SURPRISING RUSSIA

The scale and diversity of Russia, even in the post-Soviet era, is still astonishing. It would, for example, take you seven days and nights to cross it by train, from the eastern outposts only a stone’s throw from US-owned Alaska to the western border holding back Europe. By plane you are talking nine hours, so dominant is the land mass wrapping itself around the Northern and Eastern hemispheres.

As a result of this size, the indigenous peoples of this often enigmatic country vary significantly in ethnicity, colour, language and attitude. Those in the south-east of the country looking of oriental origin, while Moscow tends to produce a Caucasian European demeanour with western self-perception. Not only does this make Russia endlessly interesting culturally, but it has also given rise to a fascinating diversity in its workforce.

So how is the country in terms of its recruitment industry and how does one define such a place through its current candidates and clients? 

As Luc would have it!

Since being bought by the FiveTen group in 2008 Antal Russia has been developing and growing its strategy in the country. At the forefront of its operations is partner Luc Jones. Luc was visiting London from his Moscow HQ and took time out to talk to me in a French restaurant, Luc incidentally is English, his father is an Englishman, his mother French Canadian and he is fluent in English, French, Russian, Spanish and Polish...you get the picture. Luc is a whirlwind, a polyglot tornado whose restless energy and endless amount of often surprising Russian recruitment trivia leaves you itching to go there. Luc’s message is clear: Russia: it’s not as scary as you think. 

Just as we get ready to get down to some serious industry chat, Luc suddenly starts talking what, to my ear, sounds like nonsense. A string of words so fabulously bizarre I am beginning to think he has become possessed. It then becomes clear what is happening, Luc is talking to the waiter.....in Uzbekistani! Impressive and maddening for those of us restricted to “dos cervezas por favor”.

Luc firstly points out one of the main cultural differences between Russian business values and the traditional Western model: “Over there probably half of the positions we do overall are sales related. The point you have got is that, where we grew up in a country where somebody is trying to sell you something from the day you are born to the day you die, under a socialist system, well, selling something is what ‘evil’ capitalists do! I have to remind clients when they come out to Russia for the first time that selling something just one generation ago would have landed them in jail.”

Luc continues with an anecdote regarding a former girlfriend he placed in a position in a high-end drinks distribution business after she had graduated with a decent degree from a linguistics university in Moscow: “Her grandfather thought this was worse than her becoming a prostitute! He just simply didn’t understand the concept of buying something for one price and selling it for a profit. There are still a lot of negative connotations in Russia regarding business; it is still regarded as something criminals do because for 70 years it was drummed into people that you just don’t do it and it is taking a long time because there is no business culture.” More below....

Old barriers

Luc’s own linguistic talents are essential for working in Russia, he believes you simply cannot work in Russia without speaking it; and talking of work and Russians....: “I think the Russian work ethic is appalling!” asserts Luc, “It’s perfectly okay to rock up an hour late and say ‘sorry I overslept’ or ‘there was a traffic jam’. One of my colleagues who helped set up the Russian operation even resorted to closing the kitchen between 9.30am and 11am because he was getting so pissed off with people turning up late. If you turned up before 9.30am you could help yourself to a nice coffee and a snack but turn up after that and you have to wait – well there was almost a revolution. I have threatened to block Facebook and the like but it is considered perfectly normal to sit down and have a chat with a colleague for half-an-hour sipping a cup of tea, when it isn’t even a break!”

And he isn’t done yet: “Productivity wise this is just crap, if you look at the London office we are pulling in 1.5-1.6 placements per consultant per month, Russia is about half of that.”

However saying that, when it comes to defending the image of his adopted motherland, Luc is unequivocal: “It is hard to find another country that is more misunderstood or has as much of a negative image as Russia – well maybe North Korea. People tell me it is terribly dangerous, but it really isn’t. The other week in London someone suggested it was dangerous and I turned around and reminded them there were some pretty awful riots in London in the summer, they got the message.”

Time for another Luc factoid: “A lot of people don’t realise that Russia has the second highest number of immigrants in the world after the United States; 98 per cent of them will be from former Soviet states and this is a difficult point as Russians are quite nationalistic.” This translates as a problem, according to Luc, when it comes to prejudice against those from Central Asia (think of all the former Soviet states ending in ...stan). They are mainly employed in Russia as a form of underclass carrying out “menial labour” according to Luc, but he confirms there is still the familiar phrase ‘they come over here and take our jobs’ coming from certain Russians, even though there is little effort or resolve to perform those menial jobs themselves.

Gender switch

Luc then throws another swerve ball: “There is no rec-to-rec industry in Russia. There is no interim, no temporary and no contract work. This still goes back to the old socialist policy that you join a company for life. But this can go to either extreme, due to the way Russians are.”

Historically, even though there seems to have been a bit of a swing of late, recruitment in the UK seems to have been a male-dominated space, but not so in Russia with a huge majority of women filling the desk space, approximately 85 per cent of recruitment consultants in Russia are female.

Luc explains how this has happened: “Demographically in Russia there is a real shortage of men, originally stemming from the Second World War when 27 million men were killed, mostly young men. A similar number were lost in the Gulags, where estimates range from 

five-45 million, your guess is as good as mine! As a result there is huge social pressure on young girls to get married quickly, even recently if a man was unemployed and pissed, he would be beating girls off with a stick; it really is a man’s paradise out there.”

This in turn has made men quite lazy, according to Luc, who suggests this is one of the anomalies of the Russian jobs market: “We had a situation recently when we were recruiting for a Russian technology company and this chap sent in his CV, which was pretty good and he had been working with his previous company in a good position for four years. I asked the consultant to find out why he had left. He said he didn’t see it as a decent career path, so he just quit. I couldn’t believe it, you don’t quit your job first, but in Russia, you do. He said he didn’t really feel that comfortable about looking for another job when he already had one.

“No-one really seemed that bothered about the prospect of losing their job in the downturn and those that had weren’t at all phased by it.” 

This is easy to explain, in the UK if you quit or lose your job and you still have rent or mortgage to pay, it is the major concern and a good reason to find work as soon as possible. In Russia however, in the post-Soviet era the population was so low that everyone got given accommodation. Utilities are cheap as well and you can avoid spending a lot of money.”This is a difficult one to explain to foreign clients,” Luc continues, “they just see it as lazy; of course I turn this around straight away and say ‘well at least he’s available now!’ “I do find myself telling candidates not to quit until they have secured another job.”

About half of Luc’s time is explaining to clients how it works in Russia and managing their expectations. This is compounded in the interview process, which really doesn’t seem to suit the Russian make-up: “They don’t really like to sell themselves in interviews,” adds Luc, “they think it makes them look a little bit desperate. The client calls up with concerns about this fact, even though the experience is there, they don’t seem at all motivated. I say ‘what are you talking about, they showed up to the interview didn’t they?’”

The market itself has seemingly grown more quickly than the candidates have developed, this will surely create more of a need to further develop and mature the recruitment industry. 

So what other practical issues need confronting when servicing such a vast country? Well surprisingly most meetings are done face-to-face, unless, adds Luc, it is say for a mining job in the far east of Siberia. This is also down to the Moscow-centric labour distribution.

Back to the language; most of the outlying former Soviet states will speak some Russian, whether due to the former need to do so under Soviet control or because they have one TV channel piping Russian into their homes. This in turn means they are in a better position than most to take work within Russia. Those that don’t speak it, at present, stand little chance of working there. “The level of English spoken there is appalling,” continues Luc, “Very few people speak it, there are no tourist information offices and apart from one or two at the airport, there are no signs translated into English.”

And yet, despite these huge cultural and language barriers, despite the Western preconceptions of Russian life and business, despite Luc’s stories of lazy men and desperate women, despite the obvious ambiguities and oddities and yes, despite the cold, Luc is keen to point out one thing. He has a rich and varied life in Russia, there are well paid jobs and there is a lot of fun to be had; Luc is raising his family there free from the paranoia which non-Russians could so easily suffer from in such a different cultural climate. Luc’s sign off is his mantra: “Russia: it’s not as scary as you think.”