Ivaylo Hristov: The Biggest Tech Job Board for the IT Community in Bulgaria

DEV.BG is the biggest tech job board for the IT community in Bulgaria, with the most IT job ads and the largest number of career profiles of various tech companies, looking for employees in their field.

Tell us about yourself?

I am a person with a technical background and have over 15 years of experience in the tech industry. Over the years, I have been a tech leader, managing and founding different tech companies. I perceive myself mostly as an entrepreneur and founder of DEV.BG.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

As a former developer, I have been on both sides of the hiring process for years. At the beginning of my career as a developer, while looking for a job, I saw the shortcomings of the existing job boards.

Then I moved to the other side – I was a team leader, I had my own company and I often hired people for different positions. I saw the difficulties from this point of view as well, and this provoked in me the desire to create something that is better than anything else on the market, and only for the IT sector.

What is your magic sauce?

The fact that we are not a generalist job board, DEV.BG is a niche job board, where only IT positions are offered. For this reason, everything we do is aimed at the IT community. We do a lot of things that a generalist job board can’t do.

In addition, we care a lot about the community. We create various initiatives for them. In just one year, we organize 165 IT events, hold a large conference and serve the interests of the IT community. I think that’s why people come to us, DEV.BG, because they are sure that they will find the right job for them.

Where do you see your company going in 5 years time?

We want to improve what we do and be able to help more and more people find the right job for them. In 5 years we will do it again, but even better.

What has been your biggest setback so far?

By making a two sided marketplace, as is every job board, it’s been insanely hard to create enough demand and supply at the same time. Before we started the job board we had 4 and a half years of research.

Our big setback is that we made 5 different prototypes, which we tested with different MVPs and still couldn’t find the right formula. Probably the biggest setback was that it took us four and a half years before we launched the job board. But when we launched, it was instantly very popular, because of all the preparation behind it.

What is the next big challenge for your business?

Our next challenge is to help more effectively companies that have less employer branding. If a company with very good employer branding comes to Bulgaria and publishes their ads on the job board of DEV.BG, they will immediately find many candidates. However, the real challenge is to help a company that no one has heard of, find their staff.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

One of the things we want as a young tech board in Europe is for other tech boards sharing our mission to contact us. We are always open to cooperation and we see that in Europe, although it is divided into many countries, a leading tech job board emerges from each one.

As a leading job board for Bulgaria, we will be happy to keep in touch with others like us to help and support each other. For anyone who wants to contact us, you can write to me at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrist/