The new hyperiongaming.com website has arrived. With new interactive functions, a blog facility, photo gallery and the ability to sign up to receive the Hyperion Gaming newsletter, site visitors have never had it so good. Your comments are genuinely appreciated; please feel free to e-mail your thoughts: feedback@hyperiongaming.com 

Best Regards,

Hyperion Gaming

Hyperion have now launched for business in Malta. Our office is on Elia Zammit Street in St Julians and we are fully licensed to provide dedicated iGaming recruitment for Malta (license #C46076). The Hyperion team looks forward to replicating the success we have enjoyed in the British Isles within the Mediterranean Region.

Please call +356 2138 1369 to arrange a visit.

Regards,
The Hyperion Team.

Spinola Bay, St Julians.

The tabloid press is agog about a certain baby dangling Mr Jackson announcing some shows in the Millennium Dome.

However to those in the gaming world there is only one Jackson who is making a comeback, and this one certainly isn't wacko!

Hyperion are very pleased to announce the appointment of Steven Jackson who is heading up Hyperion's offline gaming recruitment practise. 

With six years land based recruitment experience Steven is incredibly well connected and his ability to offer the sector a dedicated recuitment solution is second to none.

Steven can be contacted by the following methods:

Tel: +44 (0) 207 619 9852

Email: steven.jackson@hyperiongaming.com

Linkedin:  Steven Jackson

Thursday, 26th March 2009 - 00:00CET
Online gaming recruiter opens Malta satellite

Joanna Ripard

Online gaming jobs specialist Hyperion Gaming of London has opened a satellite office in St Julians to be closer to the ever-growing sector in Malta, managing director Alex Lafferty told The Times Business yesterday.

Operating since March 2007, the company - one of only a handful with UK headquarters specialising purely within the online gaming sector - has been granted a licence to act as a recruitment agency locally. The office currently has a team of two which will be beefed up in the coming months.

"It was a natural progression for us," Mr Lafferty said. "There are over 300 licensed online gaming companies in Malta; that makes it the next largest territory for us outside the UK and Ireland."

Hyperion Gaming seeks to recruit for online gaming companies worldwide, particularly those based in the UK, Dublin, Gibraltar, Macau and Malta, and to tap its "strong connections throughout online gaming".

The company's website claims the firm has recruited for market leaders Betfair, Betdaq, Sporting Index, Ladbrokes, Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker, from executive to director levels.

Hyperion says it offers recruitment solutions to a wide range of organisations operating in the sector, including gaming software providers, operators, and on-line payment solution providers.

Current vacancies listed at www.hyperiongaming.com include web developer for online poker based in the UK with a starting salary of £33,000, poker PR and events manager for Ireland (€50,000), and human resources manager for Malta (€35,000). Other Malta-based jobs listed include customer service posts, requiring Swedish-, Danish-, German-, and Polish-speaking candidates, and marketing and managerial positions.

A director of web development based in Ireland could command up to €130,000, a director of web localisation in the UK up to £100,000, and a technical liaison/project manager in Malta up to £50,000.

Mr Lafferty said Hyperion Gaming was keen to tap into the local workforce, particularly because Maltese people seem to have embraced online gaming.

"In that respect, yes, we will always try to facilitate employment for the local Maltese population wherever possible," he said. "For some of the niche roles in gaming, we will, on occasion, have to go further afield.

"We have been in Malta for just two weeks. Hyperion has previously recruited a number of candidates for Malta in the past two years, but we did not target the Maltese market specifically until we were fully licensed and capable of providing the best possible service to both our clients and candidates. Having a physical presence in Malta is extremely important to us, as it will allow our business to form close links with a number of key operators and service providers in the region.

"We have already had numerous candidates in the office and we have been to see a lot of our clients as well in Sliema, Ta' Xbiex, St Julians. There is a good community for online gaming in Malta. Everyone seems to know each other."

Mr Lafferty believes the industry is resilient enough to withstand the international recession and will not be as badly affected as other sectors.

"The recession has had an impact, but online gaming is well positioned to deal with that a lot more than other industries," he said. "It is an agile sector, so we are fortunate."

Recently I’ve been working on a number of Country Manager roles for various clients looking to develop their presence in emerging territories. The job description for these positions varies between operators but the general consensus is that they’re pretty vague. Key requirements are of course an encyclopaedic knowledge of the iGaming industry/ iGaming product in the territory in question and a long list of contacts in the industry/ local media.

A recurring theme is the conflicting stance of centralising all activity in a new market from Head Office or setting up a new office on the ground? I’m a believer of developing a local country-specific from the ground up (what do I know, I’m a recruiter, not a marketer!), but from experience some operators are often reluctant to give their country managers resources to allow them to fully exploit the market potential.

I understand that in the current economic climate, giving too much power to local managers could potentially be a very expensive mistake, but if the right people with the right knowledge are given enough freedom at the start, this is surely to most effective way to promote one’s product in an emerging territory?

Russia is a prime example of this. Ways and means of depositing funds and a general distrust of the gaming industry are key barriers to entry to the Russian market, so to me it makes sense to give more ownership to a well informed Russian Country manager. If key decisions are still being made in Kahnawake or Costa Rica and the Russian manager is acting as a coordinator for the marketing department in Head Office, then some of their expertise and market knowledge could be wasted?

On the contrary, there obviously has to be a balance of power however and territory managers need to be accountable; as with every other business unit, but in my view they do need to have a certain level of autonomy in order to excel. It’s up to individual operators to decide how much responsibility to bestow upon their remote staff, but in emerging markets it seems to me that getting the right person for the job is by far the most important decision a business make.

I met with someone recently from a leading European poker room who shares this view; “Whilst some of the larger rooms are pumping millions into advertising in several European territories, we are communicating directly with our customers. Although we don’t have the spending power, our conversion rate and CPA is much lower. Will they ever get those millions back? I don’t think so...”

One drawback of decentralising your marketing in an emerging market could be dilution of the brand and deviation from core values, so along with the cost risk, is this what iGaming operators are afraid of?

I don’t think it’s that simple and have to concede that my initial view that all territory-specific decisions should be made by the country manager may perhaps be slightly over-zealous. In order to truly break into a new territory however, regardless of political, demographic or legal differences etc, I firmly believe the balance of power in general should tilt more towards the local experts than what I’m finding at present.