The founders set up a job exchange for Ukrainian refugees.
(Photo: UA Talents)
Dusseldorf In just a few days and nights they created a job platform: With their UA Talents offer, Ivan Kychatyi, 32, and Nikita Overchyk, 33, want to help Ukrainian refugees find a job. The two entrepreneur friends are from the Ukraine themselves and have been living in Berlin for a few years.
They came up with the business idea in conversations with friends who are on the run. “We have experience in building platforms and contacts in Europe,” says Kychatyi. Both thought that a job exchange would be the best way to support their compatriots.
No sooner said than done: the platform went online on March 7, just a few days after the outbreak of war. There are now 8,000 vacancies from 3,000 companies listed, including offers from Flixbus, Zalando, Bosch, Intel, Accenture and Daimler.
Offers like UA Talents are urgently needed. Almost four million people have fled Ukraine, according to the UN. Almost 300,000 refugees have been registered in Germany alone, but the actual number is likely to be much higher. “Many refugees from Ukraine want to work quickly,” says Herbert Brücker, migration researcher at the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research (IAB) in Nuremberg.
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According to the expert, experiences from past waves of refugees show that the majority of refugees find their jobs through personal contacts and not through private job exchanges. “But that doesn’t change the fact that initiatives like UA Talents make sense.”
Exactly that seems to be the motto of the Ukrainian entrepreneurs. Both have already founded start-ups in Berlin, but are putting this work on hold for the time being in order to further develop their job exchange. They don’t want to make a profit with what they offer. “We pay for the construction of the platform from our savings,” says Kychatyi. 30 volunteers help, eight people are in the core team.
“It’s a great initiative,” praised entrepreneur Verena Pausder on LinkedIn. The two founders received help for their project from well-known financiers and companies such as Atlantic Labs, Earlybird, Projekt A, from Meta (Facebook) and Axel Springer as well as from Europe’s largest tech community “2hearts”. Overchyk says: “The great support impressed us.”
Initial focus on tech jobs
So far, there have mainly been jobs in the IT sector on the platform. “We started with technology jobs because many Ukrainians have good IT skills and tech companies make quick decisions,” says Overchyk. The aim is to soon cover several sectors. They cannot say how many applicants the two founders have placed, so far it has not been technically possible to follow them up. Just this much: The platform had 400,000 visitors in the first 15 days, mainly from Germany, Ukraine, Poland, the Netherlands – and Russia.
Experts see good job opportunities.
(Photo: IMAGO/Jens Schicke)
UA Talents competes with several providers at once. In addition to the large job exchanges Stepstone and Indeed, there are other platforms that are specifically aimed at Ukrainian refugees. At the beginning of March, for example, the “Job Aid Ukraine” offer from entrepreneur Marcus Diekmann was launched. There are currently 14,000 job offers from various sectors on this platform, including offers from restaurateurs, nursing professions or agricultural businesses. Google, Douglas and Ikea, for example, have switched to the platform.
Many well-qualified refugees
The two founders expect that the refugees from Ukraine will be able to curb the local shortage of skilled workers. “Many Ukrainians are very motivated and hard-working people,” says Kychatyi. Experts also see good job opportunities: “We expect the refugees to be well qualified,” says IAB expert Brücker. The qualification level of the Ukrainian population is high in international comparison, the proportion of academics is even slightly higher than in Germany.
The two Ukrainian founders continue to work on their platform. First, they want to optimize the performance of the homepage. It should be easier for employers to manage their job offers on the site.
According to the two Ukrainian founders, they work 18 hours a day on their platform. There is no opportunity for reflection: “It is not an easy time because many of our friends have also been affected by the war,” says Kychatyi. “We are in work mode – and want to help our compatriots to find new jobs as quickly as possible.”
More: Experts see good job opportunities for Ukrainian refugees – Minister Heil warns of the danger of exploitation