Helping people change their lives. Visiting Landing.Jobs

Hello! A new season of my friendly stories about office culture “InTheOffice” is back. Now from Portugal.

The pandemic and relocation to another country significantly affected my pet project. The last story from a product company office — the “Sber” in Moscow — was published almost a year ago. But COVID times are in the past, and my new place of residence gives me an excellent opportunity to continue the series and visit the offices of large international companies. There are dozens of them in Lisbon, ranging from corporations like Google, Uber and Amazon to promising international startups. The office of one startup with Portuguese roots was one of the venues I visited recently.

Landing.Jobs is a marketplace for companies and professionals looking for a job in IT. The company cooperates with such major brands as OLX, Farfetch, Zapier, Volkswagen and others. It actively participates in the IT community life, hosts its own events and supports other companies' events. The main products earning money for the business are vacancy publishing for companies, candidates recruitment and remote work abroad services.

José Paiva, co-founder and CFO of the company told me how it all started. He is from Portugal but worked for many years in Brazil, where he ran a large company. Then he returned to Portugal, and his former colleagues and acquaintances began to ask him to help with relocation and job search in Europe. This is how a recruitment agency was born, which at first was focused only on professionals from Brazil who wanted to continue their careers in Portugal. Over time, the geography expanded to other countries, and when the rapid growth of online services began, José, together with Pedro Oliveira, the second co-founder of Landing.Jobs, launched a platform for candidates and companies. Now the company operates in several countries and uses this great phrase as its motto:

“We help people change their lives”

The office has a whole wall of photos of people who have found jobs and changed their lives with Landing.Jobs.

José believes that cultural differences are very important in recruitment and helping candidates. Therefore, they work more with candidates and companies from Brazil, Portugal and other countries with “Portuguese roots”. The main focus now is on remote work. Their services help the employer to start working with a candidate remotely from another country, while Landing.Jobs takes care of all the issues of paying salaries in local currency and taxes. For the employer, this is a good opportunity to test a new employee and, in case of a match, offer the candidate to relocate and continue working in the country of their new company. There is even a Portuguese proverb that José quoted: “Don’t try to live together without getting to know each other better.” I myself tried this format and worked for the first year at OLX completely remotely. I had a contract with a similar company in Kazakhstan. It really works!

I was wondering if the Landing.Jobs team considers LinkedIn as their main competitor. This is a strong player in the European job search market. My question clearly hooked José. He calls LinkedIn a “spam machine” that sells the personal data of its users. Therefore, one of the main Landing.Jobs value proposition is the protection of personal data and full profile access control for the candidate. The team calls this approach a “candidate-driven tech careers marketplace” and tries to “treat its community members like people, and not just another entry on a database”.

And indeed it is. I created a candidate profile on the platform to see the product from the inside. When creating, I selected the status “I’m currently employed, but open to hearing about new opportunities” and all notifications in my profile were turned off by default. Only companies with vacancies I was interested in could contact me through the platform, but with no access to my personal contacts. On LinkedIn, on the other hand, I receive an average of 1–2 requests per week from recruiters who use paid mass mailings, that only try to look like personal requests. Also, the Landing.Jobs platform hides the name and even the gender of the candidate until they agree to share this information with the employer — a useful feature nowadays.

Now about the office, which impressed me a lot. It is located in an old building in the centre of Lisbon. The building has a big history. In Portugal, there is a significant date — April 25, 1974. It is when the dictatorship of António Salazar was overthrown in a bloodless military coup by the underground army organization “Movement of Captains”. This event is called the “Carnation Revolution” (Revolução dos Cravos). It was in this house, where Landing.Jobs is now located, where Celeste Caeiro worked. She was returning from work with a bouquet of flowers and lowered a carnation into the rifle barrel of a soldier she met. It was the season of carnations, and following her example, the inhabitants of Lisbon began to distribute red nails to the soldiers en masse. These events served as the basis for such a name. The Landing.Jobs office even has a poster about these historical events.

The office itself combines antiquity and the convenience of a modern workspace. There are several levels and a long terrace along the entire floor, where you can comfortably sit with colleagues. The large hall is used for team meetings and meetups. At the reception, there is a QR code that leads to this page with basic information about the company and announcements of events — good practice. In case the customers come to your office, it’s worth a try.

I was also shown a starter kit for an employee, which, among other merchandise, includes a rubber duck — an important tool for any developer. One such duck now lives on my desk, and we communicate sometimes.

I was pleased with meeting rooms named in honour of famous films: “The Matrix”, “The Incredibles” and “Django Unchained” — in this one, it’s probably good to sign a new work contract, breaking the old one!

Morpheus’s quote from “The Matrix” also sounds good in the context of a job search:

“All I’m offering is the truth… Nothing more”

This seems to be the key value that a job marketplace can give to its two main target audiences. The truth about working conditions. The truth about the candidates. The choice always remains with the customers, and if the choice is convenient and effective, the product will be successful.

PS: Starting now, I will continue posting both in Russian and English. It is useful as a language practice for me and an opportunity for the heroes of the stories, an opportunity to read them. Russian version.

All #InTheOffice stories can be found at https://merkushev.ru/en/

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