Interview with Henrik Christensen, from Jobbsafari5 min read

At the beginning of this month, we contacted Henrik Chistensen, the ranger and virtual CEO of Jobbsafari, one of the leading generalist job boards in Sweden. The website actually belongs to the Jobindex group, which started in Denmark. Since 2009, they have been operating in Sweden as Jobbsafari.se, and since 2012, they have extended their services to Norway (with Jobbsafari.no). In 2015, we interviewed Jobindex. Now, it’s time to hear from Jobbsafari!

1. First of all, we’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk to us about your job board. As we mentioned before, Jobbsafari is a part of the Jobindex group. This made us wonder: why did you pick the name Jobbsafari, instead of keeping Jobindex is Sweden?

That is so simple – someone else owned jobindex.se when the site was launched and they wanted a crazy sum of money for the domain name. The trick was then to find a name that would be pronounced and spelt the same way in any European language (we had sites in all of Europe at that time) and thus Jobsafari was born. Today, we spell it with two b’s as we are in Sweden and Norway only. You might ask why Jobindex did not change to Jobbsafari – well that’s because a lot of money had been spend on building the “Jobindex” brand and it made no sense to spend even more money to try to change it. So today we operate under Jobbsafari in Sweden and Norway and Jobindex in Denmark.

2. We like the name. It’s a good pick! Since you’ve been present in Sweden for a while now, we were hoping you could tell us about the job industry in Sweden and how it has evolved over the past few years.

It used to be a very crowded industry with a lot of small players and no clear number one. Over the last few years, there has been a concentration and today a handful of sites are in front. The race is becoming more and more focused and I would expect further concentration over the next period. There is still not clear number one, but we are getting closer…

3. In addition to offering access to job offers, your website is particularly interesting because of all its special features. One of those special features is the “Happy at Work” survey. What can you tell us about the results?

We believe that everyone deserves a dream job. We keep a very strong focus on the jobseekers and do whatever we can to ensure their experience is pleasant and useful. This includes insights into the companies that advertise open positions – everything from statistics on historic ads over financial performance, to our newest feature: ratings. The result is a site that the jobseeker will trust and use for job searches as well as for research before applying.

4. We definitely agree that additional services are a part of the job search. You currently have job boards in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Will your group be expanding further in the future?

That is not on the cards. In fact, we have closed our other sites across Europe to focus on Scandinavia. The Scandinavian market is different from the rest of Europe. The model is a bit different and the issue of the language is actually quite a big one. Even the way job ads are written and composed is different! We understand this, which makes us experts in our field – we want to keep it that way by focusing on what we do best!

 

 

 

 

 

5. It’s definitely difficult to understand how recruiting and job searching works everywhere! In Europe and in Anglo-Saxon countries, we hear a lot about the importance of learning new skills to succeed in the current workforce. Has there been a rise in the number of people enrolling for online courses through your website? Have more courses requested visibility through your website?

We haven’t noticed any particular interest in online courses through Jobbsafari – at least not yet.

6. That’s surprising! We have another question about the labour market: based on the activity from your website, has there been a rise in foreign companies looking to hire in Sweden?

Yes, but very often, it is because recruiters have ran out of candidates in their own country and they are more or less desperately using cv-databases wherever they can find them for new candidates. It is quite clear that they do not fully understand the “Scandinavian way” as mentioned above and more often than not, they don’t find what they’re looking for.

7. We hope they’ll read this interview then and stop looking in the wrong places! Regarding your filters, how do you choose the subcategories?

We have built up our job categories based on actual jobseeker behaviour over the years and we are very conservative in changing them or creating new ones. According to our feedback, jobseekers really appreciate that particular aspect of our site. They say we’re good at targeting jobs that actually fits their profile.

8. They would know better than anyone what good filters are in Sweden! We have one last question for you today: what can your job board offer recruiters that other Swedish job boards can’t?

We can offer the ads with strong visual appeal that appear directly in search results and in e-mails. We also provide recruiting services such as cv-match, text writing, advising based on candidate preferences and actual research, and we reach a broad range of candidates. And if any of our users need further assistance, we are ready to help.

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We can confirm that first-hand! We would like to thank Henrik Christensen again for these insightful answers. The Jobboard Finder is the largest database of job boards in the world. If you have any suggestions for our blog, please send them through. And if you’d like us to interview your job board, simply get in contact with our team!