Pocket Gamer Connects London will kick off the new year in style on 18-19 January.

Tickets are still available.

So to give you a hint at what you can expect, we're shining the spotlight onto our speakers to provide a deeper look at the personalities who will be taking the stage.

• Arja Martikainen is a Senior Consultant Games Talent Acquisition at Barona, and has been involved in game recruitment in Finland for 20 years.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us about your company's role in the mobile games industry?

Arja Martikainen: Games Jobs Finland was founded because while working as a HR Manager for Digital Chocolate, I found it hard to recruit Finns.

Games Jobs was and is still the first of a kind in Finland. My vision was to create a platform that would work as a landing point for Finnish and international talents that are looking for a job in Finland.

The service is built so that there is a very low entry to all games companies, also operating with small budgets. Along recruitment and advertising I have been working with change and training projects as well as an HR advisor.

What was your highlight of 2015?

During 2015 several new start-ups started their operations in Finland. Many start-ups sourced their candidates from ex-Rovio employees.

Also the serious gaming cluster became an active player along the entertainment games cluster. And the first Finnish venture fund targeted solely to games was founded.

Pocket Gamer Connects London 2016 kicks off in January so give us a prediction or two of what we can expect to see in the new year.

The time for mega-sized mobile games companies is over. Mobile games will be developed in a smaller companies with very experienced and dedicated team.

An ideal size to get started is about 15 people. The sweet point would be around 35-50 people in a company in order to keep it agile.

This brings challenges to raise new talent on the market if the companies are mainly searching for senior staff.

You can check out all our Speaker Spotlights here.