nnov.profy.ru was the Nizhny Novgorod version of the "Mir Professionalov" ("World of Professionals") HR portal: a server for job listings, résumés, and recruitment that operated in the first half of the 2000s. The nn.ru directory described it as a "universal HR server for work and job vacancies in Nizhny Novgorod"[5]. The footer of the parent project carried the copyright "Mir Professionalov, Moscow, Profsoyuznaya St., 108"[1], and from 2002 — "ZAO Mir Professionalov" at the same address[2]. The Nizhny Novgorod subdomain, however, ran its own vacancy feed: an expanded listing in the "urgently required" section carried a Nizhny Novgorod employer's contact details — "603006, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod, M. Gorky St., 151, office 505" and phone (8312) 31-78-68[1]. The home-page snapshots in our sample span 2001-2005[1][4].

The 2001 vacancy feed

In the snapshot from April 19, 2001, the home page was dominated by a "new vacancies" list: date, title with a number, and salary. Twenty positions from April 14 and March 31, 2001; most lines carried a vacancy number from 1410 to 1507, with sums from 150 to 1000 — "Office manager" for 150, "Logistics manager" for 250, "Branch director in Nizhny Novgorod" for 1000[1]. The currency was not indicated in the list itself, but on the expanded listing the same figure appeared as "$1000"[1]. Only one vacancy was shown in full: "Project manager" at the company "Professionalnye Kommunikatsii" ("Professional Communications"), $1000 (the text read "Salary from $500 to $1000"), 36+ months of experience, fluent English or German, and the note "Work in Nizhny Novgorod, training in Switzerland"[1].

The menu of those years was editorial, not purely functional: "about the project," "participants," "for the press," "how they pay," "correspondence," "tests," "questions of the day," "profy.ru tips," "discussion," "psychology," "what, where, and how?"[1]. The page also featured a "Your opinion" block with a poll (the snapshot shows "Does your company experience crisis situations?"), a psychological test called "Your work style," and a vacancy subscription with a choice of encoding — Windows-1251 or KOI8-R — and message format, HTML or TEXT[1]. The footer read: "Server developed by the B2BLaboratory division of OAO 'Rossiyskaya Telekommunikatsionnaya Set'"[1].

2002: the regional edition

By September 2002 the site header read "Volga Federal District / N. Novgorod," and the menu had grown: "Recruitment in the region," "Vacancies by company," "Vacancies by profession," "Résumé editor," "Bookmarks," "Mailings," "Correspondence with employer," plus separate application forms for preliminary candidate screening and quality recruitment[2]. Part of the content came from Moscow: announcements of Moscow training courses "with a 10% discount" and the "PERSONAL-2002" conference[2]. By that time the Nizhny Novgorod feed had thinned out: the same two dozen lines were now spread from May to September, some without a sum, marked "negotiable"[2]. The page also displayed a raw engine warning — an error from the pg_fetch_row() function in the file /usr/local/apache/servers/profy/root/php/hot_vacancy.php[2]: the site ran on PHP over PostgreSQL.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru directory the site was listed under "Society and Nizhny Novgorodians: Job Search" (the neighboring "Recruitment agencies" was a separate category) and carried a Counter.nn.ru counter numbered 1908[5]. The counter rating in the category snapshot from June 20, 2002 was 127[5]; in the snapshot from September 8 of the same year it was 149[6]. In the June snapshot the category listed twelve sites, six of them without a rating; nnov.profy.ru ranked fourth — after "Mir Professionalnykh Kommunikatsiy" (3838), the "Megapolis" recruitment agency (386), and the "Nizhegorodskie Kadrovye Agentstva" ("Nizhny Novgorod Recruitment Agencies") site (286)[5]. Comparing such figures across the whole directory is the subject of a separate Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote of 2004, "Mir Professionalov" does not appear: recruitment projects are represented there — "Rabota v Nizhnem Novgorode" ("Work in Nizhny Novgorod," job-info.ru), "Sayt poiska raboty i personala JOB-52RUS" ("The JOB-52RUS job and staff search site," Work in the Nizhny Novgorod Region (job.52rus.ru)), "Kadrovoe agenstvo Millennium — XXI vek" ("Millennium XXI Century recruitment agency") — but the Nizhny Novgorod profy site is not among them[7]. No votes for nnov.profy.ru are recorded in our data. For the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, this was not a standalone project but a regional window of a federal portal: a city switcher, Moscow announcements, and a Moscow copyright[3].

How it closed

By August 2004 almost nothing remained of the local edition. The home page had become a showcase for the general portal with a list of fifteen cities plus Ukraine, and a standalone line read "We invite a regional partner in Nizhny Novgorod to cooperate"[3] — meaning there was no partner in the city by that point. The Nizhny Novgorod content had shrunk to one expanded listing and a list of ten lines from August 19-30, ranging from $300 to $3000[3]. The expanded listing was for "Regional representative" at the company "Megapolis," N. Novgorod, $800, contact Anna Mayorova, phone (8312) 39-44-80, email on the megap.ru domain[3] — the same domain as the "Megapolis" recruitment agency listed in the nn.ru directory[5].

In the snapshot from April 4, 2005, the menu remained as short as it had been a year earlier: "Post a vacancy," "Recruitment," a city selector, "Links and Buttons," and "Registration" for job seekers[4]; only the line about seeking a regional partner had disappeared[3][4]. The expanded vacancy on the Nizhny Novgorod page was "Medical representative" at the company "Ekomir," N. Novgorod, for $500, but the employer contact given was already a Moscow number — 095-944-9332[4]. Of the ten lines in the list, seven had no sum and were marked "negotiable," and among the rest were positions outside the region — for example, "research fellow (Tolyatti)"[4]. By this time the copyright read "© 1998 ZAO 'Mir Professionalov'"[3][4], whereas in 2001 it had read "©2000"[1], and in 2002 — "© 2001"[2]; the Moscow phone number in the footer also changed, from +7 095 4247065 to +7 095 781 3319[1][2].

No further traces of the Nizhny Novgorod version appear in our sample: the latest home-page snapshot we have is dated April 4, 2005[4], and the domain nnov.profy.ru no longer exists upon checking.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, section "Society and Nizhny Novgorodians: Job Search," 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Job Search," sorted by rating, 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)