profic.ru — the website of a Nizhny Novgorod recruitment project, "Mir Professionalnykh Kommunikatsiy" (World of Professional Communications), later renamed "Mir Delovykh Kommunikatsiy" (World of Business Communications): vacancies, applicants' CVs and personnel recruitment — first in Nizhny Novgorod, later in dozens of cities across Russia. In the catalog of Nizhny Novgorod websites on nn.ru the site's card ended with the name of the organization — "Nizhegorodsky Kadrovy Konsortsium" (Nizhny Novgorod Personnel Consortium)[1], while in 2003 that line held OOO "Agentstvo Razvitiya Delovykh Kommunikatsiy" (Business Communications Development Agency)[2]. The proc.profic.ru subdomain carried a separate site of ZAO "Professionalnye Kommunikatsii" (Professional Communications) — the Nizhny Novgorod recruitment agency PROK[1]. The first snapshot of the domain in the Web Archive is dated 3 July 2001[3], the last surviving snapshot with live content — 28 July 2007[4].

What the site was like

The snapshot of the home page from 28 July 2007 shows a site that had already been heavily simplified[4]. At the top was the heading "Mir Delovykh Kommunikatsiy", and beneath it a long line of links by city: from Astrakhan, Arkhangelsk and Barnaul to Yakutsk and Yaroslavl, more than seventy names, Nizhny Novgorod among them[4]. The menu consisted of four items: "Home page", "About the company", "Our mission" and "Mir Delovykh Kommunikatsiy"[4].

Two lines spoke about the business itself: the name of the owner — OOO "Agentstvo Razvitiya Delovykh Kommunikatsiy" — and the line of work: "We carry out the recruitment of senior executives and chief specialists in the cities of Russia", as the home page put it[4]. Below it was specified that vacancies and personnel recruitment were offered in Moscow, St Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and other cities[4]. Of the contacts, a single email address remained on the page, web@profic.ru: the snapshot preserved neither a telephone number nor a postal address[4].

The page closed with a block of links that had nothing to do with recruitment: a library of books on pickup and psychology, manufacturers of sliding-door wardrobes, the "Lantset" (Lancet) dental clinic, a beauty salon, hair extensions, the "Marlen SPA salon"[4]. Formally all of this was part of the text of the recruitment portal's home page[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site stood in two sections of the nn.ru rubricator at once — the catalog of Nizhny Novgorod websites. The first: "Firms (Enterprises)" → "Information and personnel agencies, services" → "Recruitment agencies"[1]. The second: "Society and Nizhny Novgorod Residents" → "in search of Work"[5]. In May 2002 the "Recruitment agencies" section held 16 sites[1], by May 2003 — 22[2].

Next to every entry the rubricator printed a numerical traffic rating; in this census it is counted as the rating of the regional counter Counter.nn.ru. By that measure profic.ru was first in its section by an enormous margin: 4986.84 against 1587 for its own subdomain proc.profic.ru and 46.94 for the third on the list — the "PROFESSIONAL Recruitment Agency" (snapshot of 28 May 2002)[6]. A year later the order was unchanged: 3815 for profic.ru against 536 for the site "Work in Nizhny Novgorod" (nnov.zarplata.ru) and 457 for the "Megapolis" agency[2].

The figure itself jumped sharply from snapshot to snapshot: 4608.23 (27 May 2002)[1], 4986.84 (28 May)[6], 3838 (20 June)[5], 1719 (25 July)[7], 122 (8 September)[8], then 3518 and 3815 again in May 2003[9][2].

Another measurable trace is the rubricator's "The Very Best" section, which gathered the sites that catalog visitors clicked through to most often over the previous 30 days. In the snapshot of 25 July 2002 "Mir Professionalnykh Kommunikatsiy" occupied the 67th line of that list with 199 click-throughs from the rubricator[10].

The neighbors in these sections give a cross-section of the Nizhny Novgorod online labor market of the early 2000s: "Labor Exchange on NN.RU", "Nizhny Novgorod Recruitment Agencies" (work.nnov.ru), "World of Professionals in Nizhny Novgorod" (nnov.profy.ru), "1JOB_RU Work in Nizhny Novgorod", the "Megapolis" agency, "Sputnik-plus", "Aral", the recruitment agency OOO "Regionalny Kadrovy Tsentr" (Regional Personnel Center, rpc.r52.ru), "Tsentr Tekhnologiy" (Technology Center, center.r52.ru), "Social Protection of Nizhny Novgorod Region"[1][5]. By 2003 the same section had been joined by "Egida" (Aegis), "F1-Group Company" and OOO "ANCOR-N.Novgorod"[2]. More on this layer of the network — in the overview of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet.

Change of signboard

Between 2002 and 2003 the project rewrote both its name and its legal entity in the catalog card. It had been: "Mir Professionalnykh Kommunikatsiy", "Nizhegorodsky Kadrovy Konsortsium"[1]. It became: "MIR Delovykh Kommunikatsiy VACANCIES Work Personnel recruitment in Russia", OOO "Agentstvo Razvitiya Delovykh Kommunikatsiy"[2].

The subdomain went the same way. In 2002 proc.profic.ru was listed as ZAO "Professionalnye Kommunikatsii", and the description was emphatically local: the Nizhny Novgorod recruitment agency PROK, the recruitment of senior and middle managers in Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Yekaterinburg[1]. In 2003 its place was taken by "RDK Agency BCD Agency Personnel recruitment in Russia", and in the description Nizhny Novgorod slipped to second place behind Moscow — recruitment of personnel for branches and representative offices in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and other cities of Russia[2]. The subdomain's rating meanwhile fell from 1587[6] to 1[2], and in another snapshot from May 2003 the entry was marked "Rating: none"[9]. The same shift is visible on profic.ru itself: by 2007 all that was left of its Nizhny Novgorod origins on the home page was Nizhny Novgorod in a list of some seventy cities[4].

How it closed

The Web Archive went on recording the domain long after the project stopped developing: the last snapshot of profic.ru is dated 6 August 2025[11], and that of the proc.profic.ru subdomain 6 October 2022[12]. The probe on which this census of closed Nizhny Novgorod sites is built found an empty page at the address: the state of the domain in the card is marked as "parked/empty". The last known snapshot with text, a menu and a contact belongs to 2007[4]; after that, all that remains of "Mir Delovykh Kommunikatsiy" are archive copies and lines in the Nizhny Novgorod rubricator.

For how this cross-section was assembled and by which figures the sites of that era are compared, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Recruitment agencies" section, May 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Recruitment agencies" section, May 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Early snapshot of profic.ru in the Web Archive, 2001 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "in search of Work" section, June 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Recruitment agencies" by rating, May 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "in search of Work" by check date, July 2002 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "in search of Work" by rating, September 2002 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Recruitment agencies" by check date, May 2003 (archive)
  10. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "The Very Best" section, July 2002 (archive)
  11. web.archive.org — Last snapshot of profic.ru in the Web Archive, 2025 (archive)
  12. web.archive.org — Last snapshot of proc.profic.ru in the Web Archive, 2022 (archive)