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From Minnesota to Tallinn Matching talented people who want to take a break from their ordinary jobs with companies who are looking for helping hands for specific projects around the world is the shorthand description of what Jobbatical does. Over its first year, 1 200 companies across 40 countries have used Jobbatical and 7 000 job applications have yielded over 300 job matches. Behind these numbers are real people who are happy to share their user experience. I meet Björn Lapakko from Minnesota, USA, in his new office above the Kivi-Paber-Käärid restaurant in Telliskivi, the hipster-ville of Tallinn. Despite his name, denoting his roots from his Finnish grandparents, Björn does not speak any Finnish but he’s been eager to come and live in Europe ever since he was a kid. In his hometown of Minneapolis, which looks and feels very much like Tallinn – although people are far more engaging here, he claims – he had been working as a senior Digital Marketing Manager for the U.S. division of Aimia, a data-driven marketing and loyalty analytics company. ‘I wasn’t really looking for anything at the time but at the same time I wasn’t 100 per cent happy,’ he recalls. ‘One day, my intern suggested that I check out this website, Jobbatical.’ All of a sudden, his lifelong dream to come to Europe, not just as a backpacker but as someone who could contribute to the economy and sustain a lifestyle, became a more tangible possibility. Previously, he had applied for a few positions in Europe but when his US citizenship came up, he was promptly removed from the running. ‘Jobbatical offers a unique job hunting platform being from another country is never a shock to employers… they actually embrace it.’ Since the beginning of January, Björn has been working for Funderbeam, an Estonian startup. His job title is ‘Growth Hacker’ – his focus is primarily with lead generation and the digital marketing of Funderbeam’s soon to be launched, blockchain based, global startup marketplace. ‘Ultimately, my goal is to drive awareness and activation for our revolutionary technology,’ he continues. ‘I’m really loving my time in Tallinn and I can’t wait to explore the rest of Estonia,’ says Björn who has since enrolled in an Estonian language course provided by Estonian government and is happy to have found a community who share his passion in ice swimming and local craft beer. ‘I’ve been very lucky to have stumbled across Funderbeam and Jobbatical. It’s been such a remarkable and unique experience!’ he tells me.
Think big, act fast These are the kind of stories Jobbatical has made happen and what prove to Karoli that her gut feeling that the job market as it is would be shaken by the ever growing globalization and trans-nationalism, was right. The concept of Jobbatical grew out of several previous experiences. Since 2009 Karoli had been in charge of bringing FOX International
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LIFE IN ESTONIA #41
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Channels, broadcasting Fox Life, Fox Crime and National Geographic to the Baltics. At some point she felt she had learned all about localizing international TV-channels and needed some change. She left FOX and flew to Malaysia, with just her running shoes and books. Within eight days she had read through all her books and done enough running circles around the small island she was staying on to understand she needed more meaning in her time off. ‘I would have loved to find a team in Malaysia, whom to help with the skills and expertise in media business that I had been working past seven years,’ she says and adds ‘but Jobbatical did not exist back then’. She managed to find a small Estonian startup who needed her help and flew to San Francisco. ‘I worked 14-16 hours a day really exploring the startup scene in the Bay area. This was a great ‘’jobbatical’’ for me.’ She also applied to Singularity University, a global initiative founded by Dr. Ray Kurtzweil and Dr Peter Diamandis, both influential thinkers on the future of tech in Silicon Valley. ‘I had applied to the Singularity University Graduate Program last winter since a brave little optimist in me said – what the heck, go for it, you’ve got nothing to lose!’ she wrote on her blog after finding out the delightful news that she was chosen from among 3 000 candidates. ‘I will be the first person from my country and the first woman from the Baltic countries to be in the SU Graduate Program’, she revealed. Fast forward four years, and Karoli reflects that this experience gave her the courage to do really big things, and most importantly, a really good network of people that reaches much further from the sweet embrace of Silicon Valley. ‘I noticed that with the new Millennial generation, your geographic location and time zone really does not matter any more. Both friendships and work span borders. Although hardly anyone wakes up in London to think that their next big opportunity is waiting for them in Tallinn, we should open up opportunities for those who are curious and adventurous enough to want to try out new challenges elsewhere,’ she says. Jobbatical was born in the spring of 2014, when Karoli’s daughter Maya turned one, as she had promised herself to take at least a year off for the family: ‘I discovered that for a person like me, having worked for more than 10 years, there was an option to go and pick melons in Australia or take up an internship. I started to wonder that there must be a multitude of people like me who could add more value than that.’ Looking back at how Jobbatical started, she admits that they’ve made many mistakes. ‘Eat your own dog food!’ is a good saying by many entrepreneurs that also applies to Jobbatical. There was no pivot but there was a lot of experimentation. Finally, placing the focus on technology paid off: ‘It really took off in May 2015; the focus was there, the companies and the right people were on board,’ Karoli says. ‘I did not know anything about raising money and no one is likely to give you a manual on how to go about that,’ she reflects. Having pitched to hundreds of investors, she now admits that even today she cannot pinpoint a specific pattern besides the fact that the US investors will look further in the future whereas the European ones are more centered on numbers and are more keen on how the idea can be monetized.