President of hh.ru Mikhail Zhukov has died. Obituary

Yesterday in Moscow, at the age of 57, the president of the largest Russian recruitment platform hh.ru, Mikhail Zhukov, died. Thanks to him, hh.ru has become not just one of the leaders in the Russian online recruitment market, but also a driver of changes in attitudes towards work and hiring on the part of both job seekers and employers.

“I have been managing hh.ru for many years in various positions and over these years, since the late 2010s, I have been able to observe not only how the Russian labor market itself is changing, but also how the profession of those people who deal with personnel is transforming. Remember for yourself – they used to be called personnel officers. What was the first association that this word evoked? The aunt is wearing a hat, which she doesn’t take off even indoors. As soon as she arrived, she sits in it at her workplace. And now? Now they have been replaced by young professionals who can not only shift layoff orders from place to place. They see the market, know what applicants expect from them, and are even ready to implement AI tools into their work. We even call them differently – HR specialists,” says hh.ru President Mikhail Zhukov to the hall in which these same HR specialists are sitting, and they laugh.

He gave this short speech at one of his own platform conferences this fall, and although it, of course, was not his last public address, it seems to me that it was one of the most striking. Then, after his monologue, a discussion began, which I moderated, and we discussed how now HR specialists are not only evolving very quickly as professionals, constantly mastering new skills, but also how gradually their work in providing enterprises with personnel is becoming so important that in the future It is from them that vice presidents and presidents of companies will grow up. Because now, without people, as before, without the release of new products or competent financial policies, there is nowhere.

Having headed hh.ru in 2008 as CEO, Mikhail Zhukov did a lot to ensure that the development of the HR profession in Russia went exactly this way. Yes, the hh.ru platform under his leadership grew in terms of operational indicators, became the leader of the online recruiting market in the Russian Federation, and later also became one of the three largest job and personnel search sites in the world. But it’s not only that.

All this time, the hh.ru platform has also been developing as a large expert center, helping employers, represented by large and small companies, better understand what kind of employees they need, where to look for them and, often, what to do with them later.

Thus, it is hh.ru that is now introducing a new approach, which in the future could revolutionize the approach to hiring in Russia – when an employee is assessed as suitable for a particular position not on the basis of some formal characteristics, such as a diploma or work experience in the company, but by specific skills.

Mikhail Zhukov described in detail the entire path that hh.ru went through under his leadership in his recently published book “HeadHunter. Success is inevitable.” But this book, of course, is not only about the company – it is about him, about his approach to managing employees, and most importantly, it is about what results can be achieved if you see these employees as people, and not just a function. People who value the ability to make their own decisions and it is important to have the right to make mistakes, because, as Mikhail Zhukov wrote, “the first thing I profess is giving people freedom in everything.”

Well, then not only his employees, with whom he went through a journey of more than 15 years, can thank him, but also those who have used hh.ru all these years – after all, it gave them the freedom to choose their place of work. And freedom to work in our society, where work is gradually becoming one of the main values ​​for everyone, is the main freedom.

Anastasia Manuilova