Job search with a bear


    Today and tomorrow we are holding an online job fair , which is an example of a project that has survived a strange start, throwing in formats and, finally, reaching a payback and getting on its feet. This is partly a managerial and partly a technical little story of one of the HeadHunter projects.

    When in 2012 they told me that HeadHunter would be doing an online job fair, I decided that my colleagues were very naive: even 2 years ago, the topic was far from new, and did not achieve much success. When I saw the interface with 3D halls as in low-budget walkers ten years ago, I finally established myself in the thought that they were playing too much.

    It was a very strange leased Arab platform, which we round the clock for ourselves and the breathtaking domain vjf.rabota.mail.ru. The project was first done under the Work.Mail.Ru brand, which the company of the same name gave us to manage in 2011. Since the main audience of this site is “blue-collar workers” and junior office staff, they began to sharpen the fair for them.

    With great interest from customers and applicants, the platform’s requirements for channel width have cut off thousands of people from the regions. Then there were 3 more fairs: one in November 2012 (524 vacancies and 6,833 responses from applicants) and two more in 2013. They were made without Arab 3D technologies, and, from a technical point of view, were more successful. But another problem came out: our people (locksmiths, drivers, fitters, painters) were not too eager to communicate with recruiters even in chat rooms, not to mention the video. That is, people came, looked at vacancies, but did not show the necessary activity. Naturally, we didn’t like it, nor did employers like it.

    After thinking about the idea itself and appreciating the interest of customers, we realized that we started in the wrong place.

    Step one: a new platform and integration with hh.ru


    It was impossible to do a project on a crooked platform, not to mention Arab 3D technologies. Therefore, the fair moved to a simple domain expo.hh.ru and was developed in Python 2.7 based on the Django framework.

    The data is stored under the control of PostgreSQL and is carefully maintained by the maintenance service. For caching, we use Memcached, the downloaded files are sent to the storage via the Webdav protocol, mailings go to users thanks to the standard hh.ru mail service.

    At the fair today, integration with the site is implemented using our API. This allowed employers to use existing vacancies, and job seekers created on hh.ru resumes. We already wrote about the API here and here , full documentationposted on github.

    It is already becoming clear that since we transferred the fair to the hh.ru brand, its audience is now changing.

    Step Two: A New Audience


    The new audience of the fair is mid-level office workers. They have already mastered job sites and social networks, therefore they do not feel discomfort from virtual communication.
    Here are the statistics from the first fair on the new platform, held in the second half of February. It can be seen that everything is fine with Moscow and Peter, and there is still a lot of work to do with Yekaterinburg - their activity is still too low.



    We were not mistaken with the audience, the most popular vacancies were:
    1. Marketing and advertising manager;
    2. director of the store;
    3. project manager;
    4. accountant;
    5. secretary.

    58 147 unique visitors arrived in two days, but in general, the traffic issue remains open to this day. The project is tied to specific dates, so the audience should not be brought all year round, but at the moment when there are already registered employers, otherwise the person will not have reason to leave an application for participation.

    Step Three: New Regions


    The first fair was held throughout Russia, but then it did not work, so we simplified our task by concentrating on Moscow. At the end of 2013, Peter was added, and in February this year, Yekaterinburg. This time, coverage was also expanded to the Volga region - Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Ufa. In all regions, for example, Beeline will be presented . In total, 67 companies were registered. Based on the current price list, it is easy to estimate profitability.

    Well, the main question


    Employers say: why do we need a second HeadHunter? Why do they need offline traditional job fairs? In order to watch dozens and hundreds of candidates motivated for a new job at once in a couple of days. A well-developed study of the base is a basic tool, and a fair is a one-time event where you can not only quickly “close” urgent vacancies, but also communicate with people in real time and get feedback from them. In this case, no one needs to go anywhere - a profit during bad weather, for large cities and people with disabilities. By the way, first of all, companies pay specifically for communicating with an audience interested in a new job. Actually, the fair is a specialized platform for communication. Yes, there is no magic and rocket-science, even by the standards of Runet, but the project is in demand,
    By the way, in May, a fair has already been planned for students and graduates. We also thought a lot about specialized fairs, for example, for IT-specialists. Perhaps we will implement these plans closer to the fall - we need to evaluate how interesting companies and vacancies we can collect for it.

    But at this fair there are also several vacancies in IT:
    - as many as 26 from Sberbank - Technologies, for example: WebSphere Message Broker (Yekaterinburg) developer , lead programmer (IBM FileNet, Java) , Oracle Siebel CRM architecture director , chief Java developer , chief specialist in IT quality management , etc.

    - several from the Radio Engineering Institute named after Academician A.L. Mintz:software engineer (in Moscow, but they promise regular business trips), software engineer (FPGA) .

    - Beeline engineer for radio measurements and quality control of communications

    - not quite according to it, but cool - an expert on Boeing types

    In general, I would like to see such people at the fair :)

    PS Even though we are already holding the fair in different forms two years, the project still needs ideas for development and new functions, so we will be glad to any suggestions and comments on the site. Come , test and write to us.

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