Mikhail Alexandrovich Frolkin,the managing partner of HeadHunter company, was born on May 26, 1970 in the town of Dolgoprudny in the Moscow Region. He graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and the Moscow Institute of foreign Languages. When a child, Mikhail dreamt to become a sailor, then a captain and at the age of nine, having turned to science fiction, he saw himself as a commander of a spaceship equipped with blasters and laser guns. However, Mikhail happened to “prowl the oceans” of the Russian recruiting market. Since 1993 he worked in the recruiting agency ANKOR, where he dealt with pickup of accountants. This experience served him well. One year and a half later he left the company, but he is still grateful to ANKOR for all he learnt while working there.

After leaving, Mikhail started his own recruiting company called People You Need. During the first year after creation the company couldn’t be called flourishing – lack of experience in clients’ attraction and negotiation had their effect. But gradually People You Need started developing, volume of orders was growing and the company numbered about 30 employees. The company rapidly achieved a success and in 1997 People You Need could boast a turnover of half a million dollars. By that time Mikhail had definitely realized that the Internet was an exceptionally convenient means to bring employers and candidates together. Nevertheless, Job-sites existent that time couldn’t meet the requirements of the recruiting market, as really good specialists didn’t risk placing their CVs on the Internet, where anyone was able to see them. The need to create a special system limiting access to candidates’ documents arose. All listed factors were taken into account, which resulted in creation of basic elements for the main business project implemented by Mikhail – HeadHunter (www.hh.ru).

The project was started in 2000 under the name of National Job Club. Proper allowance must be made for the markets existent and smothered by free sites. Russia, Brazil and Spain, were the countries, whose recruiting markets could be related to the list of those. “Before we came to the Internet, a great many free resources had already been operating, but we created the first paid service. We made a high-quality product and this fact allowed us to climb to success even at such a problem market”, says Mikhail.

Starting 2003 the site has been known as Headhunter. Headhunter’s competitive advantage appeared to be the total access control provided to the candidate, so that the client was possessed with an opportunity to choose the degree of their CV’s visibility. Nowadays almost all recruiting agencies operating at the Russian market along with some big foreign and Russian companies deal with Headhunter. Moscow office of the company numbers over 60 employees, Headhunter has its representative offices in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The company’s turnover in 2005 made up about 2 million dollars.

In 2005 Rambler chose Mikhail Frolkin as the person of the year in Russian field of recruiting.