Sergio Balcells (1977, Barcelona) is the Country Manager for Spain of welcome to the jungle, a very special means of communication that has just been launched in Spain after triumphing in . Its main hallmark: its ability to combine job search-oriented content with the ability to unite companies and candidates based on their talent. To know a little more in detail what is Welcome to the jungle and how does it work, We have spoken with Sergio.
So… Welcome to the jungle is a means of communication, a job portal, a place of inspiration for those looking for work in the sector…?
Welcome to the Jungle is the job reference medium. Through a wide variety of high-quality content (articles, webseries, podcasts, magazines, events…) our goal is to inspire each person to succeed in their professional lives.
In other words, we create content, both for candidatos as for companies. In the case of candidates, with articles and own videos, focused on giving inspiration, advice, from how to approach your professional career, productivity tips… to a section focused 100% on tech talent, called made by developers and for developers and where we offer articles focused on hard skills and in soft skills.
In the case of Businesswe do it by creating your which consists of something unique, because we go to each client company, and record photos and videos of their work environment, employees, managers, in short we show the culture and values of the company, so that a candidate can project himself in the company before responding to an offer (that is, he can imagine with total realism what it is like to work in that company, what the offices are like, his future colleagues…).
All this information, plus their job offers, and their technological stack (key to attract Tech profiles) is posted on our website, accessible to any candidate. In short, we help the company to create its Employer Branding in a very simple and turnkey way (if you weren’t working on it yet) or to complement it if you were already on this fantastic and necessary path to attract Talent.
This is something unique in history: a lot of frustration, jobs that do not fit with people’s values, burn-out, demotivation… In that “jungle” that the world of work can be for some, our mission is to help a candidate find a company that is aligned with their values and cultureand therefore when they join, a perfect matching is produced, which logically affects the company: lower turnover and greater happiness!
You have a long career that has taken you through some of the great references of the digital sector in Spain. How did you decide to enter Welcome to the Jungle?
The truth is that I am very happy to have been lucky enough to direct some of the leaders in the digital sector, from Cars.net, ao Jobtoday, but he had never directed a “Media”, and with a mission as powerful as help talent find the company that fits their values and culture.
This captivated me when I met the founders -Jéremy and Bertrand- in Paris. Increasingly I am also becoming “millennial” in way of thinking, and I need to be convinced that I work in companies that “do good”, that help. And I am truly convinced that what we do at Welcome to the Jungle is very powerful, and the creation of this “Virtuous Circle” (the candidates informed in Welcome apply to companies that fit their values + skills, which generates more happiness, better results and greater attraction of talent).
Actually, Welcome to the jungle is a newcomer to Spain, but it already has international experience. How will you use that experience to achieve the best results with your Spanish portal?
The fact that it worked France with such great success (I recommend any reader to ask a Parisian or French-resident friend to ask about Welcome to the Jungle, they surely know it and tell you that it is the new benchmark in employment) it clearly proves 2 things:
- that Employer Branding (what we do) has come to stay, It is not a fad, but a reality: companies either begin to show what they are like inside, and show their culture and values in a transparent way, or recruitment can become something complicated and very expensive for those who are not in this line ( which is not so new, since Google has been treating its employees well for years to continue attracting the best talent on board)
- the fact of having more than two million visits and above all more than 2,000 companies on board Welcome to the Jungle, with their profile published, from Wallapop, Badi, Kantox, to PWC, Boston Consulting Group, SEAT, Louis Vuitton, Johnson & Johnson, Criteo… shows that all companies, big and small, technology or pharmaceutical, have understood that if they want to achieve their ambitious growth goals, everything happens first to have the necessary talent for it.
And all this successful background that already exists in France, we have brought to Spain, where we already have more than And growing!
What are your readers like? What kind of content are they most interested in?
https:///professions-digitales-more-demandadas-espana/
They are people interested in their professional development, therefore we find both women and men, with university studies in areas ranging from marketing, finance, engineering, legal, and ages ranging from students and recent graduates (30%), to people in full development of their professional career (50% between 25-35 years old) and, finally, more senior talent (20% over 35 years old) seeking to keep up to date with advice, news (from how to work personal brand until agile methodologies).
And at the employment level? How do you get companies to use your portal to publish their offers?
Over 50% of Welcome to the Jungle traffic is organicsince many candidates and companies come because they find our articles or videos on Google (), and the rest come from our powerful (Linkedin), our , or by direct search in the browser.
We manage to attract companies because we offer them a unique Product, which includes Employer Branding and Recruitment tools:
At the level of Employer Branding We create a turnkey package for each company that includes:
- Create company profile on our platform
- Go to their office to record the videos interviewing the key people they decide that can help show your Employer Branding
- go do the photos of your team, work environment, culture
- To give free access to our ATS (Welcome kit) to manage the applications, or if you already have one, we ask you to integrate with it
- Publication of all the offers they have (unlimited) for 1 year
- Creation of a career page in case you do not have your own
- The created content can be used as they wish later (internally in presentations, on your website, on your Social Media…)
And we do it all ourselves in such a simple way, that for an HR manager to decide to use us it only takes fifteen or twenty minutes of time, and the rest we take care of everything.
How is Welcome to the jungle monetized?
Very simple, we only charge companies for the creation of that “company profile”
What goals do you set for yourselves for this first year?
Grow both in traffic (candidates) and in the number of companies on board, and we are achieving it!
Imagine that you could travel back in time: what advice would you give Sergio from 2009?
Good question, I imagine that if I only had 5 seconds to send you a timeless Whatsapp I would say:
Get into this internet thing right now, don’t wait! take care of your people, be happy!”
Let’s do a bit of futurology: what headline would you like to read in Marketing4eCommerce in a year?
Leading Spain in the world ranking of happiness thanks to the fact that Welcome to the Jungle is chosen by 99% of companies in Spain to develop their Employer Branding
And a little more difficult: imagine that we jump forward in time: how do you imagine the job search in 2023?
I imagine it to be similar, but with advances, with a little more technology in the selection processes: from bots for some simpler phases of hard skills, but always keeping the human component in decision phases, and with companies trying to attract and retain talent with more human-compatible policies: remote work, less face-to-face…, perhaps with virtual reality in our videos in Welcome to be able to show the companies even better from the inside and project the candidate in them.
I also imagine candidates much more informed about companies, and consuming professional content (from courses to training) in a different way than now, more mobile, more dynamic… Exciting times are certainly ahead.
Quick Quiz:
- What is the first social network you open in the day? Twitter
- iOS or Android? iOS
- App or website? depends on what for
- In which eCommerce and how long ago did you make your last online purchase? Yesterday on amazon, and recently on Ulabox
- And it was? Coffee capsules at Amazon, Gillettes at Ulabox
- Last book read? (worth ebooks) The Red Queen, by Juan Gómez Jurado, great!
- Recommend us a fiction series: La Casa de Papel, a classic. If not Lucifer also amuses me a lot
- What website have you come across lately that has surprised you for the better?they do a great job
- What is your favorite thing to do that has nothing to do with digital? Many things, from playing sports (running, cycling, paddle tennis, whatever!), riding quietly on secondary roads, doing with friends (collecting plastics and waste on the beach, mountains, forest…) It is something that we created with my wife and that relaxes and makes me very happy
- Let’s spin a magic chain: Which acquaintance of yours (from another company) do you think we should interview? Why? A Ekaterina Elez, because she is a unique person, Russian-Spanish, former professional tennis player, enterprising, always cheerful, always positive, enjoying the little things every day, and who now runs a totally different business but with the highest trend and future, such as the elimination of tattoos on (you didn’t expect it, eh?) and yes, she is my wife, and without her I wouldn’t have gotten where I am.
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