Jan Klusoň (Welcome to the Jungle): If people at your company work twelve-hour days, say so

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Jan Klusoň, CEO of Welcome to the Jungle for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. He founded the job search and employer branding platform under the name Proudly and later sold it to the French company. In his view, companies should invest 60 percent of their time and money in building their employer brand and 40 percent in immediate hiring needs.

Most companies do the exact opposite. They put almost everything into recruiting, filling positions that are urgent, and have no time for employer branding. “They sacrifice the future for the present and end up in a vicious circle,” Klusoň says. A strong employer brand, he argues, lowers staff turnover and brings in candidates who apply on their own. As the well-known saying goes, a brand is what you have left when your factory burns down. The foundation is a well-built Employee Value Proposition: a clear answer to why people should want to work for the company. The best companies don’t guess it; they find it out through interviews and surveys among their own employees.

Authenticity is key. Klusoň recalls a company where, during filming, people played table football enthusiastically, until it turned out the table had been rented just for that day. It was pushed into a corner and didn’t appear in any video. Another company was afraid to admit that people there worked from nine to nine. Welcome to the Jungle’s advice was: say so. People who come expecting an easy-going job will leave during their probation period. People who know what they’re getting into will come with energy and stay. Companies also lose good people, Klusoň says, when they follow trends, for example by pretending nobody there smokes. One Slovak company, by contrast, proudly showed off its smoking room first, and smokers among designers and developers know they’re welcome there.

Many companies, according to Klusoň, still don’t treat employees as adults. A typical example is the blanket return to the office after Covid, even though remote work had worked well and people saw it as a sign of trust. Welcome to the Jungle has offered unlimited holiday in the Czech Republic since 2015, and the parent company in France has introduced a four-day working week without lowering its targets. “The more you trust employees, the more they value it and the less they abuse it,” he says. The manager’s role has changed too. It’s no longer someone with a whip, but partly a coach and partly a therapist who can talk openly with people about what they want.

Most Czech companies, he says, see company culture as something rather intangible. Every company will say it matters, but many picture nothing more than first-name terms and team-building trips. Candidates, meanwhile, no longer want just a text job ad listing salary, a company car and a phone. They want to see who works there, how people are managed, what the rituals are and how the company looks after its people. The biggest clash of expectations, Klusoň says, comes with junior candidates, who expect fast promotions and a lot of influence. But the responsibility is always shared: candidates should ask in interviews, and companies should answer honestly.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• Why candidates often don’t know what they’re looking for and how to tell

• What the difference is between employer branding and recruiting

• Why an Employee Value Proposition is the basis of employer brand communication

• Why it pays to admit things that aren’t “on trend”

• Why a blanket return to the office signals distrust

• Where Jan Klusoň thinks the job market is heading

Trends in employer branding, according to Jan Klusoň, come from the West. In France, companies start working on their brand right after they’re founded; in the Czech Republic, often only once they run out of people. By then, it’s usually too late, because an employer brand can’t be built overnight.