Maris Tepers is the CEO of MateHR and IT recruitment specialist with more than 7 years of experience. In this interview, he tells us how MateHR was created, how the world of IT recruitment is transforming, and what trends are about to become more prominent in 2019.
MateHR was created to help IT companies across the world to find qualified specialists in a faster and more flexible way. Maris as CEO himself embodies the values of the company. Living between two countries and having international partners in almost 20 countries around the world, Maris knows exactly what international life and work mean.
But how did he get here and why did he start a recruitment agency? Read on to find out the story behind MateHR.
One market is not enough
Maris Tepers began his career in different sales positions, starting with telemarketing, banks and real estate. Today he believes that his almost 15 years experience in sales plays a major role in his IT recruitment approach.
He explains: “Sales is not only about getting someone to pay you for a product or service. I believe it’s about forming, managing, and maintaining relationships with customers, as well as coordinating different processes. For me, the most important is to ensure high-quality service for our customers.”
For six years Maris was the head of sales of human resources agency Enjoy Recruitment in Riga, Latvia. For two years, he was simultaneously the CEO of the company. In his daily work, he has directly experienced that the demand for IT professionals is way higher than the supply and that even the best recruiters will not be able to satisfy this constant lack of IT workforce.
He also realized that the Latvian market alone is getting too small to satisfy the demand for IT professionals and began establishing international contacts. He explains: “Even in markets as big as Russia, Ireland, Ukraine or Germany one company often cannot recruit enough specialists to meet the demand that exists in that very same country.
As a result, local recruitment agencies either take ages to find specific professionals or they don’t succeed at all.”
MateHR - a network, not a single agency
Maris came up with the idea to form a network of international IT recruitment partners with many countries and even regions united for better workforce supply.
His solution was to create an international HR agency that would serve as a one-stop-shop to match employers with highly skilled professionals across the globe.
He points out: “Our biggest strength is that people don’t have to talk to one agency in Ireland, another one in Belarus and the third one in Portugal. MateHR’s network unites hundreds of recruiters offering the speed and scope that no single company ever could.”
A network of IT recruitment companies also helps to ensure speed - a factor that’s often crucial in IT headhunting. MateHR’s CEO explains: “On average, our recruitment process takes 2-3 weeks, and the following relocation - 2-3 months. Even if the job transfer process takes less time when you recruit locally, the IT headhunting part takes longer, because the market has a smaller supply. Therefore, in total, international recruitment takes approximately the same amount of time as hiring locally. And it definitely pays off - especially when employers want to hire more than one specialist.”
Putting employers back in charge
“For many years, IT companies around the world have been looking for programmers in an inefficient way. By reducing the importance of borders, we help employers go back to being in charge of the recruitment process. This means actually being able to choose the most suitable candidate from a selection of the best - instead of settling with the one that’s just “good enough.”
‘’MateHR’s IT focus considerably helps because we understand the needs of IT companies and know the market like the back of our hand.
Therefore, we are able to fill the gap between skilled IT professionals who are open for new opportunities and IT companies who want to hire more efficiently.”
At the moment, Maris sees fintech, telecommunications, e-gaming, artificial intelligence (AI) and successful startups to be the most booming industries for developers. Meanwhile, the most demanded IT professions are DevOps engineer, Front-end developer (Javascript, React, Angular), Cloud technology specialist, Back-end developer (Java, .NET, Python, PHP), QA automation specialist, Database specialist and other.
What’s in store for IT recruitment in 2019
We asked Maris Tepers to highlight a few major trends that are likely to impact developer recruitment in the future.
Trend No 1 - Employers become more open to hiring internationally
Maris explains that today employers across the globe become increasingly more open to international recruitment - even those who were skeptical about it only a few years ago.
“Employers are beginning to see the benefits of having international employees - for instance, a different background and a fresh perspective of the industry. International employees also tend to be more loyal and less prone to change their job.
The person who relocates is not an adventure-seeker. He or she has made a serious decision - that this job is worth moving for it. Therefore, international employees are generally more stable and more likely to stay in the same company for a longer time compared to local employees who are more susceptible to look around for other job opportunities.”
Trend No 2 - The flow of professionals is diversifying
Maris has noticed that developers no longer relocate only from East to West, as it has traditionally been over the past decades.
“Today we see that increasingly more professionals from Western Europe or North America are open to job opportunities in Central, South or Eastern Europe.
There are different reasons for this change. Many people are interested in seeing how the industry works in different regions. Others simply want to experience living in another culture and visit new places. With many booming IT companies opening branches or headquarters in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, international specialists are willing to move there, as well as for the lower cost of living.”
Trend No 3 - The stereotype of Eastern Europe as a cheap labor pool is fading away
The stereotype that Eastern European countries offer cheaper workforce is slowly disappearing. Maris agrees that highly skilled professionals from these regions may generally be more available and open to other job opportunities.
“However, the demand for developers is so high, that companies have to look in all directions if they want to hire their perfect employee and adjust the salaries accordingly”, Maris explains. “In other words: the nationality of the employee loses relevance, especially with English as the language of the IT world spoken by specialists worldwide.”
Written by Ieva Baranova