why did you decide to take part in disruptHRTech this year, and what would you like to achieve?
ANDREW: Taking part in disruptHRTech this year is a big challenge for us. We wanted to share and inspire tech companies with our idea that the world is full of talent and that more and more developers are willing and ready to get new life experience and are open to relocation. And that by expanding their search beyond the borders of their countries, they can get a tremendous inflow of that kind of developers, whom it’s so hard to find on the local markets and also, bring new energy and enrich diversity in their teams. However, it’s still worth remembering that relocation is quite a challenging step, that’s why it’s worth providing your future employees with maximum help and support in their relocation and adaptation in your home country.
Our purpose is to become one of the top 5 companies to share our idea in a broader and louder way. Everybody knows that recruiting agencies “karma” is not the lightest, so we will fix that
FAYE: What’s your idea of innovation?
ANDREW: Our idea of innovation is in our “Human-oriented” approach and values. Also it is in our business model, which helps tech companies to find talented developers, when they face the task in which variety of instruments are useless and there is a catastrophic shortage of specialists on the local market. Many recruiting agencies are so focused on the result, that by speeding up the cycle of closing vacancies and getting immediate revenues, they completely forget that they are dealing with people. In our turn, we take full care about the candidate during relocation and help/teach companies, how to make relocation as smooth as possible for their future employees. And I am also missing the fact that we have to be devilishly good in IT Recruiting and speak the same language with companies and programmers by definition. For instance, our last article for tech recruiters “Glossary for the Tech Recruiters” had got more than 1000 positive responses all over the world.
FAYE: What differences are you seeing differences across Europe? Around the globe?
ANDREW: I can see that more and more companies across Europe and England are open to hiring their employees from abroad. Although, not all companies will be successful in recruitment of people from different countries because some companies create/ offer only minimal conditions and are not willing to help a future employee in relocation. As a result, the developer doesn’t stay for a long time in the company like that.
An increase of the flow of people who are willing to work in Europe/UK is connected with accessible process of getting work visa, fair amount of interesting technological companies, communication in English language inside the company and in the country overall. There is also a trend of relocation within countries of the EU/UK. For instance, in the US, the situation with visas is more complicated, that’s why many companies are ready to hire only those developers, who work in the US already. Although as a general trend, I can see that developers are more ready to move for 2-3 years, to live in another country, work in international teams, get new career experience and just travel.
FAYE: What are your plans for expansion?
ANDREW: Our primary Mission for this year is to enter the American market and help software engineers get relocation experience in the center of innovation – Silicon Valley. First of all, we will examine/consider developers who live in the different states of the US already, because getting work visa in the US is partially a lottery and a long-term process. We are going to offer a freelance/remote work approach with companies from Silicon Valley for developers beyond the US, and afterwards, gradually turning to questions about relocation itself and visa application processes.
You can find the original here: blog.hrn.io
