In the case of Adecco, leader of the local market, permanent recruitment rose by 55% in the first 9 months against the same period of 2013.
“This year, we’ve felt a slight rebound in new investment, in Bucharest, which is becoming a European regional hub of shared services/outsourcing business, in Iasi, Cluj and Timisoara. Outside Bucharest, the increase was registered in the area of automotive production, as well as in IT, sales and finance, both for existent companies and for new clients,” said Marga Radu, Head of Permanent Placement at Adecco Romania, a company with revenue of above EUR47 million last year.
The company particularly placed candidates from among young faculty graduates, but also recruited specialists or middle and top managers.
For Lugera, the first nine months of the year also brought increased activity for recruiters, after clients requested marketing, sales and production people. Personnel was also recruited for the financial field.
“The most in-demand profiles are those of IT specialists and foreign language speakers. The Romanian market is still being intensely tapped for the opening of SSCs and BPOs and this is why the number of positions to be opened for foreign language speakers will be rising in the upcoming period. Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara, Brasov and Sibiu still lead when it comes to the regions of interest for employers of such profiles, owing to the high number of available candidates,” said Cristina Savuica, Chief Happiness Officer at Lugera, with revenue of over EUR37 million in 2013.
For ManpowerGroup, January-September 2014 brought the best results (against the same period of 2013) since the company was set up in Romania (in 2003), both in terms of revenue and gross profit, say the company’s representatives.
“We visibly attracted more opportunities for full-time employees from the part of clients, so that in 2014 we can speak, for the first time since the onset of recession, of a really constant flow of full-time recruitment for various industries. This year we managed an over 120% increase in recruitment for full-time jobs on the IT segment,” said Valentin Petrof, country manager of ManpowerGroup, a company with revenue of over EUR43 million in 2013.
He also said the fields that provided more opportunities for candidates were the telecom, automotive and retail ones.
Along the same line of permanent recruitment, Austrian-held Trenkwalder company also saw its revenue go up in the first nine months of this year, by 18% against the year-earlier period. In 2013, the company reached revenue of above EUR30 million.
“Recruited positions were in two major fields: IT and production. This happens as demand for IT specialists is still high,” said Adrian Nicolae, general manager of Trenkwalder. In production, he says he can notice rising demand of specialists with an over 5-year experience, in niche segments.
The increase in the first nine months reached 74% against the same period of 2013 in the case of the permanent staffing arm of Gi Group company. “The tendencies indicated by this year’s recruitment for permanent jobs show that multinationals continue to have cost efficiency programs and Romania is seen as a relatively cheap source of foreign language speaking professionals,” said Gi Group officials.
In the case of APT Group, permanent staffing orders in 2014 came from the area of SSC, BPO, IT and Telecom services, traditional fields for the company.
“Against the first nine months of 2013, we posted a volume decline of 6% in the same period of 2014. However, taking into account temporary staffing and HR Outsourcing, there was a 2.7% increase in the number of people employed comparing the same time intervals. We continue to have large projects in the same fields like in the case of permanent placement, namely SSC and BPO services, but we also delivered in the banking, IT&C, retail, agricultural, pharma and real estate fields,” said Cornel Apostol, CFO of APT Group.
According to statistical data, the top 8 employers on the local recruitment and temp work market in the first nine months of 2014 had over 27,000 employees, around 3,000 employees more than in the same period of 2013.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)