By Yaroslav Radinsky
CEO at RASA.pro tg – @radinskiy
The text is published with the permission of the author.
Link to original text is here.

I’ll tell you why we hired such an employee and what came out of it. About the battle with headhunters, resourceful pimps, and unconventional team-building.

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In the photo: Kristina Kukhtina. Photographer – Evgeny Pyankov.

My name is Yaroslav, and I am the CEO of the digital agency RASA based in Khabarovsk/Russia. We specialize in creating websites, applications, configuring CRM, and advertising promotion in the Russian Far East.

How we looked for a Go-go dancer or stunt marketing in IT industry

Recently, on a hiring platform, we posted a job opening for a GO-GO dancer for our agency.

The idea behind hiring an employee for this position was to bring fresh perspectives and approaches to our work, regularly boosting the team’s motivation. The concept is undoubtedly innovative, but we are also a company with a young and dynamic team.

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Everyone would have benefited from this idea:

For our designers and UX researchers, it would be an unconventional source of inspiration for new solutions. For developers, a wonderful assistant in tackling complex code and a means of relaxation after a challenging workday. One of the requirements for the job was an understanding of code terminology and the ability to visually interpret it.

And for the team as a whole, this person would be a friendly partner, the office mascot, and someone who makes you want to stay at your workplace longer and even invite friends to work – a dream scenario from any manager’s perspective. Moreover, the art of dance itself is an underestimated tool for work, especially in the form of contemporary dance.

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“I imagined working in IT differently.”

One of the main values of our team is caring for each other. Both programmers and all employees, in general, can get tired or even experience burnout, which inevitably affects work processes and potentially the team spirit. Therefore, relaxation and recreation are no less of a priority for us than the work itself.

Previously, RASA had unconventional specialists visit the office, such as a breathing techniques coach. As a team, we gathered in our relaxation room in the morning, turned off the lights, and practiced proper breathing in complete darkness to set the soul and body for a productive and energetic day, charged with positive energy. We also had a yoga instructor come to help unlock the team’s full potential through practices and, quite simply, strengthen team building.

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From time to time, as a team, we play poker, board games, and have a regular tradition of movie nights (usually on Friday evenings, but sometimes on Thursday or Wednesday). The team even votes on the movie they’ll watch. We have a ping pong table in the office where you can hit some balls during lunch, although this is hardly surprising to anyone. Also, every Friday at 5:30 PM, we have a meetup where the team shares experiences on productivity, work, and ways to improve their lives inside and outside the office.

In our understanding, it is crucial to see employees not just as workers but as a real team, where human needs are valued alongside their experience and skills. This requires time, organization, and money, but it makes us who we are.

And in our view, having a resident GO-GO dancer is one way to support the established corporate culture. At the beginning of the year, I provided details about what our team does outside of work and why the agency means much more to the team than just a workplace.

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What keeps young talents in the Far East?
The edge of the world, low salaries, and what is there to find at all—this is roughly what people from the central part of Russia think when it comes to us. Using the example of employees in a digital agency, let’s explore why skilled professionals choose to stay here and not move to larger cities.

But let’s get back to the job opening: after its publication, some time passed, and for some reason, local media and public groups started writing about it. Then, my colleagues and acquaintances noticed it. I received messages in private and via email with content along the following lines.

This is genius!

Is everything okay there?

Should I break into IT?

To be honest, I was a bit surprised by such a resonance: a regular job opening meant to address production tasks suddenly became news and quickly left Khabarovsk, making its way into larger media outlets.

Publications in local media and not only about our vacancy.

I was even invited to the radio, and Moscow-based news portals reached out for interviews to have me share more details. Well, it’s time to share them with you too.

PR campaign

Or, damn it, fake news.
I suppose you’ve already grasped that our job opening is an atypical PR campaign, which, to my delight, worked out as planned.

The idea struck me on December 14th. It didn’t happen spontaneously; I was exploring ways to advertise our agency. It’s always a significant budget and a major hassle for companies like ours. After all, we operate in the performance marketing sphere, where everything is measured in quantitative terms: we attracted so many leads, brought in so many clients, reduced the number of abandoned carts, sold 250 million worth in a month, and so on. And all agencies say the same thing: that they deliver many results for little money.

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At this point, a thought occurred to me: advertising is like buying love. Today you pay, and everyone wants you, but tomorrow the budget is gone, and you find yourself somewhere behind the scenes.

Then I remembered that besides advertising, there’s PR.
But I’m not familiar with it, and it’s not my strong suit. I’ve never been a journalist, a professional creator, or someone who knows how to create news hooks (or maybe I’m too self-critical). I always thought that the ideas that came to me were too straightforward, not very useful, and not worth trying to unfold. But that evening, I wanted to test a hypothesis that seemed quite unconventional.

News also appeared in Telegram groups.

Of course, I’m talking about the vacancy with the dancer.
I was dealing with the routine: browsing through job listings on HeadHunter and working on recruitment – currently, we’re in search of an HR manager, so I’m handling personnel matters for now. While reviewing profiles of analysts, programmers, and HR professionals, I suddenly felt the urge to see someone extraordinary, a specialist that no other company has.

And why not a dancer?

I immediately envisioned the reaction of those around to such a prank. Here’s an IT company, and they’re looking for a GO-GO specialist, and it’s definitely not about the Go programming language. Any regional media outlet would pay attention to this – and where there’s resonance in regional media, the news quickly spreads further, across the entire internet.

Many might believe that IT professionals have become so spoiled that they don’t know how to indulge themselves anymore (which, in reality, doesn’t resemble the truth anymore, but who needs this dull reality?). Plus, when there’s a component of sex and cheekiness in PR, it only amplifies its effect. The idea seemed good to me, with a budget of only 1400 rubles (the cost of posting the vacancy), and I decided to take the risk.

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But first, I sought advice from someone who deals with similar creative things – it was interesting to hear an opinion from an outsider’s perspective.

Testing is necessary. But, unfortunately, I didn’t come up with this.

On the other end of the line.

I took a deep breath, posted the job opening, and then sent it to a couple of acquaintances for them to check it out.

A few hours later, I saw a post about the vacancy in a regional community on social media. After that, information started coming in that the link to it was circulating in chats among employees of IT companies, various banks, 2GIS offices, and so on. My inbox quickly filled with messages from many of my colleagues and acquaintances.

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Some expressed respect for excellent PR, while others didn't quite catch on and wrote that it was a very bold job opening.

In connection with this, quite a few people wanted to join the commission for selecting the new employee.

Responses to the vacancy on HeadHunter spiked sharply. However, 80% were, of course, programmers who wrote that our company is solid, and they wished to join us in the office. Yet, among the responses, there were also very relevant ones, especially from the local community: one girl prepared a resume very well, and it was evident that it was crafted directly in line with the job requirements.

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From the resume for the position of Go-Go dancer in the IT team: “I inspire people, charge them with joy, I play the crocodile well.”

Moreover, an enterprising individual named Artem (originally from Komsomolsk-on-Amur) contacted me, proposing to regularly supply girls for a percentage. He even sent their profiles with photos and videos – the guy was geared towards establishing serious business relations. I assume he still hasn’t quite grasped the essence of our initiative.

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Of course, very few channels and media outlets explicitly mentioned the name of our agency. However, the address (Dzerzhinskogo 52) was visible in the vacancy screenshots, and the city was always specified, which contributed to the success of our PR campaign. The screenshots spread across a vast number of chats, channels, and communities, and people started googling to find out more about this company.

Without exaggeration, our website traffic increased approximately 50 times. We started receiving kind and warm letters of respect from literally everywhere, even from CIS countries. Some simply wrote “you guys are awesome,” while others said that we created the perfect festive atmosphere.

Cover letter: “I don’t know what your plan is, but you definitely created a festive atmosphere in the office.”

Cover letter: “Brilliant! We need to put this idea into circulation!”

Cover letter: “With dancing code and fun!”

It wasn’t without its challenges, either.

And problems did arise with the HeadHunter website – our vacancy started getting blocked. When a significant traffic influx hit the job opening (this happened on the 19th, a Tuesday), HH algorithms likely perceived it as a DDoS attack or some bot influx, so they took the vacancy down from publication. No money was deducted in the process.

The problem was not too complicated to solve – I simply clicked the “repost” button, and the vacancy returned to its place. However, on Thursday, the vacancy was blocked again, and the HH support team contacted me – they demanded the complete removal of the job opening from the site, referring to clauses in the agreement stating the inadmissibility of content that could harm the site’s reputation.

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In other words, you can search for real striptease dancers from strip clubs on HH, but not for an IT company.

I disagreed with HH’s position: we didn’t violate any platform rules, and such a vacancy only benefited everyone in terms of traffic. So, I suggested having a call to settle this misunderstanding. Within half an hour, I received a call from technical support. Not from the PR department, not from the marketing department, but specifically from technical support, where people work strictly according to scripts. I’m not here to speak negatively about the support service, but our dialogue kept hitting the same script: they claimed that the publication could harm the project’s reputation, and I asked to connect me with the PR or marketing departments for further discussion.

When the conversation reached a complete deadlock, they told me that two complaints had been filed against our job opening.

I asked for clarification: two hundred or two thousand?
They replied: just two.

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So, at that moment, out of approximately 50,000 people who viewed the job opening, two individuals clicked the “report” button, which became one of the main reasons for the blockage. We tried to resolve this issue, but in the pre-New Year rush, with a million other things to handle, it was too cumbersome.

However, in all other aspects, our prank was a success.
The team in the office received a boost of positivity right up to the holidays, and we gained a better understanding of the power of PR.

In the end

We spent 1400 rubles for the publication on HeadHunter, and that was the entire budget.

About 20 million users saw the news about the vacancy (based on rough and superficial calculations of public reach. Unfortunately, we couldn’t count the statistics for corporate chats).

Responses to our other vacancies significantly increased – more than 200 came in. After the New Year, some of these individuals will start working with us once we find an HR manager.

Khabarovsk is once again making waves in creativity and PR – and it’s delightful. Most importantly, many truly believed in the reality of what was happening: both IT professionals, the audience, and even journalists.

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So, when people say that there is no life, creativity, or creative individuals on the Far East, it sounds at least strange to me. We saw, through a simple example, how interesting the PR tool can be, and I think we’ll implement something new in the near future (I’m not selling PR courses yet, but if anyone is interested, write to me on Telegram

P.S. While writing this article, my colleagues managed to convince me of something, and after the New Year, we will indeed invite a Go-Go dancer to the office. But I’ll write about that next year (and possibly even add a video).

Greetings from frosty Khabarovsk,
Yaroslav Radinskiy, RASA.

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Happy New Year everyone!

By Yaroslav Radinsky
CEO at RASA.pro tg – @radinskiy
The text is published with the permission of the author.
Link to original text is here.

By AVITO, Russian biggest on-line classifieds’ aggregator.

Automotive industry jobs are increasing twice in 2023. The automotive business is rapidly gaining momentum in showing new foreign brands, reorienting imports, increasing the demand for used cars on the market, as well as developing domestic manufacturers. The demand for specialists and the supply of average wages for them correspond to the pace of development in this area.

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Last summer, the number of vacancies for specialists in the automotive business increased by 76% compared to the same period last year. According to the consulting department of the Autohub service (Avito project), finding, retaining and motivating employees are key issues for auto business leaders in 2023.

In addition to a 76% increase in the number of vacancies, the average salary offers in the automotive business also show an 18% growth rate. If at the end of last summer the segment’s employers were willing to pay an average of 62,581 rubles, now the amount is 73,656 rubles per month.

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Avito Works analysts recorded a double increase (98%) in the number of vacancies for working with China in the automotive business. Moreover, the interest of job seekers in Chinese business segments increased by 29%.

“The number of vacancies in the automotive business has grown by more than one and a half times and, as of the end of August, it occupies about 7% of the total number of job offers. The high demand for industry specialists and the increase in salary offers are due to the emergence of new domestic and foreign manufacturers. So, in the summer of 2023, in the auto business, we recorded a two-fold increase in vacancies related to work with China.

The development of the used car market and the extension of the service life of cars also had an impact, which led to the popularization of such working specialties as a car mechanic, car mechanic and car electrician” by Artyom Kumpel, Managing Director of Avito Works.

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In the context of individual professions, the change in such a specialty as an auto electrician is indicative. The number of job offers across the country for this profession increased by 110%, and the proposed salary – by 18% and reached 84,611 rubles per month.

The number of vacancies for car painters increased by 90%, and the average salary offers – by 12% (92,198 rubles). They are followed by auto mechanics with an increase in vacancies by 70% and car mechanics – 68%. The increase in the proposed wages amounted to 8% (79,907 rubles) and 15% (77,144 rubles), respectively.

Automotive Industry Trends in 2023 in the development of personnel in the automotive business

In June 2023, the team of Autohub (Avito project), a service for managing key business processes of a car dealer, conducted a survey among the heads of car dealerships and found out that the search and retention of employees are priority issues in personnel development. Thus, 63% of respondents are interested in the issues of motivation and retention of personnel, 43% – where and how to look for employees.

The top trends also included the formation of a team of leaders (34%). And 21% of dealer network managers are interested in developing their own HR brand.

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“In order to find the perfect candidate for a job in the automotive business, the first step is to create a profile of the employee that the manager wants to see in his team. The profile should meet the needs of the business and include formal requirements, personal and professional competencies, as well as the functionality itself. When choosing a team member, you should pay attention not only to popular web resources with candidate profiles.

Social networks, referral programs for employees, search for candidates at universities and technical schools work well. One of the ways is hunting, when you attract people who are already working somewhere to your team with the help of a “field trip” or through the collection of recommendations. In order to not only find new employees, but also retain current ones, it is important to develop the company’s HR brand.

The HR brand is relevant both for the internal audience: current employees, and for the external one: candidates. In order to improve the HR brand for candidates, it is important to analyze salaries and conditions on the labor market, create a high quality description of vacancies and brand the company page on job sites,” comments Daria Koporova, an expert in the “Personnel” direction of the Autohub service.

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By AVITO, Russian biggest on-line classifieds’ aggregator.

Original atricle by this link.

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TOP signs that are better not to ignore. The list had been compiled while interviewing for a marketing position at an IT company, but it will be relevant for many positions:

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• “The first six months 20 thousand, and then 200.”
• “And the previous marketer’s eyes were burning…”
• “Already leaving? We usually work until 9…”

1. This is a vacancy from some individual entrepreneur who is on the verge of creating an innovative product. The product will undoubtedly lead both you and the company to unprecedented success. The team needs a natural-born leader with burning eyes (and eventually, burning ass). By the way, what exactly this product is unclear; most likely, it’s a financial pyramid.
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2. The interviews stretch over 5 or more stages. A separate point is the test assignments where you are asked to complete a week’s worth of work. A polite way out is to explain that you are interviewing with several companies/still working in your current position, so you don’t have the time to spend on such a lengthy test assignment. Generally, paying money for a large test assignment is considered good practice.
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3. In one form or another, phrases like the following are present: salary is limited only by your capabilities; we pay as much as you earn; there is no limit to the salary range; the previous marketer became a millionaire.

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4. A powerful sales funnel is needed, with many incoming leads, but there’s no money for advertising. The business owner is fervently shaking the book “Marketing Without a Budget” (a great book, I recommend it).
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5. In the “Advantages” section, it states: no dress code, friendly team, professional team, white salary, and company-sponsored tea.
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6. A random assortment of various requirements, as if someone couldn’t control verbal diarrhea. I’ve seen several job postings where a lone marketer was expected to manage social media, develop a podcast platform, organize offline events, run multiple blogs, launch advertising campaigns, work with printing, participate in industry competitions, rankings – this is an incomplete list, mind you. And all of this for 80 thousand per month, please.
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7. They expect the marketer to start everything from scratch and quickly: positioning, PR strategy, advertising strategy, sales funnel, and a new toilet to replace the wooden one outside. Instead of a logical note saying, “You will build your team for this task,” there’s a phrase, “You are active, work not until 18:00, but until results are achieved.”

8. Office work 5 days a week and no other way. It’s strange in 2023. Such companies still offer corporate transportation because their office is somewhere on the outskirts of the city.

9. It’s unclear what happened to the previous marketer and whether they are even alive. Or former employees are openly criticized during the interview. Or you hear something like, “We’ve already changed three people in this position in a year, can’t find a decent one.”

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They avoid discussing salary until the very end. The second stage of interviews is already completed, and the financial question is pushed back. In one large design studio in St. Petersburg, there’s an interesting principle: torture the person with interviews and tests, not disclosing the salary range until the very end, so that in the end, they would want to join so badly that they would even agree to a salary below expectations. These folks have apparently reread Kurpatov, rewatched Stepanova.

More often than not, these sins are committed by small, quasi-IT companies that have been on the market for a couple of years. During interviews, they still like to say, “We lived for three years on word of mouth; we didn’t need any marketing. And now, with the word of mouth fading, clients shrinking, we’re hiring a marketer to bring us leads. By the way, there’s no budget for marketing, I can handle advertising with my own money. And we’re a big family, incest is not uncommon for us.”

By the way, I run my channel about marketing, horses, relocation, and IT (yes, just like that). Subscribe; there are many posts like these there.

By Diana.
She writes about horses, relocation and work:
https://t.me/marketingandhorses
The text is published with the permission of the author.
The original is here.

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