Russian Experience

1. Think and say:

a) What’s your idea of your future career?

b) What are the ways to find a good job?

2. Read the text and answer the following questions:

a) Are you going to be a client of a recruiting company?

b) Would you like to work for such a company?

3. Make a report “Recruitment in Russia” based on the facts from the text and the theory of Market Factor.

4. Make up a fantastic story “How My Lifetime Dream Came True.”

Recruitment in Russia: Still Climbing

Leading players in the Russian recruitment market are forging ahead bringing the industry standard up to the world class levels. Russian society, however, still has not given due recognition to the several year old market despite its potential for creating a viable middle class.

The Recruiters and Their Clients.

Looking through business directories and advertisements one can find numerous companies spanning the business spectrum. Recruiting agencies are not an exception, and there are dozens of them. At the beginning of 1995 there were 48 common profile recruiting agencies and five executive search companies in Moscow alone. Several years later there were about 90 recruiting companies in Moscow and 130 across the whole of Russia.

Which companies use these agencies? Of 95 firms (mostly Western), 20 claim that they perform their own personnel searches, only using agencies in “”special circumstances”. “Why should I use agencies when I can hire familiar and reliable people without paying anything?” ask many Russian employers.

On the other hand, foreign firms initially looked to agencies for employees as they had outside Russia. Thus, the market initially grew out of Western, not Russian, companies’ demands for workers.

Meanwhile, in a recent poll of 40 top managers of Russian recruiting agencies, 44 % thought there was more potential for growth with Russian clients while 32 % still prefer to look to Western companies. While Russian firms still have to learn about working with recruiting agencies, there is nevertheless potential for growth in the market.

There are different layers among Russian recruiting companies. Soviet remnants such as Triza are still chugging along trying to supply all kinds of personnel from blue collar workers to top management. Founded as a division of the Komsomol in 1989, it has probably remained alive by virtue of its close relationship with the state.

There are technologically sophisticated agencies, formed mostly by foreign companies extending their activities into Russia, but they do not necessarily have an edge over the Russian companies. In fact, the leading Western-oriented recruiting agencies are Ancor and Russian Connection, the Russian branch of the American company GEMM Consulting. These firms have been active for several years while other Western recruiters are still arriving in Russia. Only in 1995, for example, did U.S. based Manpower International arrive following international clients like Hewlett Packard and Rank Xerox.

Young Russian agencies, with their natural-born knowledge of the environment make up the third group. Finally, there are firms whose activities cover recruitment along with other businesses. The oldest and largest of them is Contact, a real-estate firm now into recruiting., and it finds recruiting more promising. Other examples include Global Net, the telecommunications distributors, and the Russian computer concern IBS.

What Are Russian Recruiters’ Complaints.

When asked what are the most typical problems in running recruitment agencies, 33 % of recruiters cited low professional standards in their own work and “consumer-generated” problems. Eighteen percent complained of the lack of a recruitment infrastructure, and 10 % mentioned “applicant-generated” problems.

Clients choose which agencies to work with, but they are limited by the applicants agencies send to them. In the first years after Communism there were plenty of qualified people for agencies to send to their clients. Later, however, recruiters suddenly started to complain about a death of “easy to sell” candidates. The situation was most dire with specialists, or “the people who help others to earn money”. It will be necessary either to work with what is available or work with the educational institutions and start training more “market-oriented” people.

Childish Behaviour in an Immature Market.

The young Russian recruitment market is not immune from greed. A relatively small number of its subjects looking to gain at the expense of others has strained relations between top managers and employees. It can take up to 25 years for a recruiting agency to obtain a necessary degree of professionalism, something none of the Russian agencies has. Some Russian recruiters take pre-payment from clients or make them pay for the low-quality “personnel consulting”. Most Western recruiters are older people who switched occupations. On the contrary, Russian recruiters are usually young, knowing recruiting and nothing else.

Thus, the question of creating the available professional ethics is on the agenda.