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Recruiting a Russian-speaking team in Cyprus
The Client and The Challenge
We were approached by the team of the international electronic transfer system, with many of their customers being Russian-speaking. They needed to gather a support team based in Limassol to monitor and verify payments. All candidates were expected to be fluent in both English and Russian.
Our help
First of all, we helped the client to build the profiles of potential candidates and identify the amount of resources required.
To do so, we:
Then we launched the search. Since the candidates had to speak Russian and already live in Cyprus, we reached out to online portals used by the local Russian diaspora.
Our employees joined more than 20 chats and groups on both Facebook and Telegram, and signed up for a local online club and several websites visited by Russian-speaking candidates from IT companies that have moved to the island.
Parallel to this, we searched for suitable candidates on LinkedIn and reached out to them with a job offer. We posted on LinkedIn the same job posting in Russian too, and received an additional response.
The third area of work was recommendations. The local community is very outgoing and often helps in finding both work and employees, so we used this opportunity. The position provided for a fairly limited number of technical competencies, the company was ready to teach employees the ins and outs. Therefore, we asked all candidates who weren’t personally interested in the vacancy to recommend us people who might be suitable.
The distribution of the response by source was as follows:
34% — social networks, local Telegram or Facebook groups
26% — job posting on LinkedIn
22% — candidates who were recommended by others
18% — candidates who were offered a job via LinkedIn
To do so, we:
- asked the client for data on the number of applications and the average time it takes to process one application
- clarified specific hours where everyone in the team must be online, as well as the workload distribution by time of day
- studied the practices of similar support teams based in Europe in order to set up the most convenient shift schedule
- listed requirements for candidates, must-have hard and soft skills in order of priority
Then we launched the search. Since the candidates had to speak Russian and already live in Cyprus, we reached out to online portals used by the local Russian diaspora.
Our employees joined more than 20 chats and groups on both Facebook and Telegram, and signed up for a local online club and several websites visited by Russian-speaking candidates from IT companies that have moved to the island.
Parallel to this, we searched for suitable candidates on LinkedIn and reached out to them with a job offer. We posted on LinkedIn the same job posting in Russian too, and received an additional response.
The third area of work was recommendations. The local community is very outgoing and often helps in finding both work and employees, so we used this opportunity. The position provided for a fairly limited number of technical competencies, the company was ready to teach employees the ins and outs. Therefore, we asked all candidates who weren’t personally interested in the vacancy to recommend us people who might be suitable.
The distribution of the response by source was as follows:
34% — social networks, local Telegram or Facebook groups
26% — job posting on LinkedIn
22% — candidates who were recommended by others
18% — candidates who were offered a job via LinkedIn
The Result
7 people were hired within 3 months. All of them successfully passed the probationary period, two of them were promoted. The gathered team provided the necessary stability of support and high quality of customer service, which helped to increase customer loyalty.
Later our client contacted us once more and asked to hire a team of business managers based throughout Europe — a task that we had successfully completed too.
Later our client contacted us once more and asked to hire a team of business managers based throughout Europe — a task that we had successfully completed too.