Just 20 years ago Jüri Tarkpea, now the VP of Platform Engineering at Fleet Complete, had a software company in a small Estonian town called Tartu. Their one-of-a-kind GPS tracker first caught the eye of Skype founder Toivo Annus and just 3 years ago the whole business was acquired by a huge global player Fleet Complete. Talk about a success story! 📈
Fleet Complete is the global leader in providing IoT solutions with the goal to reduce waste around anything that involves vehicles 🚚.. As their product falls on the B2B side, the wider audience might not be aware of all the Fleet Complete devices that surround us. But be well assured, they make our daily life a lot easier.
According to Jüri, Fleet Complete is like a fox 🦊 – agile and adaptive to every situation. Small enough to be flexible and fast. Big enough to serve huge global partners.
Read the interview to find out how the team gets stuff done and how they work with influential clients like Ford, AT&T and many more.
Interview
No mission statement is better than an insider giving us the overview of the company. Please tell us what does Fleet Complete do? Where could one find your product?
Essentially, we have two core values that we provide to our customers.
Firstly, reducing waste around everything that involves vehicles and other assets of a company. In addition to that, we also try to maximize the benefits that come out of these assets. Usually, it involves location tracking.
Location visibility is the cornerstone of our service, because once you get to the location, you can do business calculations, maintenance reminders and all sorts of reporting about anything related to the vehicles and assets. So, what we really do is help fleets thrive.
What exactly do you mean by “fleets”?
In our case they are bicycles, cars, heavy trucks, helicopters, boats and everything in between. If one knew where to look, this is exactly where our products are to be found — attached to all sorts of vehicles. Of course, in reality there are few who know where to search.
In fact, as we operate on the B2B side of the business world, the knowledge about us in general public is not high at all so that sometimes even the employees of the companies that use our products don’t know about all the systems we are providing them. They might know that some devices are being used but not if they are provided by Fleet Complete or somebody else.
We look at it as a good thing, after all, one of our ideals is that we take away the problems, not replace them with new ones. In that sense, being unknown is a really good thing — because everybody remembers troublemakers.
What is your career story in the company? How did you find Fleet Complete or how did Fleet Complete find you?
My career started almost 20 years ago as a developer with two friends. At the time we had a little software company in Tartu with a few map applications. There was one specific app that allowed one to see one’s location on an old soviet military map, using GPS trackers. At that time, it was a unique offering.
What is maybe interesting to mention is that Toivo Annus, the founder of Skype and one of the first business leaders in technology, used to have a hobby for off-road vehicles’ orientation back in 2004-2005. People who drove those vehicles started buying the software to know where the bogs and trenches are and this is how Toivo found out about us.
One of the companies he had invested in was Oskando which was focusing on GPS trackers´ hardware, so at one point it was only natural that he came to us and made an offer to merge.
Following that, we expanded to Baltics and found the first resellers in Eastern Europe and Nordics. Then we merged with a Danish company and we started growing bigger than just a Baltics’ company.
Three years ago, this whole thing was acquired by Fleet Complete and today I serve as the Global VP of Engineering. I think that most of the people working in the Estonian office today are on the same trajectory of one day contributing to this company and team at the highest possible level.
Wow, that’s one interesting journey you had! What is the common value that connects different international experts in the team?
“Getting stuff done”. In the corporate environment it can be really hard to maintain our own face and the personal style of communication.
Luckily, I believe that we have managed to do that. We are not afraid to express our opinions and we all bring our best to the table for the mutual goal of getting stuff done. So, I guess it is the common mindset that most connects us.
During these unprecedented times, how are things going with Fleet Complete?
When the first wave of COVID hit, very soon after, we started breaking many monthly records in sales. Our products and services proved to be extra valuable during these unprecedented times when life needed to become more digitalized in order to minimize physical contact between people.
So, the year has turned out quite well. In fact, so well that we have started a new hiring cycle to keep up with the customer demands.
At the same time internally, we switched to remote work mode from day 1 without any impact on the business. So, we are very flexible and allow everyone to decide what is the best working setup for them. Also, during that time we were offering virtual workout sessions with coaches on wellbeing as well as physical exercise.
While the company’s headquarter is in Toronto, Fleet Complete has 12 offices all around the world. Picture from Tartu office opening.
The company is rapidly expanding and Fleet Complete just opened a new office in Tallinn. Congratulations! Who are you looking for to join the team?
Indeed, thank you!
As I mentioned earlier, “getting stuff done” mindset plays a big role in our company. Therefore, we are first and foremost looking for people who align with that mindset.
In addition to that I want to say that we have seen too many success stories over the years of people who on the paper should have not been hired but aligned with the mindset, had grit and have now achieved great things.
Working in a company that is growing that fast is not always easy. It means that we also look for people who are searching for professional challenges. We do not have the luxury to decide everything for our employees, on the contrary, we are counting on them to make up their own mind and in case of urgency have the confidence to make the decision on their own.
If you are looking for professional challenges, share the “getting stuff done” mindset and are ready to take the lead when needed, we are a perfect match.
Specifically, we are looking at the moment: mobile developers, QA engineers, full-stack developers, UX lead and many more. Feel free to join the team:
You said that switching to remote work happened rather smoothly. Do you have any secrets on how you did that?
We support productivity. You should work where you are the most productive, be it the office, home or remote office — it doesn’t matter.
In addition to that I believe we are a supportive bunch that want to achieve great things and to have fun along the way.
Also, the self-development aspect is worth mentioning. During a short period of time you can see the strengths of each employee and we try to play on their strengths, we try to encourage their personal growth. From a materialistic perspective, our employees can choose their work equipment. We don’t offer golden laptops, but we’ll do as much as possible to help our employees to be more productive.
Thanks for taking the time to chat with us! To end the interview, we’ve got 5 rapid-fire questions to you.
If Fleet Complete would be an animal, what animal would it be?
A fox, because of agility and ability to find solutions. Adaptive to every situation.
What is the best thing that happened to the whole team this month?
Excellent question! We just launched our next generation web platform product for retail customers of AT&T of US.
Who is Fleet Complete’s biggest client in the world, in Estonia?
AT&T globally and Eesti Energia in Estonia.
What’s your favourite part of your current job?
Never had a boring day.
What do you believe is the biggest strength of your company right now?
Small enough to be agile and be able to execute rapidly. We are also big enough that we serve as partners for world’s biggest car manufacturers (Ford, General Motors, Daimler, Mitsubishi) and telecom companies.
Software speciality is a major force in the job market. Unfortunately the field is strongly stereotyped. It is commonly believed that software engineers are introverts that work silently in the corner – somewhat typical nerds 🤓.
#ILookLikeAnEngineer was called into life to stop this appearance-based bias. Now let’s investigate the performance-based tilt.
It is commonly believed that great knowledge of tech skills is all you need to be a successful software developer. However, the HR & recruitment experts from People Link have pointed out an interesting shift 👀 in the IT recruitment field.
Currently, personality is getting more weight in taking a decision whom to hire as an engineer.
We discussed with Danas Venclovas, head of IT recruitment at People Link, how the software engineers’ personality has become the primary focus during the recruitment process.
Danas Venclovas from People Link has strong expertise in the IT sector recruitment.
Software engineering speciality has become a very broad field of study. Years ago a solo task is now an interaction between many stakeholders: designers, users, product owners, etc. How has that changed the profile of a software engineer?
That’s right, stakeholders are more and more involved in contributing to tasks meaning more collaboration is needed. If we look back 3-4 years, most of the companies tried to fill roles with people handling very specific skill set (i.e. software engineer with 3 years of .NET 4.x, or ASP.NET and even in some specific business domain experience) and that was complete standart in the market.
Currently, in recruitment we see a huge shift to what is required to fulfil tasks – companies now appreciate technical eclecticism. Meaning we are not looking for a PHP Symfony specialist or Java engineer, companies are looking for a Software Engineer who would feel comfortable with a combination of programming languages and would be able to choose different tools for different problems (i.e. use Node.JS on one microservice and Python for the other, while working on the same platform).
Another thing that changed over the past few years is the view on engineer’s personality. Companies used to focus on a specific skill whilst turning a blind eye on what they are as a person. Currently, personality is getting more weight in taking a decision whom to hire as an engineer.
As every company is using a different technical stack and in almost every case when a person joins the team, they have to adapt to the company’s stack and learn new things, Hiring Managers tend to take in consideration their communication, collaboration skills, ability to learn, flexibility, agility, etc.
Study suggests that although interests and personality types may play a role in the selection of a career, they may not predict success in that area. Would you agree with this? Do you see any prominent characteristics among software developers that secure a higher rate of success?
I really think that personality influences the selection of the career path – for example, in our recruitment we use a Tripod assessment center that assesses personality based on the Big 5 personality theory. Combined with mental and/or spatial ability tests can give us a very good indication on how a person will perform in a new role, will they adapt quickly and what might hinder their success.
Overall, higher scores in Arithmetical and Spatial abilities is a good predictor of one’s opportunities to have a good career in the IT industry. Hence if one is considering to transition to IT, I would very much advise them to take such a test- it would be a very useful guideline for them.
Developers like any other people share a very wide range of interests and hobbies – sports, hardware, gaming, cooking, you name it. None of these interests can predict developers’ ability to succeed at work. During my career I interviewed a lot of diverse people who in no way support the stereotypes of developers. I’ve seen very communicative, extroverted people enjoying coding all day and complete introverts who successfully manage teams and develop businesses.
But there is one factor which can definitely describe a person’s success in IT, actually in any field – and it’s a very simple thing – constant learning and finding ways to challenge oneself. Best candidates and leaders of the market always say the same – the more I’ve learned along the way, the more I still don’t know. And as IT is a very fast paced industry with constantly developing technologies, tools, and frameworks, one must keep up with all of it if you want to stay in the game.
People Link consists of experts in HR Recruitment and Sourcing, providing full Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) services to wide range of sectors.
As an expert in recruitment, you have probably done numerous successful hirings. What are the biggest stumbling blocks that people make during an interview or in the applying process?
There are numerous ways one can fail in interviews or any other stage of the recruitment process. I could tell you stories for hours about candidates who come to a video interview without wearing a T-shirt, lights up a cigarette while being interviewed, curses, appears late by 30-40 mins or forgets to show up at all. So it’s not easy to surprise me anymore 😀
The interesting thing is that these stories are much more common in the IT industry than any others. It’s hard to tell why.
I think the biggest mistakes that people make during an interview is coming in without any preparation – not having taken a look at the company or position they’ll be interviewed for. I had cases when a person shows up on a video interview and doesn’t remember what company we will be talking to, and in most cases this strongly indicates that candidates have little motivation tochange jobs and are just “window shopping”. In most cases, talking with recruiters means one of the following: either you improve your salary and benefits by going to a better position/company or you increase your salary in the current company by going to your boss and saying – company X is headhunting me. So why not make some effort and show your best qualities.
At People Link we do a lot of surveys on the Lithuanian labour market and a few years back we were looking into what personal qualities employers look for in their employees. And the results showed that most desired qualities are responsibility, efficiency, independency, diligence and proactivity. So try to show these qualities during interviews with companies in addition to your technical skills and you will earn much more than you’ll lose: you’ll improve your working conditions, your salary, or at least – your reputation that in the long run might positively improve your working conditions and/or salary.
Give some hints to students or those who are considering a career change. Where in the IT sector do you see that companies’ demand is high, but the potential amount of talent is low?
In all the areas in the IT market demand is higher than supply. Choosing almost any field in IT to study has a tremendous potential. Of course, you should consider studying modern technologies like Golang, Node.JS, React.JS, Python, since the demand of these skills in the market are higher than other technologies but if you choose PHP, Java or .NET as your main technology, you will still have plenty of opportunities in the market. One of the “not such a good” choices would be going for Mainframe or other legacy technologies.
But, as I mentioned before, not only your technology stack is important, think of ways how to improve and show your personal qualities. And not only that but also invest some time into data literacy. If you’re thinking about IT, huge chances are that you’ll be working with data, algorithms and databases, unless you go for Front-end and Design. In this case you’ll have less data 🙂
If a company is struggling to find talent to join their team, how can People Link help in these situations?
At People Link we provide a number of services to the companies but the main is the full recruitment process. But I always say that companies we work with benefit the most from the partnership we have, since we help not only with finding and assessing candidates but we work with companies to make the best Employer Value proposition, help with recruitment process and strategy, we consult companies on the market trends, salaries and challenges, efficiency and effectiveness of their HR processes, etc. We have experience building teams for start-ups from scratch, helping market leaders to find and hire the right people and we cover many more functions from consulting to organizational research.
Want to know more about recruitment trends? Contact team of People Link for more info.
What are your predictions for the future? How will the IT sector recruitment trends change? What struggles/changes we have to be ready for?
The main struggle that recruitment will face is less time for filling the role. Two years ago it was completely normal for recruitment to take 3-4 weeks, year ago it was 2-3 weeks. Now if a candidate doesn’t have an answer whether he or she gets the offer or not in 2 weeks, you can practically forget about them – they’ve forgotten about you and lost their interest in the role. From the candidates point of view it’s completely fair to ask for a faster process since nobody wants to go through 1 month of recruitment and find out that the company chose someone else. It’s even worse when candidates don’t get any feedback at all.
Another thing that’s not a future trend but todays’ reality – recruiters need to work alongside hiring managers in order to recruit and engage the best people in the market. The age where recruitment agencies were just service providers is over and now every head-hunter needs to be as much as possible included in the recruitment process because only by having all the information we can help companies and candidates and actually be partners in dealing with market’s challenges.
And for the future in IT predictions, I really feel that Data literacy will become more important as everything is moving towards Big data, Data Science, AI and we all, doesn’t matter if you are a developer, a customer support, or HR Generalist, everyone will have to work with data and its analysis. Another trend – technical eclecticism – problems in the IT field evolve and become harder to solve but by sticking to one or two technologies as your technical stack means that soon you’ll be not competitive in the market. This means that, again, keep learning new things, keep up-to-date with new trends and invest time in learning.
Let’s summarise with 5 main takeaways:
💡 Currently, companies appreciate technical eclecticism – the ability of combining things from many different areas or systems. Constant improvement and finding ways to challenge oneself is the key.
💡 Danas has interviewed a lot of diverse people during his recruitment career and these people, in no way, support the stereotypes of developers.
💡 The recruitment process has become faster and faster. Two years ago it was completely normal for recruitment to take 3-4 weeks, year ago it was 2-3 weeks. Now if a candidate doesn’t have an answer whether he or she gets the offer or not in 2 weeks, you can practically forget about them.
💡 According to People Link survey results, the most desired and valued qualities are responsibility, efficiency, independency, diligence and proactivity.
💡 Not only your technology stack is important, but think of ways how to improve and show your personal qualities.
People Link is constantly helping to connect the right talent to relevant companies:
The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has arrived in Finland as well which resulted in new restrictions and measures starting from November until December 15. 😷
In this report, we will compare market competitiveness, the number of job openings, the offered gross salaries and more between November and May. 👍
Our goal is to see how the Finnish job market has been doing in the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic.
👉 Both the number of job openings and applications saw a decline.
👉 Finland saw a slight change in market competitiveness in October. It was somewhere between the “challenging” and “OK” levels.
Now is time to dig into November’s stats and see the most significant changes since May!
Job Market Overview
As we mentioned above, both the number of job openings and applications saw a decline in Finland.
What about this month?
However this month, similar to Estonia and Lithuania, the number of job openings in the Finnish job market has seen an increase. 📈
However, the number of job applications has decreased this month. This is similar to other countries in the region as well. Apparently, the opportunities outnumber demand. 🤔
➡️ From a different angle, the expectations of job seekers may not be matching with the offerings from companies.
What about market competitiveness?
If you are looking for a job in Finland, we have some good news for you. Nowadays, it is at the happy green level – the “OK level” – to find a job in the Finnish job market. 😊
Wondering about the offered and expected gross salaries?
Both salaries saw a small increase as of mid-November. This has been an ongoing trend since October which means the low gap between the salaries persists.
Job openings in Top 6 Specialties: November vs May
Time to talk about every job seeker’s favourite topic: job openings in the top 6 specialties. 🤓
In this section, we will compare November’s number of job openings (as of today) with May’s.
🔊 What was the situation like back in the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic? What about now – how is the Finnish job market doing in the second wave?
When we look at the chart, we can see that:
✅ In November the number of job openings in all industries fell compared to May’s stats.
✅ The Software Engineering industry saw the highest fall – more than 50%. Despite this significant decrease, this specialty still has the highest number of job offerings compared to the others in the list.
✅ Data Analytics already had a low number of job openings in May and now it has decreased by more than approximately 60%.
Let’s see how the data will look in December!
Offered Salaries: November vs May
The offered and expected salaries have been a rollercoaster for most countries and Finland is one of them.
In this section, we will discuss how the offered gross salaries have changed since May.
➡️ The winners of this section are Design and Data Analytics. These 2 industries saw an increase in November compared to May’s numbers.
Good for you designers – Design made a giant leap forward as of mid-November! 💃
➡️ Surprisingly, companies operating in the Sales and Business Development industry are offering exactly the same salaries in November as they were in May.
➡️ Marketing, PR & Design saw the lowest increase when it comes to offered salaries.
Market Competitiveness Per Specialty
In this section, we will talk about market competitiveness and how easy it is to find a job in Finland nowadays.
We will also dive into the top 6 specialties.
Let’s summarise the data above with 4 main takeaways:
💡 Software engineers are always at the top of the list when it comes to the most sought-after employees. But as of mid-November, it seems finding a job will be a bit more challenging for them.
It seems to be at the “OK level” now, whereas it was “easy” in May.
💡 Good news for IT & Sysadmin experts! Now it is very easy for you to find a job in Finland. Our data shows that the market is offering the perfect environment for you!
💡 The market has become more competitive for (Tech) Project Management and Data & Analytics.
💡 The Sales & Business Development and Marketing, PR & Media industries are facing less challenges in November as well. The ease of finding a job in the latter is not perfect though.
Welcome to the MeetFrank family!
🥁 Lately, we welcomed 7 new members to the MeetFrank family: Tovari Oy, Growflow Oy, Combient Foundry, Fondion, Trustmary, Elenia, and AtoZ!
Now that the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic has started to hit the world, new travel restrictions came into place for Estonia as of last week. 😷
If you are planning to travel to Estonia, we recommend you check the news more often these days. 👀
If you are asking “is COVID-19’s comeback the only news in Estonia?”, the answer is no! The country is celebrating its 5th unicorn: congrats Pipedrive! 👏
In this week’s article, we will discuss the most recent effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the Estonian job market and how the top 6 specialties are doing. 👀
We will also compare today’s stats with those of May, when the effects of the pandemic began to show up in the market data in most countries after the first wave.
Let’s dive into the overview and see what’s new in Estonia as of mid-November! 👇
Job Market Overview
In our previous report, we shared that by mid-October, the number of job openings finally increased by 12%. What about mid-November?
The number of job openings in the Estonian job market has increased while the job applications saw a small decline.
This means, despite the second wave looming, there are still opportunities for job seekers out there. 🤩
In the next section, we will dive into the number of openings in November versus in April and discuss the stats from different angles.
When we look at the chart, we can see that there was a small increase both in offered and expected salaries by mid-November. 📈
The gap between the salaries persists.
Finally, some good news. Market competitiveness in Estonia – which was at the “difficult level” last month – has almost reached the “OK level”.
This means there are more openings and opportunities for job seekers and more need for talent on the employer side. 😊
Job openings in Top 6 Specialties: November vs May
In this section, we will compare the number of job openings as of today with those in May. 🕵️♀️
When we look at the chart, we can see that the number of job openings are lower in November in all specialties compared to May. 📉
✅ Sales and Business Development saw the largest decline.
✅ Even the number of openings in Software Engineering – the star specialty of the year (and apparently of the future) – decreased significantly.
✅ (Tech) Project Management saw a small decline. But please note that this industry had a relatively low number of openings in May.
Now that there is promising vaccine news and we can be more optimistic about the future, let’s hope better days are ahead in terms of the economy and of course, the number of job openings worldwide and in Estonia. 🙏
Offered Salaries: November vs May
A lot has changed in 2020 and one of them has been the state of the economy worldwide. 🎢
Let’s see how the first and second waves of the Coronavirus pandemic have affected the offered salaries in the Estonian job market.
There are 3 main takeaways from the chart below:
➡️ Software Engineering, Marketing, PR & Design, and Customer Support have seen a decline since May. The last two industries do not come as a surprise to us, as the market competitiveness has been mostly high for both industries for the entire year.
➡️ IT & Sysadmin saw the highest increase. If you are looking for a job opportunity and your expertise is IT & Sysadmin, keep an eye on the openings coming up at the moment. 👀
➡️ Sales & Business Development and Project Management fields also saw a moderate increase in offered salaries.
Market Competitiveness Per Specialty
How has it been to find a job in Estonia lately? Which specialties are offering the most opportunities?
In this section, we will answer these questions – comparing the November data with May’s. 👀
The offered gross salaries and the number of job openings may not present a lovely picture of the Estonian job market. But if we have a deeper look into market competitiveness, we can see that things are slowly getting better.
💡 The “yay, now it’s easier to find a job opportunity” industries are Software Engineering, (Tech) Project Management, and Sales and Business Development.
💡 The “well, I might face some competition” industry – in which it is a bit more challenging to find a job – is IT & Sysadmin. Bearing in mind that it is at the “easy” level to find a job in this industry already, it’s not such bad news at all!
💡 The “it’s at thesame level and nothing has changed that much” industries are Marketing, Design & PR and Customer Support. Job seekers working in these specialties are currently facing high levels of competition which we hope will be replaced by more job opportunities in 2021. 🙏
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🥁 This month, we are happy to welcome many new members: ID Lam OÜ, Sild Consulting, Salespeople OÜ, and Visory!
The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic is here – what’s the latest situation in Lithuania? How has the job market been responding to COVID-19 since May? 🤔
In this report, we will compare today’s stats with May’s and see how the first and second waves have been affecting the Lithuanian job market. 🕵️♀️
Let’s evaluate the current situation in terms of market competitiveness, offered salaries and the number of job openings and see how the first and second waves of the pandemic have been shaping the Lithuanian job market.
Ready? We are ready to learn more too! 🚀
Job Market Overview
In our previous report in mid-October, we saw that the number of job openings increased by 19%.
This month, there was also an increase – by 23%- in the number of job openings in Lithuania. It seems more employers have sped up their recruitment processes in mid-November. 📈
On the other hand, the number of job applications in the Lithuanian job market has declined over the past 4 weeks. 📉
This gives a clearer picture of the job market – there are either more opportunities than needed or the expectations of job seekers do not match with those of employers.
🕵️♀️ Next in line are offered and expected gross salaries. Similar to Estonia, both saw a decline this month.
The gap between the salaries persists.
Last month, it was at the “OK level” to find a job in the Lithuanian job market. By mid-November, finding a job is much easier—almost at the “easy level”! 🙏
If your future career plans include Lithuania, your chances of finding your dream job are higher nowadays!
Job openings in Top 6 Specialties: November vs May
In this section, we will compare the number of job openings as of today with May’s.
Let’s go where the stats take us:
✅ All the industries saw a decline in November when compared to May in terms of the number of job openings.
✅ Sales and Business Development and Software Engineering saw a much sharper fall than the other industries.
✅ Customer Support and Data & Analytics already had a low number of openings in May. As of mid-November, these numbers are even lower.
📉 When it comes to the number of job openings, Lithuania is facing a similar situation to Estonia – all industries have seena harsh decline. Let’s see what December will bring and how the Lithuanian job market will end the year.
Offered Salaries: November vs May
We all know how 2020 changed everything from how we live and work to the state of the global economy. In this section, we will compare the gross offered salaries in November and May to underline the results of the first and second waves of the coronavirus pandemic. 😷
Let’s discuss the 3 main takeaways from the chart below:
➡️ There is some good news from the Lithuanian job market. All the industries saw an increase in gross offered salaries except for Customer Support.
It is at the “OK level” to find a job in this industry. It is possible that the salaries have been lower due to high demand as well as a high number of job opportunities.
➡️ Data & Analytics saw the highest increase in offered salaries.
➡️ Marketing & PR & Design saw the lowest increase.
Market Competitiveness Per Specialty
Next in line is market competitiveness per specialty. In this section, we will compare the situation in Lithuania in mid-November vs May and see how the country is doing as 2020 is almost (finally!) over.
The chart above is telling us that:
💡 The industries where it is easier to find a job are Marketing, PR & Design, IT & Sysadmin and Customer Support.
We are happy for these industries, particularly for Customer Support, as professionals working in this industry have not been receiving much positive news lately. 😊
💡 Although it is still easy for software engineers to find a job in Lithuania, our data shows that the market was more in their favour 6 months ago.
💡 The industry that saw the most dramatic fall is Sales and Business Development. In May it was easier to find a job in this specialty, while nowadays job seekers may find it much more challenging.
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🤩 We are happy that the MeetFrank family is growing every day! Say hi to our new members: PrestaPro, Aeroclass.org, AB „Kauno energija“ and DeepFin.
The main characteristic is its small-scale. The brand might be known only at limited geographic locations or it might be selling niche products that a limited number of consumers are using.
Imagine selling delicacy cheese 🧀 from a small Swiss canton or producing custom rows of keys 🎹 for 19th century pianos…
Whatever your product or service is, you will find your consumers with the help of internet and hyper targeted marketing 📈. This gives the microbrands a bigger impact than one might think.
This is the place where companies like Smart Brands Laboratoryjump in. With their know-how in the field, they have created a micro niche brand development model that scales them through a series of growth methodologies in branding, multichannel sales, sourcing, and digital marketing efforts.
In the light of ‘attack of the micro brands’ we talked with Tomas Unikauskis, the CEO at Smart Brands Laboratory.
The Interview with Tomas
Alien just landed on the Earth and your task is to explain to this totally clueless creature “What Smart Brands Laboratory does?” Go!
Smart Brands Laboratory is in the business of understanding people’s behavior. We’ve developed a proprietary niche brand scoring algorithm that identifies products that people around the world need, how they get what they need, and what the most efficient ways are to meet that need. We now own and manage 5 niche brands in the home & kitchen, vegan, pet, and sports product categories.
The source of your company’s success is the micro niche brand development model that you have created. What source of scaling magic is this? How does it differ from anything else on the market?
The primary objective of niche branding is to deliver a highly relevant message along with a value proposition that resonate closely with a narrowly defined audience. Our goal isn’t to build large brands that speak to masses and deliver products that are great for everyone. We’re driven by an eagerness to identify a subset of people that have a few specific things in common and speak about what matters to them. That’s the main competitive advantage of our business model.
Smart Brands Laboratory works with niche brands that have huge undiscovered potential. How do you find these unique labels? Do you agree that if a brand is too niche, it may die from lack of audience?
Even if you have the best brand of trombone oil in the world, every month there are only 300 people around the world looking online for trombone oil. Our niche scoring model determines when a product developed for a certain audience is not a viable standalone business.
Looking at Smart Brands Laboratory’s DNA and that you help brands scale across multiple sales channels and geographies. What are the main markets you focus on?
Smart Brands Laboratory’s primary sales markets are the USA, Canada, Mexico, the EU, and we’re about to launch in Australia. We’re also laser-focused on choosing the right marketing mix in each market. For example, the demand for certain vegan products has been growing steadily in the US for the past few years, whereas it has only recently picked up in Germany.
The market is more and more tired of big corporations and instead turning their face towards microbrands. How do you see this microbrand explosion evolving?
The rise of direct-to-consumer brands started almost a decade ago. They utilized undervalued traffic strategies such as social media ads and influencer marketing. They spoke about a single problem and presented a clear-cut solution to that problem. DTC brands spoke in a way which resonated with their audiences and social media advertising algorithms facilitated delivering that message to these audiences efficiently.
Also, customer behavior appears to have shifted towards experimenting with new unheard brands more frequently. A nationally known brand used to be the main driver for customer confidence. Now DTC brands that utilize user generated content, influencer marketing, and online product reviews can deliver the same feeling of confidence and convince new customers to purchase their products.
In the light of these niche branding and newly found customer confidence factors, more brands will continue to enter the e-commerce space. However, one of the main challenges for these brands will be determining the right product-market fit and balancing customer acquisition costs with their lifetime value. I think microbrands have a better chance at striking the right balance due to substantially lower competition in these niches. This is what we’re after at Smart Brands Laboratory.
Even during these unprecedented times, Smart Brands Laboratory is actively hiring and looking for new members – currently to the Sales, Marketing and Product development teams. Who are you looking for? What is the mindset that unites your current employees?
Since inception we’ve been inviting people to join the team in hiring sprees whenever we hit a significant milestone. We’ve doubled our team a few times already and we’re currently preparing for our 3rd round of hires. We’re looking to grow our product development and sourcing team to launch even more brands next year. We also want to expand multiple traffic strategies such as SEO, SEM, paid media, affiliate, and influencer partnerships.
Regarding mindset – I’d say that it’s very important to be open and sincere with your peers when you’re working in a startup environment. The ride is bumpy, everyone has their ups and downs. It’s never easy. All these things are way more comfortable when people approach challenges with an open mind.
Here are some examples of out job openings that are active at the moment:
How do you find the talents to hire? Do you publish a job offer or what % of hired candidates has been sourced and headhunted?
I would say that a lot of people have come to us organically through word of mouth and conversations at local meetups. In addition, we post all open positions on MeetFrank and reshare them on LinkedIn. So far, we’ve hired over 50% of our staff through MeetFrank’s platform without using other headhunting services.
What are Smart Brands Laboratory plans one month from now? What does 2021 look like?
Analysts predict that 1 out of 3 gifts in the United States will be purchased online. We expect a wild fourth quarter this year! I’m sure 2021 will be another year of growth for the company. We’re looking to grow our niche brand portfolio and open new sales channels.
