Smart immigration with Jobbatical. The interview
Traveling and exploring new places is an exciting experience! It is very common in Startup world to try something new and move out to the new country to work, just to get new inspiration and experience a new culture. But the paperwork can be a nightmare in this procedure. Jobbatical takes care of the entire talent immigration and relocation process for companies — they make immigration easy
They do all the paperwork, visa appointments, and back-and-forth emails with candidates spread across location
I visited their cozy office in Tallinn just recently and had a chat with their Content Strategist — Maria Lamp. The interview was very insightful and interesting. I saw and felt the vibe of motivated professionals.
Their partners are mostly tech Startups in Tallinn such as Pipedrive, Veriff, Transferwise, etc. The company itself was founded in 2014 and they help their partners to save time and provide a delightful experience for new employees.
Soo, Let’s get started!!!
Here’s what we talked about:
How would you describe Jobbatical in a simplest way?
Jobbatical makes immigration easy — we help employers relocate their new international hires to their office. Mostly, we work with tech Startups and traditional companies alike. Our service covers the immigration part of the procedure.
Big organisational changes happened from last summer — we no longer have jobs on our website and want to concentrate on this immigration procedure more for now. So, job seekers should just apply to the company that uses our services and we take care of the procedure of moving in to new country.
We work directly with companies and help them to relocate talents from all over the world!
What are the core objectives of Jobbatical?
We have probably one of the most mission-driven teams you’ll ever meet — we aim to think without borders. So, our core objectives are to help the world work together, make them think globally and have an international mindset. We make immigration smart.
We want to make hiring internationally as easy as hiring locally
Nowadays, everybody needs to hire people from abroad in order to maintain themselves — nobody can really afford not to hire internationals, because of the talent shortage in the world. However, it can be very problematic for companies to relocate people in terms of immigration policy in different countries. This is the problem we solve and that’s why our objective is to get in there and help companies to make this process smooth for everyone involved.
One of our future plans is to expand in Europe and start supporting companies from other countries as well. We just expanded to Spain and Germany because we saw that there was a need for our smart immigration services in big European countries too.
How do you implement your core values in company’s everyday life?
Our company core values were defined by the team itself, because it should be actionable from us on everyday basis. You can see the quotes coming from our values hanging all around the office, such as Choosing difficult truth over comforting lie, Getting out of your comfort zone, Being transparent, Communicating openly as a team — we make sure that these values are part of our everyday life and use them as basis of our decisions we make internally and externally.
How does Jobbatical attract people to come and work in Estonia?
For us it is very important to set right expectations for our potential employees who want to relocate people in Tallinn.
Estonia, in a way, makes it quite easy to advertise itself as a great place to pursue your career dreams — on one hand, we have very well built Startup ecosystem, E-services and immigration policy and on the other hand, it is very beautiful nordic country with amazing nature and places all around such as Old Town in Tallinn. It is true that it might be a little bit hard to get used to the cold weather here, but, remember, cold helps you to be more productive
How international is your team?
Our team is very international, because we value this a lot! Here are people from 3 continents. However, most of us are from Estonia, because we need a local knowledge to meet our goals. Our team grows in Spain and Germany as well, because of the new offices we opened up there.
For now, our team consists of around 30 people in total.
How is everyday life in Jobbatical?
We have a very remote friendly policy here — people are free to work from outside the office too. So, everyday is different for us. People around are very cheerful and friendly. We have a cozy atmosphere in the office and make sure that everybody feels good. We do the weekly all hands meeting that includes our full team and try to get the whole team in Estonia once a year to get together and connect as a team.
What is the main focus when it comes to hiring in your team?
When it comes to hiring, we are looking for a person with right skillset and mindset. Huge part of our hiring procedure is a culture fit — we want to make sure that new addition to our team will fit us properly and will have the same attitude towards the company and mission as we have.
We would like to have people who will add their perspective in our team and will show us their point of view. Each of our team member should feel empowered, speak up and take new initiatives. Here in Jobbatical, we are focused on one goal and we motivate each other to move in the right direction.
How did Jobbatical start? #founderStory
It all started in 2014, when Karoli Hindriks, the CEO and Founder of Jobbatical, found the gap in job market:
Employers all over the world loved the idea of hiring the international talents and moving them into their country, but the paperwork was stopping perfect hires from happening. That’s why Jobbatical was created to help employers in expanding their borders and creating international teams in their country.
Finally, what would your message be to the young entrepreneurs who are just entering the field and want to create something big?
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and different from you. Definitely try to expand your team internationally from the day one!
Learn early to say ‘NO’ to things and try to asses your opportunities — don’t lose focus.
#sumUp
It was very nice to visit Jobbatical office and talk about their amazing product. I would like to thank Maria for finding time to have a chat with me and giving me very motivating and inspiring insights about their company culture.
Thank you!
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