In a country like Ukraine, where Internet business is still in its embryonic stage, many people have a good opportunity to build a career.
When Olena Anfilova came to the Ukrainian office of Euromoney Institutional Investor company (ISI Emerging Markets Ukraine) as a production intern, she had no idea that in two years she would become the deputy general manager of the company’s Ukrainian office.
“We had to work hard after the 1998 crisis to recover,” Anfilova said. “Within months, by April 1999, not only did we regain what we lost but succeeded in becoming a profitable company.”
ISI Emerging Markets Ukraine specializes in accumulating and processing business and politics?related information about the country, which is posted on the company’s Web site www.securities.com. Access to most of the material on this site is available only to subscribers.
The target countries are those in Eastern Europe, central Asia, Latin America, Africa, and others.
“Our sites are for professional use. They contain information on a country collected from newspapers and other sources and posted together,” Anfilova said. “The interested company will have to pay several hundred dollars per month in subscription fees, but it is sure to get enough information to form a full picture of the situation in a given country.”
Despite the relatively high subscription price, Anfilova said that it was still cheaper than subscribing separately to each news source.
She said that apart from ability to work hard, good communication skills and strong personal character mainly helped her start a career with ISI Emerging Markets Ukraine.
“I think that one has to be resilient and persistent to work in this system,” she said. “There is probably only one special requirement, that of higher education. But people on our staff have different backgrounds.”
The company’s personnel consists of an IT crew, which is responsible for posting information on the Web site; editorial department, which prepares the information; and a sales team.
“It is hard and meticulous work,” Anfilova said of her company’s operation.
