In recent months, three major poster campaigns have been launched along the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv, Derech Namir and the outskirts of Herzliya Pituah. The billboards carry slogans in English and feature young employees of tech companies, making Tel Aviv look like San Francisco.

Business intelligence firm Gong, game developer Playtika, and venture capital fund Group 11 led by founding partner Dovi Frances have all bought millions of shekels worth of billboards. Last month, web traffic analytics company Similarweb graced the streets of Tel Aviv with billboards of hundreds of employees saying thank you very much. In February, the hitherto anonymous fintech Rapyd, which has more than 200 employees, decorated billboards, including at bus stops, with the latest images of their young employees.

The roles have turned: tech workers have become the hottest commodity, and billboard ads have become the showcase for Israel’s tech sector. The Tel Aviv and Herzliya billboards aren’t cut off from what’s going on in the industry, but rather are in many ways the result of developments there. Apparently, a tech company that doesn’t fundraise at a major appraisal or belong to the Unicorn Club (worth over $ 1 billion) will have a hard time competing to hire quality employees.

As serial entrepreneur Mickey Boodaei, CEO of biometric authentication company Transmit Security, told “Globes” earlier this week after the company announced it had raised $ 543 million for a valuation. of $ 2.2 billion, “We estimated that in the current situation in the market, the fact that we did not raise money, made it difficult for us to hire employees, because the candidates did not know not how to compare us with other companies that are unicorns and we had to invest resources in explaining why we are also such a hot company. The media also ignored us because we had not raised any money and many clients asked us who were the venture capital funds that supported us? ”

Image, publicity, prestige and capital are linked. Unicorns raise hundreds of millions of dollars not only to be able to hire employees, but also to receive the status, prestige and visibility of being in the Unicorn Club, which in turn aims to improve their bargaining position. for employees.

The high-tech labor shortage is a chronic phenomenon that has grown over the years. From around 8,000 jobs available a decade ago in the tech industry, it has more than doubled to 18,500 jobs on the eve of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of 2019. According to the Israel Authority innovation, demand is currently declining. to 13,000 available jobs, but the shortage is felt in the tech industry and business, where companies are fighting for talented employees.

In addition, about 75% of all tech companies in Israel of all sizes have doubled or tripled the jobs available since early 2021, according to Gloat, an Israeli startup, which has developed a platform to hire talented employees and manage careers. technology, and who himself raised $ 57 million earlier this month to a company valuation of hundreds of millions of dollars.

There are many reasons for all of this. The opening of capital markets last year and the climate of optimism have led many companies to choose the route of a public offering, while the movement of many online services due to the Covid-19 pandemic and that there is liquid research capital at low interest rates funneling into technology companies.

Not all billboards that target technical employees convey the atmosphere of a unicorn. Some of them choose to convey messages about personal growth, a healthy organizational culture and the ability to influence the global agenda. While Similarweb contented itself with thanking its employees after a successful IPO on Wall Street, Group 11’s ad campaign talked about hiring “the best people,” and game developer Plarium in a 2019 campaign cheered on the candidates. potential “to conquer the world” – a slogan that had a dual meaning for all players. Playtika, which develops gambling games, talks about the balance between leisure and work, with the slogan “Life is Play”, which targets a wide range of communities.

Posted by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on June 24, 2021

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