Nothing defines the actual industry status better than statistics. According to an optimistic Forbes overview, the Ukrainian IT domain has gained momentum from 0,06% to 3,3% in 2018. That means, during the 5-year time frame, the tech sphere increased by 50 times. As far as the territory of Europe is concerned, Ukraine is the largest IT-services exporter and it looks like we are going to keep this position: this year the export is expected to reach $5.4 billion, and in five years this indicator will be around $8.4 billion.

The robust talent pool can brag about a high literacy rate which is close to 100% (~99,8%). Around 70% of the population are educated (secondary/higher education). Historically, the educational system, in general, has been rather strong, and so have been technical, scientific and research areas. Around 661 universities prepare nearly 20,000 IT specialists every year. Our freelance workers are ranked 7th in the world with respect to quality and efficiency. That is why, global tech giants have their eyes on us: 20% of global leaders have their offices in Ukraine; over 100 companies from Fortune 500 list chose to allocate R&D offices here, including IBM, Huawei, Microsoft, Samsung and other giants we all know (data provided by N-iX and UNIT.city reports).

Ukrainian tech and global acceptance

Web Summit, a top-notch tech event, is a perfect chance to take stock of the global IT arena as a whole and define the state of the sphere country-wise. The last event took place in November 2019 and revealed a number of important insights. Face recognition is yesterday’s question, AI is ready to tackle emotions based on probability theory and quantum computing. Sustainable development is as crucial as ever and belongs to the main pillars of industry leaders. Tony Blair in conversation with congressman Ro Khanna stated that for the sake of innovation people who do politics must be in close collaboration with people who make technologies. That’s the recipe for healthy societal evolution.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Ukraine took Web Summit 2019 by storm. The event welcomed a record number of Ukrainian startups. Around a hundred teams pitched their projects to international investors, business angels and incubators. Overall, the feedback can be boiled down to the wow-effect. John Stamler, TechStars mentor, was amazed by the age of startup founders, who were basically teenagers. He also said that the Ukrainian tech ecosystem sets an example for other countries; that our fellas are motivated and know exactly what they want.

Governmental support

Tony Blair is absolutely right: politics and IT must be hand-in-hand. People responsible for decision-making at the highest level influence the directions and paths a country will follow. Obviously, conservative authorities reluctant towards tech cannot stimulate innovation, improve infrastructures, modernize industries. In this case, a country falls out of the global race. Today Ukrainian government has a record number of people who came from IT. For instance, Dmitrii Dubilet is the co-founder of the first ukrainian mobile-only bank Monobank joined cabinet of ministers. David Braun, co-founder of TemplateMonster and founder of Weblium, became people’s deputy. Kira Rudyk, CEO at Ring Ukraine, also became a parliamentarian.

We have reasons for optimism, haven’t we? These developments mean nothing but enhanced dialogue between the two parties that have lived apart for years. Much depends on the sentiment of president. Volodymyr Zelensky sees Ukraine as synonym of innovation, and his goal is to boost the sphere, inter alia, via investments of Israeli companies. Trade and economic relations between two countries were negotiated with Benjamin Netanyahu in August 2019.

Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk announced the launch of National Startup Fund, a government-backed investment fund. This year, UAH 240 million will be allocated to ukrainian projects, 60 million per quarter. Investment areas involve AI, AR, Big data, blockchain, cybersec, IoT, SaaS, edtech, robotics etc. Honcharuk also stated, that the government will not put spokes in the wheels of business. Instead, we should expect initiatives encouraging entrepreneurship and creating a welcoming place for investors.

What makes Ukrainian IT special

Apparently, there’s more to it than technical degree. Collaboration and working processes go beyond obvious, they have a lot to do with cultural compatibility, matching mindsets, values, perspectives. Energies, if you will, also are added to the stew. In contrast with other post-soviet states, Ukraine appeared to be more open to transformation. Willingness to change, interest for technologies and bright minds are the three elements that makes us who we are on today’s IT global arena.

Being lucky enough with geographical location, our country works like a buffer zone between Eastern and Western Cultures. Our nation has historically developed this agility and flexibility helping to fit perfectly in any European company or one of the Bay Area teams.

We are a nation of troubleshooters. Somehow the ukrainians have proven themselves at being talented in fixing things. Eram Ukraine is a part of large corporation with offices in Silicon Valley. When something goes wrong, and the customers are not satisfied with the product, the problem is delegated to ukrainians. Because our developers bring creative yet simple solutions to everyday challenges. Technical genius is an inherited national feature: you either have it or not.

People engaged in IT is a special strata of society which is the engine of the progress. Each decision being taken, each value being communicated make significant contribution to moving forward.

Think of the Ukrainian projects that brought visibility to us as legit IT player. Preply, an edtech marketplace for learning foreign languages, raised $4 million to make 40 languages accessible for everyone. Reflect, the first ever realistic face swap app, drew attention of Elon Musk who never missed a chance to use the service. And you know, when Elon Musk speaks, the world listens. Hacken cybersecurity ecosystem launched HackIT, the largest Eastern European cybersec forum that united white hat hackers and speakers from all over the world. What do those projects share? Awesomeness at so many levels. All of these projects got coverage in top media such as Forbes, VentureBeat, and Mashable.

Ukrainian IT specialists have a global vision. While they might be located in one of ukrainian hubs such as Kyiv, Dnipro, Odessa or small cities, they think big and see far. Being extremely sensitive to trends, our tech professionals can create things way ahead of their time and give the world projects that are able to astound.

The degree employer’s brand relevance is reflected in the latest statistics: according to Employer Branding Insights Report 2019, 90% of candidates consider HR brand of an employer when applying, 95% of respondents say company’s reputation matters a lot for them. As per Talentnow, 50% of candidates would never work for a company with bad reputation even if they are offered more in terms of salary. The dominant majority of HR specialists agree that recruitment increasingly acquires features of marketing: the ability to sell a company as an outstanding employer has a direct impact on talent acquisition.

People is the most valuable asset of any business. Our clients are pursuing the goal of building an HR- / employer’s brand. We are witnessing the steady growth of market demand. Companies are willing to invest in people and their employer’s brand. In view of this, I offer to discuss the topic from PR perspective.

What is HR PR and EVP

In a nutshell, HR PR means building an HR brand using PR tools. The HR brand is based on EVP (Employee Value Proposition). It includes:

• comfortable working conditions (a convenient office with a lounge or recreation area, a separate workplace, meeting rooms, a kitchen or dining room);
• caring for the employee (your teammates are not overloaded daily, enjoy timely vacation, and if questions arise about the work quality, they are addressed in a personal conversation);
• bonus system (surpassing KPIs or providing an employee with additional value);
• Team microclimate (joint camping trips, going bowling, communication outside the office).
• all of this pertains to specific corporate culture and cannot be simply captured in the job description. There are thousands of such texts, each company uses big words, and therefore, applicants no longer believe them. All your perks and benefits must surface.

Strategy: generating key messages and analyzing the target audience

In order to build an HR brand, you must create a key message and having a clear idea of the addressee. Key messages are a powerful expression of brand values ​​and ideas. When communicating with the target audience through the media, you need to broadcast key messages.

Prior to generating key messages, make sure the mission, goals and objectives of the company are relevant, and that all employees understand and share them. Conduct a survey collecting employees’ impression — how they evaluate their experience. Afterwards, analyze the target audience — whom you address and attract to work in the company. Make a detailed portrait: age, social status, habits and hobbies; preferred brands, media as well as work expectations. Your key messages must appeal to your target audience, so make sure they match the style of the media that the target audience reads.

Media publications

The potential candidate’s behavior depends on the way he/she learned about the job opening. We have two scenarios: the recruiter offers the job or the candidate found you. In either case, one googles information about the company: reads reviews, browses employee profiles and reads publications in the press.

You can’t sway the reviews — they are formed externally. Therefore, you learn to react to them properly. Media publications are a chance to tell your story, your vision, and share what’s important. When a candidate reads all of that and his/her values coincide with that of yours — it’s a match made in heaven. A person wants to work for you.

You can also maintain a corporate blog, however, the media is the perfect chance to tell your story using credible venues trusted by readers. When edition X writes about you, it’s something to be proud of.

Presence in the media can take various forms — from op-eds of company speakers to brand mentions in review articles. All publications create the corporate image as an employer and must satisfy this intent. For this purpose, identify media that interests you in terms of HR PR. We recommend conducting a survey among employees on articles, topics and media they read. Analyze media coverage and create a content plan that matches the strategy.

Materials fall into:

1. Articles about the company and employee interviews. For instance, what the company is known for, how it excels competitors, how cool the office is, who the top managers are. You can also describe corporate culture and activities for employees outside the office. Interviews can show that a company has something to share, its experience is interesting and valuable for the reader.
2. Expert columns and comments on feature articles. An expert can be not only an HR manager, but other employees as well — developers, marketers, CEO etc. Oftentimes, a company thinks about columns from HR and CEO or CTO (in case of hiring programmers) in the first place. But in some cases, columns of ordinary employees have the wow effect. You have to proceed from the goal, market and personality of the company’s speakers. The comments in the articles display your expertise: company reps analyze the state of the market or share their point of view.
3. Columns on company values. Ichak Adizes says that business has entered the era of love. Customers choose with their hearts, and so do job seekers. Given this, you should talk about values ​​that are important to you and employees will want to broadcast. For example, the importance of teamwork or customer focus.
4. This should not be “publication for publication.” Work out the content plan, make sure that the articles are diverse, interesting to the media and cover all target audience segments.

To make PR really help you build a reputation in the labor market via content, you need to be very clear about goals on each particular website, who you publish content for and how it should interact with the target audience. Obviously, long read with tons of stats is out of place in lifestyle media. And on the contrary, reinforce business publications with relevant statistical data.

Social networks

Yes, SMM is not quite a PR tool, but you can use the company’s social media platforms to attract potential employees. Photos and stories from the weekly pizza party or happy hours on Instagram will give idea of the atmosphere in the company and activities outside of work. A successful example of HR brand promotion on Instagram is the case of the Salesforce CRM system developer. The company has two accounts — general and salesforcejobs, where employees from all over the world talk about leisure activities whether it is joint training, basketball games, social initiatives. Also, the account is used to discuss matters such as gender equality, community strength and opportunities that Salesforce provides.

In case one of your colleagues has a thematic Telegram channel, tell about it. In this way emphasize the specialist’s expertise and confirm the high level of the team.

Have no fear of going beyond standard formats. General Electric approached social media quite creatively. The company came up with a character, programmer Owen, who got a job with them. In the first video, he told relatives and friends about this who for some reason they are not happy. They are much more inspired by startups making hats for kittens. You could watch Owen’s career on all GE social networks. An unusual campaign drew attention to GE as an employer: attendance of the website’s career section grew by 800%. Thus, thinking out of the box works miracles and makes you stand out from the crowd.

Offline Events

Holding meetups, lectures, conferences and masterclasses is a way to build a community of professionals around the brand. Before diving into event organization, take time to study the market, explore whether the niche is occupied, who competitors are and what they fail to take into account. Get people from the industry to endorse the event, promote it on social media networks.

Approach the meetings regularly to form its brand within the community of specialists you need. I recommend to hold one event to test the format. We have been working with Preply platform for many years — practically since the agency’s inception. Technically, the product is complex, it is presented in many markets, the company is constantly evolving. As part of HR PR, they constantly hold events for the community, bringing together the brightest CTOs and VPs.

There’s no need in complex metrics to evaluate employer’s brand. You to track whether PR works or not by communicating with candidates, assessing the level of applicants, their experience and other places of work.

PR in this area has no deadlines: a strong brand is relevant for the company at all times. The first results can be expected in 3–6 months (depending on the market and scope). A pair of publications in targeted media and one event per month are enough to maintain the image at the appropriate level.

In a startup ambitions are as big as the risks. The teams of such projects are looking for a business model that will quickly conquer international markets. Actually, the term is defined by Steve Blank, “Silicon Valley godfather”: “A startup is a temporary organization created to find a repeatable and scalable business model.”

Such a project is always a risky undertaking, and a reputation belongs to risks. Shares depreciation and loss of potential investors are the startup’s major nightmares. Therefore, each startup founder or communications officer needs to know how to minimize the chances of a media scandal. And, of course, you need to understand how to act if the crisis has already sparked.

The first step is strategic: the role of the CEO in PR

When developing a strategy, the first thing to do is decide on the CEO’s image or a business owner. Image PR is one of the fastest ways to popularize a project. A brand has a face, a person with a specific name and character. People like these companies more than “faceless” ones. Take, for example, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg: in the news, the name of the CEO often comes first, and only afterward the journalists mention the names Tesla, SpaceX, or Facebook. We hear their names more often than the companies they manage.

But if the CEO is not ready for a public role, behavior and even mood swings can cost the business billions of dollars in profit or investment. First and foremost, you need to analyze in detail the behavior and leader’s bio. Does he/she have dubious stories in the past? Allows incorrect statements? Will a nervous system withstand scrutiny and criticism? In case at least one point is in doubt, the first-person PR becomes a risky undertaking.

“Red Buttons” of PR Crisis

Even if the personality and “PR-aptitude” of the CEO are doing well, this does not necessarily mean the absence of risks. Both the leader and the team are susceptible to making a mistake. These are the main issues communication crises usually stem from.

• Discrimination

Discrimination of any kind is a direct path to a scandal. Sexism, racism, homophobia refer to dangerous areas, but tracking them is actually the easiest. Things are a little more complicated with ageism (discrimination based on age), ableism (rights infringement of of people with disabilities and other health problems). Last year, H&M, the Swedish clothing company, pulled out an advertising campaign that enraged huge number of people and was simply beyond understanding. Picture this: a cute African-American buy wearing a green sweatshirt saying “coolest monkey in the jungle”. The huge scandal was followed by closing store in South Africa and wrapping up a collab with famous musician The Weeknd. Though the case is controversial for the model’s family, it was explicitly ugly for the public.

Interestingly enough, there is still “positive discrimination” and its particular example is “benevolent sexism” disguised as care and compliments. In our information space, such things have not yet been noticed, whereas for Western markets this is an extremely sensitive topic. It was finely roasted in the Silicon Valley series when the Pied Piper team hired a female engineer, focusing on gender diversity rather than professionalism.

• Public support for odious politicians

Another “red button” triggering an information explosion is statements in favor of scandalous politicians. Moreover, sometimes even inaction and absence of position can be perceived as support for such a politician. A striking example is the latest case of Equinox and SoulCycle, luxury fitness brands. The company’s clients got furious after they found out that Stephen Ross, the chairman of the parent company, decided to hold a fundraiser to support Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. Even though the companies do not relate themselves with that initiative, customers see no other way rather than boycotting the brands.

• Client confrontation or “unfollowing”

Many people take the phrase “the client is always right” as an axiom. And even if the client is objectively wrong, the audience is likely to stand on his/her side in the conflict. Therefore, public feud with the service’s buyer or user is the right way towards a reputation crisis.

If the conflict has already occurred, it is impossible to act from a position of strength (for example, a threat to sue), to get off with formal apologies and clerical letters about the “internal investigation”.

The best strategy is a company’s leader owning responsibility. In most cases, you need to apologize. Even if the customer is so wrong, aggression is a no-no. On the contrary, do demonstrate readiness for dialogue and concern.

Anti-crisis PR: being ahead of the curve

Avoiding risky topics and CEO keeping it together is not enough to avoid a crisis. Murphy’s law applies to the world of PR: if something can go wrong, it will definitely go wrong. Therefore, any PR strategy includes risk examination.

Prior to starting a campaign, you need to prepare answers for unforeseen and unexpected situations that can be quickly covered. You also need to identify spokespersons who will give their comments. The rest of the employees should be instructed not to discuss the crisis with outsiders: send an interlocutor to those authorized to speak on behalf of the company. Make sure to pull together a list of loyal journalists to help cover the newsbreak from your perspective.

A well-handled PR crisis means timely actions being taken, and the word ‘timely’ in this context means ‘immediate’. This year Nike found itself in a midst of a crisis when New York Times published an article by Alysia Montaño, an Olympic runner. Nike sponsored her and other athletes, however, there was something missing: a paid maternity leave. The brand was very quick to release a statement on changing their policies.

What if the crisis did happen?

Apparently, there is no one-size-fits-all script for crisis communications. It is nuanced and depends on the project specifics, the market, and the audience, and how exactly the scandal developed. Here are a few strategies that may be helpful.

• Silence

Silence (I mean literally: not silencing a problem, but silence in response to a crisis) can be a good strategy if the opinions are divided, and there are company’s supporters. Oftentimes, the strategy works miracles in black PR. If you do react, the news will only stir it up. In contrast, the absence of a reaction will settle things down in a couple of weeks or when competitors run out of budget. In any case, consider the nature and special character of a situation you find yourself in.

• Rebuttal/denial

When a company is unfairly accused, a refutation is an option. But here, again, it’s worth considering whether this refutation will feed the extra informational noise.

Grammarly displayed a good example of the rebuttal. Google Project Zero team member Tavis Ormandy found an error in the extension code that could potentially lead to data leakage. Grammarly team was given 90 days to fix the bug, afterward, the bug would be made public. Within a few hours, the error was fixed, and on Monday Grammarly spoke out loud about the situation on Twitter with a vote of gratitude. Almost every journalist who covered the situation, spoke positively about Grammarly, especially since Ormandy personally called the reaction “really impressive”.

But there was one problem. There was a notice the bug compromised all the data that the user provided: emails, Messenger, and much more. The company responded promptly and scrupulously. Grammarly contacted each media and explained that only the documents created directly in the Grammarly app were at risk. Moreover, they assured that a company continues to monitor suspicious activity.

• Apology

When there is a mistake, an apology is the best solution. In this case, you should offer affected party reimbursement or a bonus. Apologizing is not shameful. In December 2018, Slack found itself in an unflattering position: it banned the users from the countries included into the US sanctions list. Basically, people were restricted from using an app not doing anything wrong. The effort to comply with the law resulted in great disappointment of clients (given Slack positions itself as being focused on customer experience). Violating law and turning back time were no options for this case. Slack did what it had to: took full responsibility, explained what happened and why, and more importantly, explained why this will not happen again and offered ways to resolve the situation. Moral: if you make a mistake, own it.

• Shift the focus

Elon Musk’s favorite drill. Had a row with journalists? Launch your media, call it something provocative (for example, Pravda). Employees complain about poor working conditions, and investors do not like it? Send your Tesla into space. In Ukraine, we can expect something similar to politicians.

Judging from the experience, almost every business has crises. There is a correlation with growth: the faster, the more exposure to such a possibility. So, if you have big ambitions, start preparing an anti-crisis package for communications.

PR builds communication with consumers, media, investors, and stakeholders. Just like in any other kind of relationship, consistency matters in public relations — different PR tools are needed at different stages of the company’s life. In any case, it is always a lengthy process with a single strategy, rather than scattered actions. Let’s walk through the main types of PR, find out what tasks and at what stages they solve, and most importantly, how to figure out that the strategy works.

Investor relations

Media activity can be an important component of the overall development, the project dynamics as well as revenue, scaling, audience growth. It plays a vital role for edtech, fintech, cartech, travel, medical projects where the loyalty of mass audience is important — it proves the project’s usefulness, necessity, and perspective to an investor. Investor relations are built via publications about the project, its achievements, and founders; internal analytics, and own project research that may be useful for the industry.

The only way to assess the effectiveness of investor relations is to ask the investor himself what triggered him to invest in a startup — there are no guarantees or one-size-fits-all solutions. A case in point is the Grammarly service which raised $110 in investments in 2017. Before that, the startup had a lot of publications The Washington Post, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Chicago Tribune, and other well-known media.

Building an HR Brand

Tech startups always lack developers, marketers who know the niche, and other professionals. You have to compete for high-profile pros, and if the specialists want to join the company simply because of its name — it is what HR brand is about. It is built upon the publications about company values ​​and working conditions, and it is good when the speakers in these materials are from different levels. Writing about cases that retain specialists, training programs, initiatives will increase both brand loyalty and the company’s reputation as an employer.

The effectiveness of HR-brand development efforts can be assessed by the number of the received CVs, the average level of applicants and their past projects or tracking the answers to the question “why do you want to work in our company?”. The cosmic level of the HR brand is seen in Uber, Tesla, and Amazon. According to LinkedIn, they are in the top 10 companies where the job seekers wish to work the most. In Ukraine, Ciklum, Genesis, Preply belong to top HR brands.

Crisis communication

This type refers to communications during a crisis, aimed at protecting the brand’s name and reputation. An anti-crisis plan must be prepared for the companies operating in the “gray” zone such as online casinos; projects that may be incomprehensible to the masses such as cryptocurrency; and morally motivated companies, for instance, sextech projects in Muslim countries. It is essential to think over the most likely scenarios, prepare comments of responsible persons, make a list of media, and thought leaders who, if necessary, will support the company. Tools should be set up that track brand references on social networks: Mention, Google Alerts, or other to take a quick decision.

Metrics in evaluating the effectiveness of anti-crisis PR is the number of likes, dislikes or shares, content analysis of social networks and media or having a focus group to track the shifts in attitude towards the brand. Twitter bot Tay by Microsoft is one of the most illustrative examples of anti-crisis PR. AI-powered bot shocked the audience with racist and sexist tweets. The subsequent apologies as well as shutting down the program were an example of a timely and competent response to the crisis.

Personal PR

The publications about the company’s founder in the top media have a positive effect on the company’s brand, on the HR brand, and on its investment attractiveness. It is done via writing opinion pieces in the media, speeches on television/radio; smart management of social media and participation in conferences, lectures, and meet-ups.

The volume of organic traffic to the site, measuring the audience reach (who read and liked the posts) can serve as effectiveness metrics. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are the perfect examples of personal PR being useful to the entire company: the interest in personality is converted into interest to the brand.

Product PR

Product PR aims to increase brand awareness and develop the habit of using the product among customers. It works through useful publications in the media: articles, instructions, tips; content marketing and entertaining and/or educational events.

The effectiveness of product PR can be measured by volume of organic traffic, requests of the company’s name, the reach of the audience that read the publications in the media, and liked the posts on social platforms. By the time when the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B was launched, 84 PR publications had been published in the first month of release, including The New York Times, The Verge and local publications like the Chicago Tribune.

No PR at all

Sometimes PR simply makes no sense. For instance, a project with unfinished products or a product full of bugs, or a company that is not prepared for comments, criticism, and involvement in discussions. In such cases, it is reasonable to allocate budget on development, and management of business processes. PR can do a lot in case you keep in mind it is about relationships but not the sales.