With a capitalization of more than US $ 30,000 million, Mercado Libre is not only Argentina's most important company, but it is also the support of a large number of small and medium-sized companies that sell through its marketplace.
According to data from the unicorn, in Argentina there are 850,000 SMEs that contribute 70% of the work capacity, more than half of the sales and more than 30% of the added value generated by the country.
Attentive to the immense importance of the segment, Mercado Libre announced a professionalization program for these companies through face-to-face and online courses that also serve as "group therapies" for their owners.
In this way, the ecommerce giant will seek to generate more employment by allowing an expansion of its business. Simultaneously, it launched a plan to expand the indoor work plant, both in Argentina and in the rest of Latin America.
"We are growing significantly in the region. We are already 9,600 and we will close 2020 with 14,500 people, which implies growing 51%. Of this increase, 1,500 positions will be in Argentina," Carolina Miranda, Talent Acquisition Director of Mercado Libre, tells iProUP.
Thus, the company maintains its ambitious plans in the country even if it represents a little less than 20% of its total business, mainly concentrated in Brazil and Mexico. And also in spite of the tense relationship that it maintains during these hours with the Government.
Its CEO, Marcos Galperín, who did not hide his sympathy with the management of Mauricio Macri, is going through the "honeymoon" of Alberto Fernández's government with caution, despite the fact that his Fintech business suffered some regulatory turbulence.
In fact, as iProUP advanced, personnel from the Superintendence of Financial Entities of the Central Bank inspect Mercado Pago, the financial arm of Galperín's firm that is in charge of transactions and the granting of loans.
The officers of the BCRA's General Compliance and Control Department regularly attend the company and even have an office assigned to control all accounts. In addition, they have the different areas at their disposal to provide the required information.
On the other hand, the body led by Miguel Pesce launched other measures to regulate virtual wallets and other fintech in general, but that hit Mercado Pago in particular as a way to "control the largest". Beyond this, their plans continue.
SME Plan
Martín Blanco, the company's sales development manager, highlights that 80% of those who market on the platform are minipymes, that is, companies with less than 10 employees.
This led the firm to advance in implementations that allow them to improve their performance. The solution was to advance in the creation of a "University for SMEs".
The experience, which began with a handful of entrepreneurs, had a satisfactory result, so the unicorn advances in a schedule of face-to-face and online classes to reach small and medium-sized businesses across the country. They even work to bring the initiative to Mexico.
It is, strictly speaking, a program that will combine lessons in the offices of Mercado Libre with an online education or e-learning modality. The objective, according to the unicorn, is to transcend the online sales channel and bet on enhancing the omnichannel experience of many sellers.
In this sense, the company outlined different improvement plans for SMEs that market their products through its platform. "We put that down to paper, we met with vendors and adopted their processes and jargon to understand them better," the executive tells iProUP.
After a research process, the company proposed a training for 100 entrepreneurs selected for their rapid growth. This plan aimed to increase its sales between two and three times in a process of 3 to 6 months. And Paula Molinari, founder of the Whalecom consultancy and author of the book "The owner's jump", joined the project, with the aim of generating the pilot program.
The next step was to select a hundred SMEs among those that grew steadily in recent times to analyze the stages of that transformation.
"With Molinari we design a form with questions about the situation of the company and we segment the group of SMEs that would most take advantage of the opportunity," says Blanco.
In this way, every 20 days for a whole quarter, sellers met in groups of 20 at the Mercado Libre offices in Saavedra. There, they shared their problems - as if it were a kind of group therapy - and began to implement the changes proposed by the platform and Molinari, within the framework of a free training.
At the end of the program, the participants themselves chose who had achieved the greatest transformations. The winners were awarded a free consulting job for three months to boost their sales within the marketplace.
One of them was Javier Casatiempo, owner of Luz Design, a lamp factory in Lanús, in the south of Greater Buenos Aires, who thanks to the expansion in Mercado Libre opened three stores on the street. The meetings allowed him to polish details of his omnichannel strategy.
"The first thing I pointed to was how to implement a good management and stock control system. This allowed me to grow faster," says the entrepreneur.
Currently, 80% of Luz Design's turnover comes from Mercado Libre and the remaining 20% from direct sales in the three stores. "People turn to the Internet more, for free return, payment methods, shipping on the day," Casatiempo lists.
The feedback received from Mercado Libre, along these lines, allowed polishing details regarding omnichannel that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Next stage
The success of this pilot initiative led Mercado Libre to redouble the bet. Thus, he advanced in the design of the new face-to-face and online modality, which last details to go out on the court.
"The sessions and actions for the professionalization of processes, training and recruitment of workers and business planning will be reinforced. They will also try to increase the female presence, because in the first edition only 6% were women," Blanco assures iProUP.
Regarding the experience, Molinari emphasizes that among the younger SME entrepreneurs "there is much more avidity and desire to learn, because they are generations more accustomed to taking knowledge and are curious. The larger ones are more accustomed to very static worlds."
This implies advancing in different training topics, to cover all types of profiles present today in the eCommerce platform.
There is also a paradigm of family SMEs, whose owners are parents who began selling in the physical world, while their children developed the online channel. There, reinforcing the concept of omnichannel will be key to the benefit of these ventures.
For the moment, Mercado Libre will maintain the criterion of selecting the participants based on their own research, and with free participation, both for face-to-face and virtual modalities.
"In Buenos Aires the same methodology of entrepreneurs 4.0 will be maintained, while in the interior of the country it will be replicated but with a broader client base to scale the program through an e-learning platform," they reveal to iProUP from the unicorn.
Professionals are looking for
To cover 1,500 new positions in the country, the firm advances on several fronts not only for its ecommerce business, but also for its fintech, with a 100% human resources area.
Even, its exponential rebound brings collateral problems: its new central house opened in the Saavedra neighborhood, designed to house 2,000 individuals, threatens to be small in a short time. The current workforce in Argentina is divided as follows:
- CABA and Buenos Aires: 3,600 employees
- Córdoba: 600 people
- Paraná-Santa Fe: 210 dependents
- San Luis: 200 workers
- Mendoza: 70 employees
Miranda stresses that it is important that the applicants "connect with our purpose, our principles and the entrepreneurial DNA that identifies us and guides us towards a culture that prioritizes autonomy through a dynamic structure, close and open to risks."
In that sense, to consider entrepreneurial talent, the firm is based on:
- Learning Agility: people with capacity and open to learn from their experiences
- Alignment with culture: that can be identified with the "DNA" of Mercado Libre. That is, they have an entrepreneurial look and without fear of challenges
Open searches focus mostly on positions in technology (more than 50%), customer experience, business, staff areas and the Distribution Center, which in 2019 alone added more than 600 people to its operation in the Market Central.
Selection and benefits
For the selection of personnel, the firm has a collaborative model of structured interviews that allow "to ensure equity and objectivity, broadening the eyes and thus creating the best teams."
It also incorporated technology to streamline and scale these processes, as a virtual written feedback assistant for all interviewers who collaboratively participate in the selections.
In this way, opinions are requested on the aforementioned Learning Agility and DNA items from Mercado Libre, along with the recommendation to hire or not. 72% of the comments are made in the 120 minutes after the interview, which reduces the risk of bias.
"We also have online assessments (evaluations) that expedite the process," Miranda reveals, and clarifies: "We are incorporating technology to the extent that it provides value without bias and adds to the experience of our candidates."
According to estimates of the company, the average permanence of a technological profile in the organization is 3 years, product of the variety of job offers that these professionals enjoy.
To this end, Mercado Libre redesigned its internal application system with the objective of developing those who already work in the firm. Thus, any new position that opens first is offered indoors.
Through the "blind work sample" methodology, candidates are asked to solve a daily work case. The area leaders, in turn, receive the results for their evaluation without knowing to whom they correspond.
On the other hand, being an industry in which high salaries abound, the monthly salary (which can exceed six figures in senior positions) is not everything.
In this sense, a battery of proposals was established to attract and retain talents, beyond the exclusive benefits with Mercado Pago or the installation of a branch of the Belgian chain Le Pain Quotidien in the dining room of its headquarters of the DOT pole of Saavedra.
The unicorn bets on "equal pay" or equitable payment between men and women. The difference currently does not exceed 1.25%, with the industry standard being 5%. This initiative, along with the preservation of ovules (the company costs the entire treatment) aims to add women to an industry dominated by the male gender.
Added to this are extended paternity and maternity leave, together with a "soft landing" policy when they return to work: less daily hours and a scheme of face-to-face hybrid work with home office for up to two years. These policies apply equally to same-sex couples and births or adoptions, regardless of age.
As for salary updates, it bets on deep revisions of the values, with three annual increases (January, July and October) and two productivity bonuses.
In this way, the company bets on two large assets of its business. On the one hand, the sellers, who achieve a job outlet and allow the platform to grow. On the other, its human resources, keys to provide better experiences to all members of its ecosystem.
