Earlier this week Adzuna, an innovative job search engine based in the UK, launched a fully localized Russian version.
“Russia is an exciting, dynamic market with a huge number of job seekers and great business potential. We feel job seekers in Russia are currently underserved by the employment tools (particularly data and social search tools) in the market. We plan to change that,” the startup’s co-founder Andrew Hunter told East-West Digital News.
In addition to standard online job search features, Adzuna offers a strong social layer. Christened “Adzuna Connect,” this feature helps job seekers leverage their social media contacts, highlight vacancies available in their social circle, and obtain recommendations.
Adzuna’s technology is connected to Facebook on a global level, but does not integrate with Russia’s major social networks Vkontakte (VK.com), Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir – which are far ahead of Facebook in terms of audience.
“We are continuously reviewing options and are open to new options to support our users in their job search — including via local social networks. We’ll watch this space for potential developments in the coming months,” Anastasia Dedyukhina, the country manager for Adzuna Russia, told EWDN.
Adzuna is not the first mover on Russia’s online job search space, which is already occupied by heavyweights including Yandex Jobs, Indeed.com, Jooble – a Ukrainian startup – and other classic resources. However, none of these services make systematic use of social tools.
One established local player, Pruffi.ru, does use social networks, but as a headhunting agency, not as a service for job seekers.
Adzuna was founded in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, formerly of eBay, Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla. The startup has been backed by Passion Capital, The Accelerator Group and Index Ventures.
Adzuna has now grown up to 4 million monthly users globally. The company operates in 11 markets, including Germany, France, Australia, Canada, Poland, India, Brazil and South Africa, in addition to the UK and Russia.
In the UK, the company claims its data on the British job market is displayed on the iPad of the country’s Prime Minister David Cameron.
