Confounded
A high energy podcast with its own video channel featuring interviews with amazing people who have overcome adversity and life’s challenges to be successful in unique and wonderful ways.
Confounded
Harnessing Technology to Support Displaced Ukrainians Worldwide
Iman Fadaei is helping the estimated 10 million displaced Ukrainians find work worldwide. From a standing start, he and his team are helping get Ukrainians into work wherever they end up, which helps them with accommodation, mental well-being, and quickly integrating into society.
The platform was initiated in response to the situation of their CTO Igor, who is Ukrainian and still based in Ukraine. The suddenness of his plight during these first days of the war and the severity of the situation his family and friends are still experiencing has inspired the team to contribute however they can.
From over 100 countries, they have posted 2000+ vacancies from companies looking to help. And this is just the beginning – staggeringly, employukraine.org has only been live for 30 days and has already been covered by Forbes, CNBC, Sifted, SIA, REC and others.
Here’s how you can help:
Post a job.
Do you have a job you can post? Go to employukraine.org
Promote.
Can you share employukraine.org with your business network and invite them to post their jobs? Feel free to tag employukraine.org on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok.
Volunteer.
employukraine.org need help with PR, translations, social media, partnerships, research, development and more.
If you’re able to volunteer please send your LinkedIn details and (any) availability to team@employukraine.org
Find out more at https://employukraine.org
and find Iman on Linked In at https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanfadaei/
So today on ConfinerTV, we have a really superb guest, a man who put his business to one side, used the software he's developed over many years to build a platform to help displaced Ukrainians get back to work, whether they're displaced internally in Ukraine or externally across the world. From a standing start, he has over 2,000 jobs available and over 100 countries, and it's compounding almost every week. So I'd like to introduce a man and he will tell you all about the story in his own words. So welcome to ConfinerTV. Thanks very much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. I think we came across each other on LinkedIn. That's right. I think. Mutual connection. Maybe the end started from there. So I think it's a really important topic. You're doing a really great thing. I think we should just jump in with what it is you're actually doing.
Iman Fadaei:Sure. So I guess I'm here mainly to talk about Employee Ukraine, which is a project that we set up about a month ago now in response to the crisis in Ukraine. So the background of the story is that I work in a team along with some other people all over the world, and our CTO is based in Ukraine. He's still in Ukraine now and obviously, as the events unfolded over the past few weeks, we've just realized how bad the situation is over there and we immediately wanted to help, just even in the first few days. And we don't have a huge amount of resources, but we do have our technology. So we sell a job matching solution called talentpoolsio and it just takes candidates and it matches them with job posts and it takes care of a lot of the back office work.
Iman Fadaei:Okay, so we realized there's a quick win here where we could enable what the UN expected would be four million refugees to help them to find job opportunities. That was the initial goal, so it took us about an hour to set that live on the 26th of February. So an hour, about a half an hour to an hour of time to get it.
Alastair Campbell:How does?
Iman Fadaei:that work Well as I said it is our commercial solution. So that's one of the main value ads of our products is that you can launch your own talent platform in an hour, which is, yeah, it just means for a lot of companies to use our service. It just saves us a lot of time and energy getting to market.
Alastair Campbell:Yeah, we should come back to that. Yeah, definitely Happy to.
Iman Fadaei:And after we launched that, we put it out to a few people in the tech space and there was just an amazing positive response here's an opportunity to technology and business for good and support people who are in need, and it kind of grew organically from there. So in the last month we have had about 100,000 visits to the platform, 10,000 users of register Wow From a hundred different countries. A hundred now.
Alastair Campbell:A hundred. Yeah, that's amazing. It was 68 when you sent me that information through last week. We decided to do the podcast.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, it's grown. So, yeah, I think it's very much a global response of businesses and civil society working together, trying to cut out a lot of the bureaucracy in actually changing somebody's life and it's just.
Iman Fadaei:It's very inspiring to listen to the stories of people who are just on the platform. I mean, we do the easy bit, which is to provide technology. Just imagine that your hometown is being bombed. There's planes flying overhead, people in the streets fighting and you've just got to decide what am I going to do with my life? I've got to get up. I've got to go. I've got to get my family safe. You're traveling for 20 hours to get to the border.
Alastair Campbell:That's just to get to Poland, yeah.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, and then you've got another 15 hours waiting at the border and then you make it through. You've got to figure out where to where to stay, and once you've got yourself sorted, you've got, you've gone through your savings. Now the first thing is how do I get a job? So that's the bit. That's where we come in and we just match up someone's CV with job openings and, you know, invite them to apply and we make it a streamlined process for them to search for the right thing and then apply, pretty simply. And then, once they've had a job, you know, on the other side you've got employers. Obviously, he wants to do good, they've got a vacancy and they think, well, this is either a remote role or, you know, we can help with relocation costs to get them over to wherever we are. And we've got companies in the UK, in Germany, in Portugal and even, you know, in America, in Canada all over the world.
Iman Fadaei:now it's the. Brazil, you said Brazil Chamber of Commerce gets in touch, it says how can we help? So I think there's a lot of good will out there for the business community and we're just trying to kind of sit in the middle to funnel that in an effective way. But yeah, as I say, it's very inspiring listening to the stories of some of the people who joined the platform.
Alastair Campbell:So it's absolutely horrifying the idea of you know, leave your house. 24 hours later you're at a border. Imagine you know from where I am.
Iman Fadaei:It's like leaving here. Yeah, and your mother or something you know.
Alastair Campbell:Yeah, oh, with the plastic baggie standing at the border of Scotland asking to be let in. And then where am I going to work and where do I even live? And, of course, I guess, because I heard that you know, like you know, berlin, warsaw, you know there's a running out of accommodation, so it has to go a bit further, wider, but how do they? So? The first question, I guess, is you start, you mentioned the beginning is tech jobs. But it's not just tech jobs now, is it?
Iman Fadaei:No, we originally started with the idea of remote software roles, so we launched a platform. Originally is remote Ukraine.
Alastair Campbell:Yeah, which makes?
Iman Fadaei:sense, and a month in we realized that actually 45% of the roles were remote, but the other 55% roughly half are in person.
Alastair Campbell:Wow.
Iman Fadaei:So we've we recently then changed to employee Ukraine, just to just to help people avoid that just employee.
Iman Fadaei:Ukraineorg employee Ukraineorg. Yeah, so it's remote roles and in person roles. So basically, if you're an employer, you've got a role anywhere in the world, you can post it and it's relevant. And there are 30 different job categories from, you know, metalwork to hospitality, to nursing, to, obviously, software, marketing, design, etc. Yeah, the tech stuff, but it's not just tech stuff. So we don't have any strategy other than to get help the next person find a job. And, yes, if that means we create a very unique category where once one person gets matched on, you know we've got orchestra conductors contacting us.
Iman Fadaei:So I mean he is very difficult to put that into a traditional job categorization.
Alastair Campbell:That is amazing. So basically an employer goes there, signs up, post what the job is, says which remote or in person? Just talk me through. If it's in person and I'm on the border with Poland and the in person jobs in France, how does? Does there's any help for my paperwork and for because there's bound to paperwork involves in all of this somewhere?
Iman Fadaei:Right. So you've got three main issues there transportation, visas and accommodation.
Alastair Campbell:Yeah.
Iman Fadaei:And, generally speaking, so many countries have got their own kind of accommodation set ups already sorted, whether it's public housing or they have with Airbnb or they've got. You know that they're reaching out, like the UK, to their citizens to say, hey, who can help here? And what Poland has done. I think almost everyone in Poland has been housed in private homes rather than setting them up in a football stadium to things. So, yeah, that's accommodation.
Iman Fadaei:And in terms of transportation, that's where there's a little bit of a difficulty at the. I mean, there isn't, as far as I understand, there isn't a clear path through from one from a country A to country B. People are just going to figure it out by themselves. And then then there's a visa question, and in terms of visas in the EU, it's much easier because if you are a refugee from Ukraine, you pretty much get an instant three year working visa. Okay, so you do have to go through some. There are some countries who have implemented it in different ways, but for most people you just you have that stamp on your passport at the border and that's it. That's. That's basically a visa. In the UK, you have to go through homes for Ukraine scheme, where you need a name sponsor. The sponsor can either be an individual or organization, but the key thing is accommodation rather than work, and then that then comes with a work authorization.
Alastair Campbell:And there is a really useful website. A friend of mine has used actually to find somebody because they're hosting somebody called I can help to host and so obviously the issue in the UK is everyone registered to see a blog host but you then have to find a names person to actually host, which makes it really hard. So I can help to host. Just a little plug there that can help. That can help as part of that process.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, there's two or three of them. We've got some resources on our platform as well employee Ukraineorg forward slash hell Okay, and it goes through. I mean we focus on the UK, but there are a few different resources there, including the government's official documentation. So visa is okay and what? What we're seeing from employees is that all the let's say, half the jobs that are in person get half of those. 45% of those are offering relocation costs to cover that as well. So businesses aren't just saying, look, we want to help. They're not just saying we're going to help and give you a job. We're saying, look, we're going to cover your costs to come here as well.
Alastair Campbell:That is amazing.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, so that's great to. I think the business is already responding.
Alastair Campbell:So there's basically, I mean, well, I don't know how accurate the stats are in, workers are a week old, but it was. There was like 1400 jobs on there. Is that the case still? Yeah, I think that's doubled now. Okay, so you've effectively 750 jobs in person where the employer is willing to help with the relocation costs. Oh yes, that is phenomenal. That is amazing, yeah.
Iman Fadaei:I think it's, and you know this is just very much the beginning. So, if you think, there's 10 million displaced people, so we're not just working with refugees, we're also, of course, the men are still in Ukraine, you know, fighting for their country, and they still need to fund their life, they need to pay for food and their families and everything. So we are equally keen to support them to keep work. So if we can help existing Ukrainian businesses to keep going, they can register also on the platform and find work, or particularly remote jobs, obviously, and otherwise they can also use the platform to find resources themselves if they like. And then you've got so.
Iman Fadaei:Most of the people that we're working with are originally there were women, often with kids, so these are the typical refugee demographic, but now more people are learning about it from within Ukraine as well. So we're having good numbers of men as well registered on the Heifer remote projects. They're more short term but because of the nature of being remote, it can handle both migration of the refugees and also the internal migration of the men who are internally displaced. And what that means is, according to the UN, it basically means anyone who's been forcibly having to move homes as a result, to leave their home as a result of the war, you're classed as forcibly displaced.
Alastair Campbell:And how many forcibly displaced people are there? Estimated Six and a half million in Ukraine. So six and a half million people have moved away from the east over to the west of Ukraine.
Iman Fadaei:Well, I don't know about east and west, but just yet they've had to leave their homes. Okay, I mean just you just turn on the news and look at some of it. I mean, you've got a doubt flats and stuff and you can see why.
Alastair Campbell:Unbelievable, isn't it? Yeah, so how do? How are you getting the message to the people of Ukraine, or the Ukrainians who are on the move to find the website?
Iman Fadaei:Well, until now we haven't done any marketing work on either side. It's people just found out about it organically. But we are now that we're a monthly and we've got a volunteering team and there is a little bit more the fact that it's proven itself to have some value we're going to dedicate a little bit more strategic thinking to it and we're building partnerships with people who do have access to those communities. Okay, For example, you know where it kind of partnered with the women's Ukrainian business, women's Chamber of Commerce and Refugee Aid and TEMPT, and we're working with a number of different organizations who are in the refugee space. Just to say, look, guys we've got this thing.
Iman Fadaei:We've got this thing. It seems to be moving. Let's work together and you do what you guys are great at doing and we'll focus on the job actually.
Alastair Campbell:But basically in 30s, 26s of February, wasn't it? So you're over, slightly over 30 days now. Yeah, you know 37, 28 days, whatever that is. Yeah, you've got 3,000 jobs on there. You know 100 countries and you're genuinely making an impact. So the more help that people who are listening can give in terms of just sharing the word, and also employers if you have jobs, just list them here. You know, worst case scenario, you might, you could do it to help anyone. But if you can, if you need somebody, why would you not choose this option?
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, it takes about a minute, so it takes about 20 seconds to register an account and then you know, you click post the job and there's something like 10 or 15 fields to figure out.
Alastair Campbell:Okay, so you're not making it overly onerous even to get that on there. You can do everything within a minute, okay. So, really, people listening, if you have a minute, one minute, one minute, you could help a family, or if you're a large organization and you want us to pull jobs in from your ATS feeds.
Iman Fadaei:We can also. We're about to release that as well. So whether it's an XML feed or RSS feed or some other ATS system that you want us, to include.
Alastair Campbell:So for those of us who don't know ATS is.
Iman Fadaei:It's an applicant tracking system. So if you're a large company and you have your own internal HR tools for recruitment, you'll typically post published jobs on your internal system and it's just going to. You know, we've got some people coming to us and saying we've got 250 jobs we want to post. So you can imagine it takes some time doing all that.
Alastair Campbell:So grab your feeds and you yeah, we put it automatically. Yeah.
Iman Fadaei:So our goal now is you know there's 10 million displaced people. Can we have an impact on 1% of that? You know that's a hundred thousand, a hundred thousand people, right? So if we can help a hundred thousand people, and that means posting, let's say, a million jobs, which seems like a lot, but it's 10,000 employers posting a hundred jobs each.
Alastair Campbell:Well, I don't do statistics particularly well, but if you're doubling the way you are every few days week, then actually you could get there technically within about 12 weeks every if the momentum was to remain the same.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, I think that's like a six month goal. If we can accomplish that in six months, that'd be great, but it does require large employers to you know, take the effort to say we want to help. To make it very easy and just be in touch. Let's have a call and do you have within the day?
Alastair Campbell:Maybe feel just out for this, for what you're seeing in terms of employers are these, are these smaller SMEs, or are you? Is it a?
Iman Fadaei:generic. It's a whole range. So there are, you know, independent bakers or trades people who say you know, we want to help, I've got the role. And then you've got midsize companies, and then you've got billion dollar companies Amazon, microsoft, sap, blah, blah, blah all of those big companies. They're also registered on the platform posting.
Alastair Campbell:Well, I bet you weren't expecting that 35 days ago, when you thought you'd do something good.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, I didn't really have any expectations at that stage, to be honest, you were just trying. Let's just see what I mean. Let's try and find one person, a job.
Alastair Campbell:And how's the day job going?
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, that's taken a little bit of. I mean, luckily, you know, I I have a team of people who I am to have. You know they're responsible for that. But having said that, they have started to spend quite a bit of time on this project as well. So, yeah, it has taken a little bit of a hit. So I've had to it's cost Quite a bit of money just in terms of internal resources, like Dedicating those resources to this project, um, but at the same time, you know, some people have contacted us and said Um, tell us about your organization. Um, you know how did it get started and when they hear that it's come from the value of the our corporate business in setting up this solution, they're intrigued about it. So Nothing has come out of it yet, but there may be some indirect business, you know, opportunity and later on down the line, um, that hopefully will cover some of these costs. At the moment I'm hoping that Um, some people, if they're interested, will donate, because I've just been funding myself now.
Alastair Campbell:And your clients are. Presumably you're having to manage your, your current clients and their requirements, and We've been very lucky.
Iman Fadaei:Actually, this month has been relatively quiet, but, or I, there have been a couple of clients who We've had to rely on their patients and their their humanitarian Motivations just for some delays in the last few weeks. But I mean that we're over that now, um, so we, we're all caught up and I think it's just You've got some decisions to make in life as to like, what do you want to prioritize for the next month? And yeah, you know, that's just a decision.
Alastair Campbell:I'm taking a month like to do some good, or even longer, especially in this situation, people in horrific conditions is is a good thing and very noble, and it's um, you know, I think what you're doing is just fabulous. I think you should have a bit of a plug for your business, though, because you are effectively doing this Um, and we haven't discussed your current business. So you, you, you've got effectively the ability for for me, for example, to do Pod. Let's just say, like, I have a huge podcast community, so I could do podcast jobs and I could be up and running an hour with podcast jobs and I forget this right, I could push that to my community and, effectively, I can create a niche um Talent pool.
Iman Fadaei:That's right, yeah, so anyone who Was a podcast service provider would be able to create their own profile. Okay platform and Typically we work with organizations who they already work with a community of professionals, but they're just doing all that business offline. Okay and we just make it very easy for them to bring their business online.
Iman Fadaei:Any niche, any sector anywhere we have, um, lee lawyer platforms, um, architect platforms, engineering platforms Uh, there's even, there was even an aboriginal australian aboriginal tribes had tribes put people providing their indigenous services, wow, in australia there's business networks, mentoring programs Um, there's, there's, I mean, but mostly there is focus on professional services, but you know it is. We've also got wellness, you know, like yoga, yoga products, etc. So, yeah, you can, you could enable anybody to create their own profile and start selling their services Online. Yeah, and, on the other hand, you can enable any customer, whether it's an employer or just a, you know btc Play, where you have consumers buying these yoga, you know. Services, yeah, um, they register, post their requirement or just buy a Uh, product host service, like a fiber style, okay, products off the platform and it's just like an e-commerce transaction in either case.
Iman Fadaei:Um, it connects the two parties. Um, it takes care of payments in like 60 different countries, so it can go from any country in the world to anything supported by stripe, which is about 55 companies, though Pretty big. Um, and, yeah, there's a lot, there's like 200 different features, different types of user flows. So you want to use video? You know face to face video calls. Do you want to do invoicing internally, externally, to want to hook up this system. Do you want to use Right? Yeah, so there's, there's lots of different options, but yeah, effectively it's an end-to-end kind of online contracting, service contracting platform.
Alastair Campbell:That's making it sound very simple. I imagine it was quite hard to get there.
Iman Fadaei:It took us a couple of years to get to this point. There's a lot of tears and sweat have gone into it.
Alastair Campbell:Yeah, I think that's amazing. Also, I think, despite all the horror, it's quite amazing that you've affected God. Well, we actually have a platform that's this adaptable that you've actually managed to go in an hour up and running. Here we go. We're going to run a solution and you could not have predicted the scale at which you're now, but it does show that your platform is scalable, robust, works, quick to do. There is a benefit there, I guess.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, I mean for sure we'll be using this as a case study of what an organization can accomplish in a month. I think we had about the equivalent of two people working full-time for a month.
Alastair Campbell:Okay, if people are listening, they want to help. What kind of help are you looking for? You said earlier donations.
Iman Fadaei:Well, the key thing to do first is, if you have a job role, just to post that. So employee Ukraineorg order for you to employee Ukraine, and then you'll be able to register and post your job. Beyond that, if you're a particular tech company or any organization that has expertise whether it's PR or social media or anything else that you've got a little bit of time to spare, we'd value in-kind support by providing your expertise to the organization.
Alastair Campbell:So actually, people who are good at outreach and have an audience, perhaps.
Iman Fadaei:May not just be outreach. Could be a law firm who says look, I'm going to look over your contracts or your terms of conditions for two hours. I mean that's the real value is in people actually volunteering their time, their expertise and their projects. It could be any field. I mean as an organization we're touching a number of different touch points. We've got volunteers that there's eight charts to consider.
Alastair Campbell:Okay, so you want to catch up with the professionalization and the organization of the backend processes, basically, and the people yeah, anyone who has a skill and they're willing to offer it, where I'm interested in having a chat with them.
Iman Fadaei:Oh it's nice and broad. Yeah, it's very broad, but we have a volunteering kind of process. So, whatever the offer is, we've got a way to streamline that. And then finally, yeah, obviously it provides it to your network. So if you just want to share on LinkedIn or something, that's great. And I'm not really pitching for donations, I'm mostly relying on the employers who actually find somebody and who get value, or recruiters, you know, who actually find someone on our platform. They set at their normal rate to their client and they make money off of it. You know that's fine, you know that's our business works. But if they are able to donate, you know some of the fees that they generate to us to cover our technical costs that would be very helpful as well. So, yeah, I think that's pretty much it.
Alastair Campbell:That makes a lot of sense. If recruiters come along and find something in your platform and then pitch them in at 20% to 30% of salary costs, it's only reasonable that they push some of that back to help support you.
Iman Fadaei:Well, if they can't, I mean they've got their own costs to cover their time and other things as well. But yeah, we definitely appreciate any donations.
Alastair Campbell:OK, so it's not really. It's time and expertise first, then it's outreach and then, if somebody wants to because they've got benefits, some donations would help. But it's not.
Iman Fadaei:We don't have an official donation campaign. But if somebody feels the urge and they say, look, here's a little bit of money and I know it's going to help you. Just get in touch, ok.
Alastair Campbell:Right, well, I'll put all that in the show notes. I've already put you in touch with somebody who should be helping us with some PR soon, so that's good, thanks very much. And then she knows a lot of people, so I'll talk about her in the show notes. Once we've got this sorted, and if anyone is listening who can spare well, even just an hour to look over some HR docs or whatever it is, then they can get in touch with you. What's the best way to get in touch with you?
Iman Fadaei:Just if you head over to employeeukrainorg, click on any of the contact us buttons and that's our email address. It's your team at employeeukrain.
Alastair Campbell:Perfect. Well, it's very impressive what you've done. I'm so glad you've done it and it's inspiring to meet you making such a difference so fast. I know there are so many people trying to do their best and you've actually gone and done something concrete. It's super impressive. So thank you for coming on and sharing that story and I hope, in my little way, this might get you a bit of a bit of reach, just for people who can help.
Iman Fadaei:Yeah, thanks very much for your time as well, alistair, and look forward to hearing back from everybody who's interested.
Alastair Campbell:Thank, you very much, thank you, thank you.
