This article is based on data from MeetFrank Job Market Insights. For additional and per-track reports, visit this page.
It has been 10 days since the emergency situation officially ended in Estonia. Even the border restrictions have been eased with Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland, which is a sign of slow yet very promising recovery. 😊
The recent news on loosening restrictions seems to have had a positive effect on the Estonian job market, as we saw some newfound stability in the numbers of openings and job seekers last week.
Want to learn more about the last week’s stats? Have a look at our previous report here. 👀
Let’s dig into this week’s numbers and find out how the Estonian job market is currently doing. 🕵
Job Market Overview
Last week, the current number of job openings was about the same as it was two weeks ago.
This week saw a sharp fall in the number of job openings by 23%. In parallel, the number of job applications fell by approximately 50%. 📉
Lately, out of approximately 29,000 people in Estonia’s talent pool, just over 12% of them are actively looking for a job. It has not changed that much since last week. When it comes to historical salaries, an upward trend continues for both expected and offered salaries. We’ll see if the gap between them increases in the upcoming weeks. 👀
Market competitiveness remained the same as last week staying at the ‘almost-OK’ level for finding a job in Estonia.
Guess which industry is luckiest nowadays? The answer is the ‘IT & Sysadmin’ sector which reached the 4.5 point, meaning that it is almost ‘very easy’ to find a job in this industry.
Weekly special chart: Expected vs offered salaries across top specialties
The ongoing crisis has changed the demand for various industries in different ways all over the world. To have a closer look at this matter, we will compare the expected and offered salaries across the top 8 specialties globally and in Estonia in the past 30 days.
Overall, out of these 8 specialties in the Estonian job market, the salary offerings of 5 industries have been higher than the expectations of job seekers. 💶
Here are the main takeaways from the stats👇
✅We see the biggest difference between expected and offered salaries in the Data & Analytics sector in the Estonian job market. The salaries offered are considerably higher than expected! 🥳
✅In addition to the Data & Analytics candidates, job seekers looking for opportunities in the IT & Sysadmin, Finance, Customer Support, and especially Software Engineering industries should raise their salary expectations too. Companies are offering higher salaries than you think! 😉
✅While there’s only a small difference between expected and offered salaries in (Tech) Project Management, Marketing & PR & Media and Sales & Business Development candidates may need to lower their expectations a bit more.
This also goes in parallel with the market competitiveness which is relatively higher in these sectors compared to others.
Globally speaking, 6 industries out of these 8 are offering higher salaries than expected even in these challenging times. 🎊👉Global trends are in line with those of Estonia when it comes to the Software Engineering industry. Expected salaries are higher than offered salaries.
👉As opposed to Estonia, companies looking for Marketing & PR & Media, (Tech) Project Management and Sales & Business Development are ready to pay more for talent.
In general, the salaries in Estonia seem to be lower in both expected and offered salaries than the global average.
Weekly highlight: Customer Support
Knowledge, communication, and patience—this week, we’re focusing on Customer Support. 😎
Let’s see what the trends have been in the last 9 months.
March was the most active month in terms of job openings. May saw the lowest number of openings so far, but many things can change before the end of the month. 🤞The number of job applications have been fluctuating in parallel with that of job openings in the last 9 months.
However, job seekers in need of a Customer Support role significantly outnumber the demand in the Estonian job market. This may also be related to the recent layoffs in the industry.
The talent pool in Estonia contains over 2,000 people, and more than 20% of them are actively looking for a job. Given this high ratio, it is no surprise that finding a job in the industry is difficult nowadays. 🤐
So, what about the salaries? How has this competitive job environment affected expected and offered salaries?Since February, there has been a growing gap between offered and expected salaries which might be considered as one of the inevitable results of COVID-19. 😷
At a time when we can mostly get support via email or phone, customer support has gained even more importance. So, as of May, companies seem to be ready to pay even more to find the best talent. 💰
Interested in a Customer Support role in Estonia? Here are the most recent openings for you:
When we look at the skills in demand, we see that English and (surprise surprise) customer service & support beat Estonian. So, you can still have a chance to build a career in the Estonian job market, even if you can’t speak the language. 💪
But we suggest you give it a try, not only because this would increase your chance of finding a job, but also because it sounds so harmonical. 🎶
👏Here comes the ‘congrats’ part. The most popular job opening in Customer Support is the ‘Customer Happiness Specialist’ role at Yaga!
Welcome to the MeetFrank family!
Adovinci OÜ, Balti Spoon OÜ, OÜ Hendrikson&Ko, SV Trading OÜ, SMARTFUL Growth OÜ, Infogrid, Exove, Startup Estonia, Greip Agentuur, Eesti Hoiuraamatukogu, and Sentinel —welcome to the MeetFrank family.🎊
Find the latest job openings from our new members below. Today might be the day you find your dream job! 👇
This article is based on data from MeetFrank Job Market Insights. For additional and per-track reports, visit this page.
Home to many pioneering companies such as Skype, TransferWise, Pipedrive, and Bolt, Estonia has lately been challenged by the impact of coronavirus, like the rest of the world. Let’s see what the second week of May has brought. 🌟
Before getting started, here is an overview from last week’s report ➡️ May started a bit foggy for the Estonian job market, which saw a decrease in the number of job openings twice in a row. Meanwhile, job-seekers remained active across all sectors.
Before diving into the ocean of this week’s stats, here come two friendly reminders:
👉If you’re an employer and want to hire people, you can join the Meetfrank family and contribute to increasing the number of next week’s job offerings.
👉If you’re looking for a job, ‘the’ opportunity might be waiting for you in the MeetFrank app. Download it today!
Now, let’s see what the stats from the Estonian job market show us about this week! 🔎
Job Market Overview
A week ago, we saw a 9.7% decrease in the number of active job openings as a continuing trend from the previous weeks. This week, the downward trend continues with an approximately 8% decrease.
In parallel, there has been a 13% decrease in the number of job applications in the past 7 days as well. There has also been a slight increase in the number of active job-seekers as can be seen below. 📈Given the data, the ratio of the number of job openings to the number of the active job-seekers remains similar to that of the past few weeks.
Finding a job in Estonia remains fairly challenging. Also, last week brought about another round of terminations in Estonian startups – Pipedrive and Veriff laid off parts of their team. So the market is going to get even more competitive. 😟
On the other hand, if you are working in the construction or IT & Sysadmin sectors, it will be ‘very easy’ for you to find a job in Estonia nowadays. So, now is the time to update your resume and send it out on new journeys! 🚀
Who said that salary is the most important criterion when looking for a job? It seems the job-seekers in Estonia are also challenge lovers and look forward to more growth opportunities as well as higher salaries.
We hope you got the message, dear employers. 🤓
It’s also important to keep in mind that the Estonian government has recently announced emergency economic packages for companies and specific industries. In addition to that, we’re hearing talk of normalisation more than ever. So, let’s keep our heads high and hope for the best for the rest of the month. 🙃
Weekly special chart: TOP 15 Companies with the most applications in 2020
Every week, we zoom in on a special chart and discuss it from different angles. Now, it’s the turn of the Top 15 companies with the most applications in 2020.
At first glance, it’s a pretty colourful list including sectors from ride-sharing to SaaS, food-delivery to finance, and recruitment to banking. By the way, have you seen who’s in 3rd place? 😊
Since the beginning of 2020, the top 6 companies in Estonia which have attracted the most applications have been Bolt, Testlio, (drum roll, please) MeetFrank, Scoro Software, Weekdone, andMicrosoft . 🥁 They are followed by companies in the banking, finance, software, and technology industries.
It seems mostly SaaS, software, mobile application, and tech-related companies in general have been sparking interest since the beginning of 2020. As Bolt, ranking first in the list, has recently launched its grocery delivery services in Estonia, food delivery can be accepted as a front-runner industry, in addition to ride-sharing.
The data shows that relatively young but already successful companies such as Bolt and MeetFrank (yay!) have succeeded in attracting more talent than the global giants.
While the big hitters are still the center of attention, there is a growing interest in young and fresh Estonian companies. 🎆
Weekly highlight: Marketing & PR & Media
Smart ideas, catchy taglines, flashy campaigns—this week’s highlight topic is Marketing & PR & Media😎 Let’s see what the trends have been in the last 8 weeks.
When it comes to the number of job openings, there has been a downward trend since April due to the current situation worldwide. From the chart below, we can see that the numbers haven’t changed for the last 3 weeks.
April saw the highest leap in the number of job applications. There has been an increase last week as well, which might be related to the recent layoffs in Estonia.
At present, the Marketing & PR & Media sector in Estonia is not experiencing its best days.
Out of more than 3,000 members of the talent pool in Estonia, 15.1% of them are actively seeking a job, which makes finding a job in this industry challenging. 🤔
The numbers show that high competition in the sector seems to have lowered the salary expectations of active job seekers until May. In contrast, companies increased their job offers to find the best talent until two weeks ago.
For the last 8 months, the expected and offered salaries have been involved in a complicated story. 🤔 At first, they went in different directions, met each other in January and February, and parted ways with an ever-increasing gap at the end of April. Recently, there has been a sharp fall in the offered salaries and a slight increase in the expected salaries. 🎢
It seems that the crisis is affecting expectations and offerings in different ways, leaving a question mark for whether their paths will cross again or not in the upcoming weeks. 👀
Looking for a role in Marketing & PR & Media and feeling even more motivated after hearing about the offered salaries? 😉 Here are the most recent openings in the industry:
Wondering which perks these companies offer to the lucky candidates? The Oscar goes to team events which companies in Estonia are very good at organising.
Apparently, free coffee is also a popular perk provided by employers. This makes perfect sense as they’d love to keep their teams up, fresh and alert for new ideas. ☕
👏The most popular job opening in Marketing & PR & Media has been the ‘Social Media Specialist’ role at Checkspot OÜ in the last 30 days.
Welcome to the MeetFrank family!
Let’s finish with some good news! This week, we welcomed Sharecloud OÜ, BCS Itera AS, and Reinvent Balticsto the MeetFrank family. 🎊
And here are the latest job openings from the Estonian job market. Have a look and see if any of them might be ‘the’ one!
Having a reputation for punching above its weight when it comes to things digital and tech, the Estonian tech sector has been experiencing a solid-paced rise during the last five years.
But how does that affect the local job market?
Here are some of the takeaway facts we found out about Estonia’s job market:
The country has risen to the 20th position in Europe in terms of the total investment into startups while having the second smallest population after Luxembourg
With its 123 million worth of investments into deep tech in 2014-2019, Estonia ranks 18th in Europe, placing it on the second place among Eastern European countries, right behind Poland that has 29 times bigger population
Software engineers and IT talent are currently among the most in-demand workers with the lowest level of competition
Salaries of Estonia’s tech jobs are behind the European average but way above the national average
Estonia’s tech sector in numbers
The tiger reference 🐯 in the title of this article is not a literary gimmick (not totally at least), as it’s referencing to the Tiger Leap project – one of the revolutionary initiatives launched by the Estonian government in 1990’s and 2000’s that paved way digital information technology. These programs played a fundamental role in the buildup of state information infrastructure and education.
It is also most likely one of the factors that have led to the considerable success of Estonia’s tech sector, that is currently growing at a fast pace and attracted a strong € 250 million worth of investments in 2019. The country is proud of its 4 unicorns, having currently more per capita than any other country in the world: Skype, Playtech, Transferwise and Bolt.
All this makes for good country promotion material, but what’s actually happening at the work market?
Top 6 jobs Estonian tech companies are hiring for
As with the rest of Europe, software engineering job offers are currently at the top in Estonia with 49% of the job offers. The share of applications submitted for software engineering jobs is significantly lower – 37% – meaning that the applicants enjoy a low competition rate. And are in high demand!
IT & System administrators are the second-highest in need and also with a low ratio of applicant numbers. Creative fields like design and marketing & PR are among the last in the top 6, with a negative ratio of the share of applications, indicating high competition.
Competitiveness for the top 6 roles
Among the six jobs with the highest share of offers in MeetFrank, creative and performance-oriented fields like design, sales & business development, marketing & PR & media see the biggest competition for the job offers in Estonia.
On average 26 people apply for design job offers published in MeetFrank, which is the highest in Estonia but far behind the European average of the same field – 41. Also similarly to the European average, IT fields are lower in terms of competition as, software engineering has 10, Data & Analytics has 9 and IT & Sysadmin has 7 candidates per offer.
What are the salaries for tech jobs in the Estonian job market?
Although slightly behind the European average, it can be said that salaries offered in the tech sector in Estonia are relatively higher than those of the rest of the country.
Also, the payment is slightly more egalitarian in Estonia between the average payments in different fields as the tech/IT jobs are not that far ahead of the others than the European average is. IT & System administrators are the most well-paid among the most popular jobs, followed closely by project management, sales & business development and software engineering, while creative fields like design and marketing are earning about a fifth less.
As you scroll up, you will see that high demand creates high salaries: As software engineers are one of the most sought-after experts in Estonia, it also reflects in their salary level.
It’s a fairly common knowledge that Estonian tech companies are also looking towards other European markets when it comes to finding top talent.
How popular is relocation among Estonian tech companies and job-seekers?
Are companies and job-seekers open to relocating?
It turns out workers currently based in Estonia are, on average slightly less interested in relocation than the European average. This is the case for software engineering and sales & business development job seekers.
A curious case is IT & system administration, that has the highest % of interest for relocation (25%) while the field has the highest salaries of all top jobs in Estonia and the lowest level of competition. This is over 4 times higher than the European average (6%) for the role.
Sales & business development and data & analytics people are the most content in Estonia, with only 11% and 12%, respectively, interested in relocating.
Top 5 countries with applications to relocate to work in Estonia
We know that around 25% of Estonian job-seekers are open to relocation.
But what about the other way around? Do people from other countries want to relocate to Estonia? The job-seekers in the MeetFrank platform seem to be willing enough.
Although Lithuania has an emerging tech scene of its own and the average payment is close to Estonia, it is surprisingly the country with the highest rate of readiness to relocate to Estonia. That is most likely due to geographic proximity.
Estonia’s northern neighbor Finland follows second and Ukraine, currently the country with the biggest migration to Estonia in general, comes third.
Top skills required in tech-related roles
Let’s take a look at which skills make you most likely to get hired in the Estonian job market. At least in the MeetFrank app!
With software engineering being the most in-demand profession at the moment it shouldn’t come as too big a surprise that the top sought-after skills are regarding that field. Full-stack, backend and frontend development and most common development languages HTML & CSS, SQL and Javascript are what’s expected of engineers these days.
Business development, project management, sales management, English and also Estonian are expected from sales & business development managers, while English is also the highest sought-after skill for customer support.
IT & Sysadmin candidates are currently most valued for their system administration and DevOps skills, while content marketing is the top skill expected from marketing & PR candidates. The most in-demand skill for designers is UI & visual design.
Top 10 Estonian companies, voted by job-seekers
In the MeetFrank app, the most applied-to companies are the tech unicorns.
Out of the four unicorns ever be been nurtured in Estonia, two are hiring at MeetFrank being they are the country’s most popular companies. These are the low-cost money transfer service Transferwise and the ride-hailing platform Bolt (formerly known as Taxify).
The third is the mobile banking app Monese and fourth Veriff, offering safer face recognition service – one of the features that are vital for Estonia’s E-Residency project.Starship, founded by Ahti Heinla (one of the founders of the mythical Skype) is now working on packaging robots with Starship that is also currently hiring across people in Estonia and several locations in the US.
MeetFrank is also regularly used by non-startups and /-tech companies, as indicated by the presence of two Swedish companies: the packaging, biomaterials, wooden constructions, and paper production giant Stora Enso and commercial bank SEB.
In a nut-shell
Estonia’s tech labour market, although comparatively small, is experiencing fast growth and offers a bunch of interesting companies to work for.
Several of them have recently grown to become international success stories such as Transferwise and Bolt, with many others boasting the potential to become the country’s next unicorns.
The average payment in the tech sector is slightly below the European average, but so are the prices in the country’s capital Tallinn, where most of the companies are hiring. The city embraces several tech hubs, a thriving startup community, having made it to the league of Europe’s top cities in terms of tech development and financing.
Tele2 is a challenging company to work for. To us, good enough isn’t good enough. We want things to be great. We work harder than most to create value for our customers. At Tele2 you must be able to deliver even when the boat is rocking, because it will.
Our industry and our customers’ demands change constantly. That’s why we need people who challenge outdated mindsets and who rewrite the rules. People who think fast and move fast. Who take bold initiatives and never hesitate to challenge persons with longer titles on their business cards.
This is the kind of people we need to maintain the edge that comes from our founder Jan Stenbeck.
The reward? To people like us, taking on a challenge is rewarding in itself. But of course we also notice and compensate results. We salute and celebrate victories. And we often play as hard as we work. But still, we like to go home to our families. We also find it rewarding to operate in some of the world’s most dynamic and fast-growing markets.
Guardtime’s mission is to build the essential backbone for truth, assurance and integrity for our digital world.
Guardtime is the first and only real-time integrity platform for data, systems and networks. Every aspect of society today depends on data, from business and transportation to government and education, yet we have no way of assuring its integrity. Today’s perimeter-based attempts to protect data and systems are failing, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Cash On Go is a fintech company aiming to be the initiator in the modern financial world.
Their mission is to provide UK customers easy to use financial services that help them through their real life unexpected situations and cash management needs.
Their vision is to be leading and profitable in loan offering without compromising our core values.
They have two offices: one in London, and another in Tallinn. Their a team of more than 60 passionate and hard-working professionals is always looking for new talented colleagues to join us in this fast evolving business.
The work environment is caring and they have very transparent management. Cash On Go also feel the productivity burst and confidence upgrade derived from the culture of no-micromanagement and high-output performance.
With them you can be part of a multicultural company that shares the mindset of united goals and growth. Together they feel the joy and get satisfaction from overcoming challenges.
When it comes to historical salaries, an upward trend continues for both expected and offered salaries. We’ll see if the gap between them increases in the upcoming weeks. 👀
👉Global trends are in line with those of Estonia when it comes to the Software Engineering industry. Expected salaries are higher than offered salaries.
The number of job applications have been fluctuating in parallel with that of job openings in the last 9 months. 
Given this high ratio, it is no surprise that finding a job in the industry is difficult nowadays. 🤐
Since February, there has been a growing gap between offered and expected salaries which might be considered as one of the inevitable results of COVID-19. 😷
April saw the highest leap
