1782 – Expanding your IT team with Tatiana Melnichuk of LUCKY HUNTER

Josh (00:00:04) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach, or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now. Tatiana Melnichuk. Tatiana, you are the founder of lucky Hunter. You are found on the web at lucky Hunter. Co.Uk. Tatiana, thanks so much for joining us.

Tatiana (00:01:12) - Hello. Nice to see you.

Josh (00:01:15) - Yes, absolutely. Well, give us a quick overview of the work that you do with lucky Hunter.

Tatiana (00:01:20) - So I'm the CEO of the international recruitment agency like a Hunter. We've been working on the global market for more than six years. We have two main offices in London and Dubai, and we are looking for it. Specialist all over the world exclude China because I'm still in progress. Just learning Chinese language maybe a little bit later. So we will be working there.

Josh (00:01:45) - Sure. okay. So where do you fit in then? So you're in the recruitment, the IT recruitment side. So our potential employers saying, hey, we have positions to fill, please find us talent.

Tatiana (00:01:59) - So we are on the client side, so on. We are working with the companies and we have a lot of customers from America as well. And yeah, so our clients, it's like a huge large tech companies and the promising startups and we are working just and based on their request. So if we have any vacancy so we can offer this vacancy to the candidate, but we are not looking for a job for a candidate.

Tatiana (00:02:27) - We are looking for a staff for a companies. Do you feel the difference between this? No.

Josh (00:02:32) - Tell me. Yeah. Explain that more so.

Tatiana (00:02:35) - So um, usually just sometimes agencies are focusing on the candidate. So like they work with the candidate. Candidate just can send them their CVS. And after that they are trying to find some job for the candidates. But this is not our way. We have a different customers just from all over the world, and they can tell us that we are looking for a Java developer just for example. And I'm looking for this. I want to try this developer in the US just it doesn't matter. Just it's remote vacancy, but the candidate should be in the US. And after that we just start searching the candidates. So just because we have a special request from our clients. So we work with the companies so and not with the candidates.

Josh (00:03:21) - Yeah. So what if you're not working with the recruiter? Um, what is life typically like for a potential employer who's trying to fill it? Roles.

Tatiana (00:03:33) - So what should candidate do for.

Josh (00:03:36) - No, no. Um, just, you know, again, personally, as a business leader, like, I'm not staffing those positions. Um, so I wouldn't know what to do necessarily. We have people aren't let's say if employers are not working with recruiter, what are they typically doing and what are the problems with that? So I guess basically what I'm saying is in a very soft self type of way, why is it valuable? And asked another way, why is it valuable to work with the recruiter like what you do?

Tatiana (00:04:05) - So we are just not another one recruitment agency. So that's why maybe we are focusing just to work with their company. So and I know that another recruitment agency, they're just happy to work with the candidate. But I can't find their just monetization system in that way. So we are a business and we need to understand how we can get money. So that's why we are focusing on the company. So we work with them. Why does customers just work with us? Because for the three reasons.

Tatiana (00:04:34) - So the first, because if it's a huge a big company, they are looking for staff all the time and they need more and more developers. And we can add so our efforts and we can give more candidates from our side because we have a capacity on the other side. So the medium startups and the medium companies, because they don't have our in-house recruiters. So they're on their just a B round. Uh, it's like a medium. Startups. And it's cheaper to work with us and pay us only once, then just monthly salary for recruiters because they sometimes they have only five vacancies per year. And it's easy. And we have a replacement guarantee. We have a we will get sent an invoice only when the candidates start to work. We work without prepayments. And it's quite interesting to work with us and small startups when they are on the G0 stage. So they need to find it. As chief technology officer and just usually founders, they don't have a lot of time. And uh, yeah, we can find this person or sometimes company they're developing in some regions and they don't have an experience like for sometimes American Company, they want to open office and in London just for example.

Tatiana (00:05:56) - And they need to find local recruiters here. Just who will try to find this local stuff here. Yeah. Yeah. So the difference works.

Josh (00:06:05) - If I'm an employer and I know that I want to be able to staff some positions and what are some things that I could do to make your job a lot easier or, you know, because again, I want to have a great place to work. I want to be attractive for potential employees. So what things might I want to have in place or do or say?

Tatiana (00:06:28) - A first just to make a perfect CV. It's a really big problem for the candidates because they can do this. So because they're just CV format, that's usually really different from candidate to another candidate, and they can just describe their experience in the CV. So and this is the first what you can do is just to prepare your CV. Just it's no.

Josh (00:06:53) - And I'm so sorry I'm speaking about from the employer perspective. Uh yes. Employee potential employees. Yes. Have a great CV.

Josh (00:07:00) - And I'm so sorry. From the employer perspective, if I want to, let's say that I retain your services, but I want to be a good partner or a great client for you.

Tatiana (00:07:10) - Yeah. Okay.

Josh (00:07:11) - Yeah. What makes a really great client for you?

Tatiana (00:07:14) - A really great client for us. It's a client who knows what he wants to to find what kind of candidates. But it's a it's a normal process when we are just working with the client. And sometimes we're just starting to find it, just full stack developer. And in the middle of the way that our customer can understand that, no, we need to two different roles because it's just difficult to find this 2 in 1 person. So we work with IT companies in a legal zone all over the world. So and that is all what we are looking for just from our customers.

Josh (00:07:50) - And where would you put the kind of supply demand right now? Tatiana, when it comes to it, staffing, is there a lot more demand? Is there a lot more supply? We're recording this at the very, very end of 2023.

Josh (00:08:03) - Where are we at right now?

Tatiana (00:08:05) - I see that now we have much more customers than it was one year ago, because I see that the market is growing rapidly just step by step. And one year ago, our customer, they were scary. No one couldn't understand what's going on right now. And now I see how everything feels that it's time to develop. It's time to grow and to have a lot of new clients and a lot of new vacancies in our in our company. And I see that the next year this will be quite prospective. I have heard a lot of forecasting about the next big crisis, but I feel in it, I see that in it, everything is going to be all right. I don't know what will be just in another field, but in the ITC that it will be like not fast, but slow growing process.

Josh (00:08:58) - I'm curious what you're seeing by the way of remote versus in office versus hybrid for position offered. What do you think is the general breakdown right now?

Tatiana (00:09:10) - It's a big conflict between candidates and companies because companies, they want to open their offices again and just to involve the candidates in their offices, but the candidate they don't want to.

Tatiana (00:09:23) - So I have a friend. He relocated to Amsterdam in really famous IT companies, but he needs to go to the office five times per week. And he understood that it was too much for him and he just dislocated it. I see that candidates, they are not happy to go to the office, and I see that in the end it will be just compromise, like a hybrid two days from office or just one days from office. But I don't see that it will be full time job from office in itself.

Josh (00:09:57) - Hmm hmm.

Josh (00:09:58) - All right. Tatiana, what is it look like when someone says, listen, you know, we've got some positions to fill over the next six months? We know, like, how did they decide to work with you versus, say, another recruiting space? Should they stop their own kind of outreach, I guess. What are the first few weeks typically look like?

Tatiana (00:10:20) - So we have a standards in our company within four days of the job opening discussion. We need to send the first CV of the candidates just to protest for the through the customer process.

Tatiana (00:10:33) - So we have only four days and within four days when we send the first CV. So we see how our customers just react on the CV. So about our customers feedback. And after that we are going step by step through the customer's process. Sometimes our customers can understand that. Now we need to change the role. We need to focus in on the different skills. Now we have another skill because recruiting this is a life process. So we work with the people with a human. So that's why everything is flexible. And we don't have standard process in a company. And when we work with the customers. So we have a different process and the different way how to build our relationships.

Josh (00:11:17) - So yeah. Yeah. So lucky Hunter has been around for quite a while, and you have a huge roster of clients that you've served. So congratulations. Six years for lucky Hunter. And um, you know, I'm just looking at your list of clients that you've worked with, SEMrush, Malwarebytes I've noticed Bionic.

Josh (00:11:38) - I've, I've see some logos I definitely recognize, but you've created quite a deep roster of clients that you work with. So congratulations on that.

Tatiana (00:11:46) - Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. Yeah.

Josh (00:11:49) - What would you say just from an agency standpoint as differentiated you versus other recruiters in the space.

Tatiana (00:11:56) - Sorry. Could you repeat the question.

Josh (00:11:57) - Yeah. Um you know what what makes you different. In other words, you know, why have you thrived, um, so well over the past six years where maybe others might be struggling.

Tatiana (00:12:07) - So recruitment business, this is the most difficult business, I think, in the, in the world, because I've been working in IT recruitment for more than 50 years and all the time I think that this is a magic. So I don't know how it works because we are near the two fires between the candidates and between the customers, and we need to find the perfect candidate for our customer. And these candidates should choose our customers, because usually our candidates have 3 or 4 and other job offers from the different companies.

Tatiana (00:12:41) - So because we're looking for a senior or C-level roles, just usually and this is a high demand specialist and yeah, this is a really difficult and hard business. Just work. So what I opened my business. So we've been working on the global market for more than six years. And uh, six years ago I was alone and I thought that I want to have a small company with two or maybe three recruiters, and that is all what I want. And now we're 35 team. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. I can't control this. We're just developing all the time. All what we did. We do our work perfect. And this is the main lead generation tools to make our work just really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (00:13:29) - Your website is lucky Hunter. Co.Uk. For someone who's been listening to our conversation, what would you recommend they do? I mean, you have a pretty beefy website and there's a lot here in terms of cases, testimonials, you know, clients, you know, certainly if you want to learn a bit about the team.

Josh (00:13:46) - But but what would you recommend folks do?

Tatiana (00:13:49) - I recommend focusing on the cases, I think. So this is about successful cases.

Josh (00:13:56) - I just wanted to congratulate you too, because it seems like you're a very, very female led and run company.

Tatiana (00:14:04) - Yeah, yeah, in my company just we have a female team on the girls.

Josh (00:14:12) - Well, congratulations on that success. You know, kind of again in the tech space. That's that's exciting to see. Uh, and I'm so sorry, Tatiana, I distracted you. Um, what would you recommend, folks next step be like in terms of, like, if they're interested in having a conversation?

Tatiana (00:14:28) - Just send us a request on our website and we will contact with you and send all information about us. So usually just our customers send their small request. After that, my manager usually will contact with the potential clients and we need to discuss the request. Because we are working without prepayment, we just will send an invoice only when the candidate starts work for us.

Tatiana (00:14:53) - It's really important to understand that we can fulfill this vacancy so that everything is correct. So what the candidates want and what the customer wants, what our customer offer to the future candidates. Because sometimes customer, they are looking for senior developers just like a unicorn and can offer just a medium or just salary range. So that's why we need to understand what is the recruiting process to discuss that we are on the same page that we understand each other because recruiting, this is where we are working on the principle of partnership with our clients and important to understand each other. And yeah, and only after that if we agree to work with the customer and the customer just just of course, agree to work with that. We just signed the contract and within four days. So we will send the first candidate. But we are talking about within four days we will send the first CV candidates. If we are talking about senior middle roles, if we are working on C-level position, of course we need a little bit more time because this is not so easy.

Tatiana (00:16:00) - The candidates are too busy to talk with us. So if we are looking for a key level manager, VP of product, VP or just engineering, so this is a little bit long process.

Josh (00:16:12) - And are most of your clients based in the UK or what geography do you serve?

Tatiana (00:16:19) - The biggest part of our client, they are based in the US, so we'll have to work with it with the guys from USA, because I think that we have the same mindset. They're fast, they prefer to work just and they want to see the profits right now. So and we are really fast and we love to work with the customer from USA. So yeah, of course I'm living in London right now. So and we have a just a local client, but we have an office in Dubai and we have just local client there, Dubai. It's quite a prospective region. They are developing really fast and they want to digitalize everything in their country and they are looking for a lot of developers. So and yeah, we're located just a lot of teams to that regions.

Josh (00:17:04) - That's great. Tatiana Melnichuk again you're the founder of lucky Hunter. Your website is lucky Hunter. Co.Uk Tatiana, thank you so much for joining us.

Tatiana (00:17:15) - Thank you, thank you.

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