Presentation of New Viadeo Services

Viadeo, an international social network for professionals with an audience of 45 million, gave a presentation of its new services — new user profiles and company pages — at the Pacha Club on Oct. 11.

Viadeo strategy director Olivier Fecherolle presented the new services, which are designed to help users and companies seeking to increase their visibility on the market.

The network’s new user profile helps reveal an individual’s full range of abilities by depicting professional experience and qualities in an informational graphic. Acquaintances and colleagues can then use the unique new “Confirmation of Ability” function to corroborate the information posted. Now members can also upload photographs into their personal business card and edit them using filters and zoom functions to create high-quality images. The improved personal profiles enable all Viadeo users to increase their visibility on the labor market by emphasizing their individual strengths and professional qualities. This also makes it simpler for job recruiters to find the desired candidates by allowing them to view all of the information concerning the potential employee’s career and professional accomplishments in a matter of seconds, thanks to the intuitive format of the user’s personal profile.

The new “Company Pages” service is a handy tool for employers and business owners, enabling them to present the internal life of the company using multimedia capabilities such as news feeds and Twitter, as well as any content from the company’s website. In addition to the company description and employee feedback, the new service also allows employers to post job vacancies. The section also automatically displays the company’s statistics regarding, for example, the average age of employees, the most popular profiles, gender ratio, etc.

“Company Pages” open new opportunities for working with the audience through the use of blogs and news feeds as well as a special “Carte Blanche” tab that can be linked to any external or interactive source on the corporate site, or to any other content — all of which provide unlimited resources for a company to present its brand. A function for uploading photos, video material and audio podcasts enables businesses to present supplementary information as well.

The uniqueness of this service lies in the fact that each company is profiled by its employees, making it possible for job seekers to evaluate their potential employer and learn about the company’s corporate culture.

Well-known HR and headhunting experts also took part in the Viadeo presentation, including Alyona Vladimirskaya (Pruffi service founder), Ella Sytnik (Ward Howell, partner), Antonio Gutierrez (Ward Howell, talent equity consultant) and Svetlana Yepikhina (head of personnel management for the Inter RAO UES Corporate Center).

Ella Sytnik shared professional secrets, such as how negatively that frequently switching between different job fields can affect one’s career. She also recommended that people sometimes seek new job positions, even if a promotion is not involved. Antonio Gutierrez explained that foreign companies have trouble understanding why the job titles held by many Russian managers often do not match the duties they perform.

Alyona Vladimirskaya gave the audience an unforgettable experience, role-playing a headhunter interview by asking people from the audience various industry-specific questions. In this way, she vividly demonstrated the extent to which Russian recruitment methods have adopted standards common in the West, where the key requirement is a specialist’s overall professional knowledge and management skills.

In the final talk, Svetlana Yepikhina surprised guests by saying that a person should become a company director by the age of 30. Otherwise, she said, a specialist risks never attaining a leadership position in the company.

The program also included an interactive segment in which Viadeo partner Cosmopolitan Academy demonstrated the magic of personal transformation and reminded participants of the importance of looking good in order to get noticed more and achieve success. Academy specialists helped two young ladies change their images to become more striking and attractive businesswomen. All of the guests could consult with stylists and makeup artists at no cost.

The Viadeo presentation brought together top recruitment professionals under one roof, giving them the chance to discuss market trends and important business issues. And most importantly, all of the guests appreciated the new functional capabilities of the social network for professionals, services that are pushing the boundary of possibilities for professionals and companies alike.