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IT Outsourcing

PeopleCentric is in an Upheaval

Frédéric Lasnier
Frédéric Lasnier
Chief Executive Officer, Pentalog

In 2008 PeopleCentric became a spin off of Pentalog and subsequently has validated its way of operating. Raluca’s team works with important clients, such as 3M, a well known BDD software publisher, Romanian start-ups, and a number of customers who will add up to the list in the coming months. Pentalog of course will remain its main customer for the moment. A generic (white label) contract was signed with an interim company providing them with the PeopleCentric procedures and technology. This contract represents a real springboard for this start-up. I believe that other companies will sign similar contracts in the near future, and not only in Romania. The main reason being that it validates a business model, very different from those presently being used by the competition. In one year alone, PeopleCentric has become the No.1 IT Recruitment Center in Romania. This month PeopleCentric is looking to recruit more than thirty people. Not bad.I’m not surprised that this new player is already amongst the top 5 Romanian recruitment centers, (all client sectors combined), given the number of recruits they are asked to find. In late August, Raluca, Elena, Olga and Andra have recruited over 100 people … in the midst of an economic crisis.How is this possible? Well PeopleCentric is based on a simple idea that can work anywhere. We simply observed that the Pentalog Branch Managers spent 2 / 3 of their time recruiting. However, a Branch Manager is expensive. It would be better if he would stick to managing his team, meeting the clients, (or visitors if you are talking of Western Europeans), organizing the training … piloting the business, rather than seeing people he would probably never hire. Because here is the problem: as a responsible company we do not usually recruit more than 15% of those interviewed.It is appalling to think that the Branch Managers spend 2 / 3 of their time for a 15% success rate. Therefore it is a huge waste of time to use the Branch Manager to recruit.PeopleCentric started from one simple observation: the Branch Manager does not need to do 60 interviews per month; he simply needs to recruit 5 people per month. We set a recruiting target: 70% of those interviewed could be hired. The gamble paid off. For us, as well as for our customers, our venture was a success.The issue of recruitment is very difficult when a company asks you to find 20 developers. Because of their education and being highly courted in the market place, they are almost as difficult to win over as it would be to hire top level management personnel.Conclusion, the cost of hiring these specialized individuals is high! PeopleCentric developed a unique method, which has allowed Pentalog to cut its cost in 3, to find the right people and at the same time maximize the quality of technical validation.Raluca is ready to spend a few months in France and we are already discussing with other French entrepreneurs, all this in order to launch PeopleCentric France. She believes that the French subsidiary could quickly make a million euros in sales given the size of the French Market. She is probably right.What pleases me is that:- Past Pentalog employees have great ideas, and at the same time we are giving them the support and help they need to make the ideas happen.- A concept and a business model which succeeded in the Romanian market will now make its entry into the French market.- A Romanian enterprise will create its first foreign subsidiary in France, with the support of Pentalog.Isn’t this great ?


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