E-search is a small family-owned firm working in HR for 20 years now. Their reference list holds a number of companies from the IT world and other fields, including successful cooperation with Microsoft Development Centre Serbia since day one.
Our guiding principle is that only the best can succeed in a turbulent business environment such as our market – says Mrs. Bojadžievska, adding that for them, quality is the key to all success. Therefore, in each project they apply a set of governance and quality control principles.
You have worked in HR for over 20 years, and during the last two E-search has seen its full expansion. What led to this? Is it related to the pandemic?
E-search is a small family-owned firm that in time focused mainly on the IT sector, in itself seeing an expansion during recent years, thus this has had a considerable amount of positive impact on our company. I’d say this has been going on for more than two years. The IT sector has continued to grow despite the pandemic, unlike other sectors.
As market leaders, you help clients find the required human resources. Does this cover all, including the highest positions?
This has certainly been part of our business, started by my late father just over 20 years ago. Today, E-search also recruits students for certain types of expert teams that operate in the above sector. We are very proud to employ young people, for whom this is their first job, and to cooperate with them. This is a profession with a very good supply of education in Serbia.
The supply of human resources in the rapidly expanding IT sector is excellent, but the market is highly dynamic
The second and equally large part of our business is staff leasing, offered as a service since our company was founded. Clients increasingly need these two services to go hand in hand.
How would you assess our workforce? What is the supply? It is easy for you to find what your clients need, or does the search for a good candidate sometimes take a while?
The workforce supply depends both on the sector and job posting, but the key point is certainly good communication with the client and understanding of what the client needs. I would also add that, as we mainly work with the IT sector which is in a state of rapid expansion, the supply of candidates is excellent, but the market is highly dynamic. Under such conditions one must be ready to act quickly and offer the candidate more than the competition does.
Although your primary approach is aimed at corporations, we pay particular attention to communication with candidates. Does this produce the best cooperation between candidates and clients?
Since our clients set high standards, the candidates we choose must meet all of the required criteria. Our company recruits different profiles in different sectors, but even within single companies clients sometimes require a set of different job posts. Fortunately, once we fill them, they tend to remain, while fluctuation and the need for replacing staff is low. It is important to note that every candidate receives feedback from us, whether they pass to the next round or not. Due to our professional relationship with every candidate, we have a pool of candidates that we can call for other jobs as well, if they have proven themselves but did not receive an opportunity for the post that was open at the time.
Speaking of corporations, who are you biggest clients? Microsoft is one of them?
Our reference list holds a number of other companies from the world of IT, and companies from other fields, but we have successfully cooperated with Microsoft Development Centre Serbia (MDCS) since the company was established.
The most important thing is to be able to respond well and without delay to the requests of our clients and expectations of our candidates
Our market is known as a turbulent business environment. What makes it such? To what extent does our legislation contribute to this?
Agencies such as ours have found themselves in a highly turbulent period recently, after the new Law on Agency Employment (staff leasing) came into force as of March 2020. Although this law regulates the rights and obligations of staff concluding labour contracts with a temporary employment agency for referral to temporary jobs, as well as the relationship between the agency and end employer, we have been faced with defined limits on the number of referred staff. This resulted in many changes to our business, reduced opportunities, and many unresolved issues and problems that remain to be solved through practice. Therefore, the answer is YES, this is a very turbulent environment for us and our business.
You believe only the best can succeed. This means you believe quality is the key to all success and you seek it in yourself and your candidates?
You just answered the question. We believe that the most important thing today is to be able to respond well and without delay to the requests of our clients and expectations of our candidates. We believe smaller systems such as ours have an advantage regarding the above characteristics, and I am certain that many people share this opinion with me.