E-recruitment insights with Mikko Vuorio from Alma Career4 min read

 About Alma Career

Alma Career which is owned by Finland -based Alma Media Corporation and Monster Worldwide operates as a leader in 9 countries in Central/Eastern Europe, Baltics and Balkans and represents several of our partner job boards like Profesia.sk in Slovakia and Jobs.cz in the Czech Republic.

We have recently had the pleasure to interview Mikko Vuorio, its International Sales Director. He talked about Alma Career, its innovations, its commitment and about the challenges in the European e-recruitment market.

· What makes you different from your competitors ?

In the countries we operate, we offer our clients leading brands, the most effective recruitment channels and most comprehensive recruitment solutions. What makes us strong is our local market knowledge, good client relationships and strong dedicated country teams. We develop our services constantly, good examples about this are HelloWorld! – a new niche site of Monster.cz which helps to reach out IT talents and our recruitment services in the Baltics (CV Online).

· How did you come up with Paylab.com ?

In 2007 Paylab was introduced as a solution to help people determine average salaries, and compare their salaries with other employees who work in the same position and in the same region. The survey was initially launched in Slovakia, subsequently expanding to ten European countries, from Finland to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The huge interest in the service, with tens of thousands of daily visitors and more than 3.2 million salary data entries collected from 10 European countries, prompted those behind the salary survey to establish a global site for comparing salaries Paylab.com. Some of the companies using Paylab are Volkswagen, Tesco and McDonald’s for example.

· Alma Career consists from 9 websites based in 9 different countries. What is your strategy? Why did you choose these particular countries?

Actually, we are operating 13 jobsites in 9 different countries. In addition to this, we have Partner websites in 8 countries. We see globalization as a trend that will increase the need for international recruitments. Alma Media sees Balkan, Baltic and CEE as an interesting region where labor market is still developing and global companies are willing to invest. This is the reason we have been seeking (and still are) investment opportunities in this region.

· Can you describe your target audience-job seekers and recruiters?

In some of our countries we are hosting generalist jobsites, but in some countries we have different brands for different target groups – like in Hungary where Monster.hu offers jobs mainly for white-collar jobseekers and Workania.hu more for blue-collar jobseekers. Other example is the Czech Republic, where Monster.cz  focuses more on IT, whereas Jobs.cz is more for white-collar and Prace.cz for blue-collar jobseekers.

· What are some of the major challenges your company will have to face in the coming years?

We need to be constantly aware of the latest technologies and one of the things we will heavily concentrate in 2016 is the mobile. Like for example Appcast.io´s survey shows, with desktop application conversion rate is 8%, with mobile devices only 1,5%. Our challenge is to come up with solutions that makes applying easier and helps companies to reach out suitable candidates. Other challenge is the overheated job market in many of the European countries which makes recruiting very challenging. This forces us to look for new products and services.

· What are the next steps and projects for Alma Career?

We are actively monitoring what is happening in our region and we are ready to invest. We are also working on improving our position in the markets where are not in the top position. And of course we are constantly developing our existing jobsites and services. For example we recently acquired Jobote.com in the Czech Republic. Jobote.com is an online application and technology designed to use direct employee referrals with easy sharing through various social media services.

· We also asked Mikko what he thinks about our Job Board Finder.

Mikko Vuorio has been working in the recruiting industry since 1999. He started his career as recruiter and research consultant in a Finnish headhunting company. In 2004 he moved to online recruitment business and after that has been working in various sales positions at Monster.fi. In the current role he has been since 2014 and is now working as the International Sales Director for Alma Career responsible for international sales and cooperation within the Alma Media group

Author: Dorota Beaurin