Advert

Online employment search firm gets the job done

Tuesday, April 07, 2009, Kamila Jušková
A A A Velikost textu:
With more and more people looking for jobs, Web site operator LMC is solidifying its position as a leader of online job search in the Czech Republic. In addition to bolstering its popular sites, which include Jobs.cz, the company has developed software to help streamline the recruitment process. Company leaders say they’re just getting started.
Online employment search firm gets the job done
Libor Malý
Author: Jakub Stadler
Besides online recruitment, LMC provides other services for clients in the field of human resource management, such as print advertisements and the selection of candidates for employment. LMC also helps companies build an image as a good employer through various promotional tools, such as media campaigns and direct mail.

According to company LMC CEO Libor Malý, the company’s ambition is to find solutions to bolster the labor market and e-HR. To do that, the company focuses on the process of continuous improvement and development of HR services while taking advantage of new technologies and trends in the labor market.

“We are a service, and it is based on maintaining a balance between supply and demand. When this ratio begins oscillating, it is interesting to look for equilibrium. At the same time we are looking for new products that would meet the new trends in the labor market,” Malý told CBW.

Shift in operations

In the 13 years that Jobs.cz has been in operation, there has been the need to address the basic problem of too much work and not enough people who want to work or who lack the proper qualifications. “We aspire to have approximately 10 responses for every offer,” he said. However, that ratio is changing as the economic crisis tightens its grip. Now, the number of positions being offered is much lower than before, and the number of people who might occupy them is much higher. “It’s exactly the opposite of our previous work. Formerly, companies had a few candidates, now they have too many. It was therefore a need to invent something that will facilitate their communication with contenders,” Malý said.

So LMC started to develop the G2 software in April 2006. It followed the more primitive G1 software, which wasn’t widely brought to market. The idea was that it would help personnel officers facilitate the recruitment process. To use LMC G2, you do not have to install an application on your computer. Instead, you access it through the Internet. “When a company gathers a lot of people, it can’t answer all of them, which is bad for its labor market reputation. G2 takes care of all administrative tasks related to the recruitment process and automates them,” Malý said.

The first thing G2 does is structure recruitment and classify job responses. “It is associated with the administration for the protection of personal data. If the employer wants to archive a candidate’s CV, he must have a signed consent from him. The system solves this,” Jana Skalová, LMC’s corporate communication manager, told CBW.

According to her, another interesting aspect is the function that makes an announcement to the labor office. “The employer must notify the labor office about every available position, which is a very complicated process,” Skalová said. She added that with the help of this system users can also advertise at many different places at once, including at Jobs.cz, on the radio, or on job servers in foreign countries. “If all this correspondence goes to one’s e-mail, there would be great confusion. G2 automatically solves all the complexity throughout the recruitment process that may occur,” she said.

LMC G2 is currently used by many banks in the Czech Republic. “We have approximately 23,000 corporate clients,” Skalová said. The most important are, for example, energy firm ČEZ, builder Metrostav, pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, Web portal Atlas.cz and Ikea Česká republika.

Clients said they’ve enjoyed the service. “When we decided to make a major change in the quality of our HR marketing, co-operation with LMC became absolutely pivotal for us. Both in the initial phase ... as well as in the development and realization phase. We appreciated the insight into the problems, creativity and organizational skills of the professionals at LMC,” said Pavel Bořil, vice president and HR director of the Czech division of Citibank, one of LMC’s clients.

Finding a niche

The idea to establish what has become the largest job portal in the Czech Republic arrived in 1994, Malý said, adding that he applied himself to programming and marketing the project, and then worked as a headhunter. “When you connect the programmer, who understands the marketing, and the headhunter, you get a sound logical base for a job portal,” Malý said. But the Internet hadn’t yet become popular. That changed in 1996, and Jobs.cz has been running ever since.

“At first, I operated the server as an independent entrepreneur with about 20 employees. During the day I worked as a headhunter, and in the evenings I worked on Jobs.cz. Physically, the server ran on a single computer. Now we have about 150 servers,” Malý said. He added that at the beginning it was just fun, and then it became serious business.
COMPANY PROFILE
Company: LMC
Sector: Human resources/IT
Type of company: Limited liability
Ownership: Libor Malý
Founded: March 21, 2001,
in Prague
Number of employees: 218
Competitors: Monster Worldwide CZ, JobMaster, CVO Group Česká republika, Adecco
Annual turnover: Kč 500 million
Elevator pitch: LMC is the most important operator in the Czech electronic labor market and one of the leading European e-recruitment companies. The company has operated the job portals Jobs.cz since 1996. The company also runs Prace.cz, hotJobs.cz and Topjobs.sk, and developed software for managing the recruitment process called LMC G2, which is used by about 23,000 corporate clients.

“I realized that we would act more serious as a company than as a group of people employed by a guy with a trade license. Employees then received a disposition and moved under a new company,” he said.

The creation of additional portals, such as Prace.cz, hotJobs.cz and Topjobs.sk, was basically a marketing venture, he said. Each portal fills a different niche. “Jobs.cz covers a population of university-educated people, so it is aimed at the more skilled positions. Prace.cz is very focused on the regions, brigades (meaning temporary work) and the mass population. It is also easier to use because it doesn’t have sophisticated things,” Malý said. About 25 percent of the offers overlap between the sites.

Searching for priorities

As for plans for the future, LMC has a lot of ideas. Its portals and applications constantly need upgrades. “For example, now we do a new version of G2 every quarter,” Malý said. He said he couldn’t be more specific about how LMC is preparing for the future. “Now the world is changing, we have to wait. We have a lot of plans, but it is continuing with the ideas that we have that will be the priority. Currently, we reassess our priorities quarterly, not just once a year,” he said.

LMC has built and is still forming the Internet job market in the Czech Republic, and it can be therefore said that the Czech government’s e-recruitment program works to its advantage. LMC’s services are, in Malý’s view, so specific that it does not directly compete with anyone else on the market. “I do not care about any competitors. I am interested in customers and users. When you engage in the competition too much, you forget why you are here,” Malý said.

One reason the company has become a leader is that it initiated an alliance among the most important Central European portals and built a global partnership with two of the world’s largest networks, the e-recruitment companies of ERA and the Network.
recommend        print        feedback
Discussion
Online employment search firm gets the job done

New comment

Author

Title

Text



NEWS

Austria to open labor market

Thumbnail
5/5/2010 12:00:00 AM   Restrictions on Czechs’ employment in Austria will end on May 1, 2011, Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spin  more...

Responsibility for the state debt

Thumbnail
5/4/2010 12:01:00 AM   The Czech national debt is rising to astronomical heights, while in 1993 the country did not pay a single cro  more...

Police accuse Supreme Audit Office head

Thumbnail
5/3/2010 12:02:00 AM   The Czech anti-corruption police on April 27 accused Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ) head František Dohnal of brea  more...
EXCHANGE RATES
CNB - Actual to date  Thursday, September 09, 2010
EUR EUR 1  24.680 CZK
USD USD 1  19.409 CZK
GBP GBP 1  29.885 CZK

More exchange rates...
Advert
CURRENT EVENTS
VÝVOZ STROJÍRENSKÝCH VÝROBKŮ V DOBĚ KRIZE
Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Advert
Advert
RECOMMENDED
Nečas: People prefer pleasant lies to painful truths
Despite being in politics for many years, Petr Nečas, the new leader of the center-right Civic .. more...

ING: No more confusion
The post-crisis economic landscape pushed one of the major international financial corporations.. more...

NWR digging its way back up
Netherlands-registered New World Resources (NWR)—which owns OKD, the largest hard coal mining c.. more...

A taste of Dutch enthusiasm
The economic crisis raised the awareness of Czech companies as far as the importance of steppin.. more...

Advert
rss
RSS

Contact us

|

Advertisement and terms of service

|
© 2010 Stanford, a. s. All rights reserved. webmaster@profit.cz