Project reference · Hospitality & retail
Recruiting at volume, across a border.
A major Gulf airport retail group wanted to fill dozens of sales-floor positions with Ukrainians. That is not a search. It is a marketing campaign, an events operation and a licensing file, all running at once — and if the licensing file is wrong, nobody travels.
585 applications in one wave
Volume
69 hired and deployed
Result
Ten channels measured separately
Method
Two campaigns, eighteen months apart
Continuity
The brief
What the client actually needed
Not CVs. A pipeline that ended with people standing on a shop floor in another country, legally employed and with the paperwork to prove it.
So the work ran from job-board advertising, regional press and social promotion, through a scripted call centre, into multi-day hiring events with the client’s own delegation flown in — and then out the other side through offers, contracts, medicals, visas and departure dates.
The hard parts
Where it gets difficult
Placing people abroad is licensed work
Ukraine regulates it. The agency needs a state licence, the foreign employer has to be registered here, and supporting certificates must be attested and legalised. Get this wrong and the campaign is wasted — the candidates simply cannot go.
Volume needs marketing, not sourcing
Filling dozens of comparable roles is a consumer campaign: adverts, mailing lists, posters, regional press, social, video. We measured ten channels separately, because the one delivering the most applications was not the one delivering the most hires.
The contract has to work in two legal languages
A bilingual employment contract, an instruction protocol and a safety briefing, each issued so that a Ukrainian candidate and a foreign employer are agreeing to the same thing.
It is an events business too
Visas for the client’s delegation coming in, venues, hotels, transport for candidates, and thirteen-hour interview days. Candidates waiting their turn were put through CV and interview coaching rather than left in a corridor.
People change their minds
Moving country on a retail salary is a big decision. Expectations were set deliberately — culture briefings, written protocols, a clear picture of the job — and withdrawals were recorded rather than quietly absorbed, because they are the number that tells you whether the message was honest.
Two waves, one feedback loop
Eighteen months apart, with a formal evaluation of the first intake requested from the client before the second campaign was budgeted. The second wave was priced and targeted using conversion data from the first.
Compliance
The part nobody sees
We ran the campaign and the compliance file together, because they are the same project. The client dealt with one Ukrainian partner instead of assembling an advertising agency, a recruiter, a lawyer and a visa handler separately.
How we work
We do not show you another company’s name
The client, the brand and the people are not named here, and they will not be named in a meeting either. We are glad to talk this project through in detail — what we cannot do is discuss the last client that way with you, or you with the next one.
Next step
Hiring in Ukraine, or hiring Ukrainians to work elsewhere?
Both are things we do, and the second one has rules that surprise people. Thirty minutes is usually enough to tell you what your plan is missing.
