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 launch, throwing in formats and, finally, has come to payback and is on its feet. This is partly managerial, and partly a technical small story of one of the HeadHunter projects.

When in 2012 I was told that HeadHunter would be doing an online job fair, I decided that my colleagues were very naive: 2 years ago the topic was far from being new, not great success. When I saw the interface with the 3D halls as in the low-budget walkers of a decade ago, I finally became firmly convinced that they were playing.

It was a very strange leased Arabic platform, which we were round the clock for us and the magnificent domain vjf.rabota.mail.ru. The project was first made under the brand Jobs.Mail.Ru, which the company of the same name gave us in management in 2011. Since the main audience of this site is “blue collars” and junior office staff, the fair has been sharpened for them.

With great interest from customers and applicants, the platform’s requirements for the width of the channel were cut off by 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 already done without Arab 3D-technologies, and, from a technical point of view, they were more successful. But another problem came out: our people (locksmiths, drivers, fixtures, painters) were not too eager to communicate with recruiters even in chat rooms, not to mention the video. That is, people came, jobs looked, but did not show the necessary activity. Naturally, we did not like it, and employers did not like it either.
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After thinking about the idea itself and appreciating the interest of customers, we realized that we had begun not in the wrong place.

Step One: New Platform and Merge with hh.ru

It was impossible to do a project on a curved platform, not to mention the Arab 3D-technology. Therefore, the fair moved to the 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 carefully maintained by the maintenance service. For caching we use Memcached, the downloaded files are sent to the repository via the Webdav protocol, mailings are sent to users thanks to the standard mail service hh.ru.

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

Here it becomes clear that since we transferred the fair under the brand hh.ru, then the audience is now changing.

Step Two: New Audience

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



With the audience were not mistaken, the most popular vacancies are:
1. marketing and advertising manager;
2. store director;
3. project manager;
4. accountant;
5. secretary.

In two days, 58,147 unique visitors arrived, but the overall issue of traffic remains open to this day. The project is tied to specific dates, so the audience needs to be brought not all year round, but at the time when there are already registered employers, otherwise the person will have no reason to leave an application for participation.

Step Three: New Regions

The first fair was held all over 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 of this year, Yekaterinburg. This time the coverage was extended to the Volga region - Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Ufa. In all regions, for example, Beeline will be represented. In total, 67 companies have 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? And why do they need offline traditional job fairs? For a couple of days at a time to look at tens and hundreds of candidates motivated for a new job. An established base study is a basic tool, and a fair is a one-time event where it is possible not only to quickly close urgent job vacancies, but also to communicate with people in real time and get feedback from them. At the same time, 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 for communication with the audience interested in the new work. The fair itself 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, he earns his own maintenance and development without spending money on hh.ru - this is not bad.
By the way, a fair has already been planned in May, honed to students and graduates. We also thought a lot about specialized fairs, for example, for IT-specialists. Perhaps we are implementing these plans closer to the fall - we need to evaluate how interesting companies and vacancies we can collect for it.

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

- a few from the Radio Engineering Institute. Academician A.L. Mintsa: a software engineer (in Moscow, but they promise regular business trips), a software engineer (FPGA) .

- engineer of the department of radio measurements and quality control of communication from Beeline

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

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

PS Even in spite of the fact that we have been holding the fair in different guises for two years now, the project is still very much in need of ideas for development and new functions, so we will be happy to receive any suggestions and comments on the work of the site. Come , test and write to us.