Operation Recruitment Now
To the casual observer it seems like the chance of a lifetime-earn ten times your salary and an opportunity to travel abroad. And for thousands of Polish nurses who have jetted off for Britain, the U.S. and a wealth of exotic locations looking for well-qualified staff it has meant just that.
The businesses making this all possible are a growing army of recruitment agencies that are finding solutions to a large variety of employment demands both from Poland and from Poles living abroad. They are meeting an ever-increasing need in countries that have invested heavily in healthcare, whose aging populations are making for greater demand and where low unemployment means natives are turning their backs on the caring professions.
Jacek Molicki, international director of the Dutch-owned Job Net agency, is frank about the market: "It is amazing how this business is growing. If you take the English, for example, they have very few formalities to bring people over, they are open, they are offering relatively good salaries and they are very, very active in this area."
Nurses needed
The Health Affairs journal reported earlier this year that between 1999 and 2002 the number of foreign-trained nurses based in and eligible to practice in the UK more than doubled to 42,000. In America experts estimate that there is an immediate need for 200,000 nurses.
"To illustrate just how bad the situation is, you can look at Poland. We have something like 220,000 nurses in total. So America is ready to employ all our nurses," explains Molicki.
But nurses are not the only professions being sought. "This is also the case with doctors, drivers, care workers and, surprisingly, abattoir workers," he says.
Economic indicator
Estimates suggest that the number of agencies who have registered for one or more of the four fields into which the sector is divided (recruitment for the domestic market, recruitment for aboard, temporary work and human resource advisors) has mushroomed tenfold over the last 12 months. Commentators believe the huge growth in recruitment has been ignited by two significant factors-Poland's improving economy and membership in the single market.
Conall McGuire is managing director of the Warsaw-based Prostream, which sources blue- and white-collar workers for the construction industry in Ireland.
"We set up the company in April with an eye on European accession and haven't looked back," he says.
One of McGuire's biggest challenges has been the difficulty of dealing with officials and bureaucracy in two different countries.
"My two business partners are Polish and they have both said to me that they thought Poland was difficult-but even they were surprised at how stringent the bureaucracy is in Ireland," explains McGuire.
Prostream relies on advertising in local free papers, paid-for publications like Gazeta Wyborcza and its Internet site. But one of its best and most reliable recruitment methods has been simple word of mouth. "People frequently come to us saying 'A friend of mine got a job with you and he's very happy with it. Can I sign-up too?' and this has proved very effective," says McGuire.
"There is a great resource of high quality workers here, and in Ireland unemployment is running at about 4.5 percent and they are facing a shortage of skilled workers."
McGuire, however, has one word of warning: "The biggest problem we have found is dealing with the authorities at the Irish end and that is something anyone going over there to work needs help with."
Shark attack
The Irish-owned Grafton Recruitment Group, which runs 42 offices worldwide and has a turnover of more than E70 million, was similarly inspired by the opportunities of May 1.
The firm's international procurement manager for Central and Eastern Europe, Richard Smith, says: "Demand has been tremendous. We are sending 80 to 100 people a month to jobs in Britain and Ireland.
Smith also warns of the sharks in the industry. "We have been approached by the bus drivers union who told us that an agency in Kraków was looking to recruit drivers but was asking that they pay a zł.4,000 fee to learn English. This is completely illegal."
Like crazy
One of the growing fields of recruitment is the on-line platform used by both agencies and employers to advertise for staff. Rafał Kopczyński is the national key account manager for one of the biggest players, jobpilot.pl, which is part of the monster.com empire.
"This industry has really taken off. In 2002 things were sustainable and slow, in 2003 business was on the up, but in 2004 it's like crazy," says Kopczyński.
"The hiring managers are opening up their recruitment budgets and they're just taking on people as soon as they can. The recruitment business within Poland works on a network basis and the hirers have given jobs to all their friends, brothers and family and now they are hiring because they are desperate for manpower."
Kopczyński has witnessed a move to electronic recruitment as employers dispense with paper applications and attempt to 'discipline' applicants. "You find that many applicants, when they are faced with paper, do not always do themselves justice, the information they supply is not always relevant and this can waste the recruiters time. Electronic applications allow businesses to be more specific about the information they require," he says.
Hunters
At the high end of the spectrum lie the executive headhunting agencies that target top salary posts in international and domestic corporations. This segment was similarly battered by the economy at the turn of the millennium, but now clients are coming back.
"Three years ago the market went through a hell of a trough," says Craig Bromfield, director of executive search in Central and Eastern Europe for Spengler Fox, which launched their Warsaw office just 14 months ago. "I would say every single company on the market suffered, operations were closed and consultants were out of work because the market just disappeared. Clients weren't as willing to pay for these services and their companies were going through a trough too.
"It's really only in the last eight to 12 months that we have seen an upturn with companies being prepared to invest in Poland. This time they have more realistic ambitions than when they first came here a while ago expecting to make a quick killing."
Bromfield explains how the executive search field is broken down: "The head-hunting market in Poland is substantial. There are probably four or five very top-level companies and 10 to 12 mid-senior level companies and the rest fight for business. This can have an adverse effect sometimes because the smaller companies are less likely to have the ethics or the professional approach necessary to maintain the reputation of the market as a whole. These companies can sometimes spoil the market's reputation."
More Poles wanted
Spengler Fox's country manager Irena Pruszyńska says clients are increasingly looking for Polish businesspeople to fill their boardrooms.
"The majority of people we recruit now are Poles and this is different to the recruitment process five or six years ago. What we find in Poland now is a well-educated workforce. Most of the people at management level are at least bilingual and often trilingual and a lot of them have got MBAs. There was always a highly educated element but now education has been broadened out and is much more accessible," says Pruszyńska.
"This turn towards a greater proportion of Poles at the top of companies is also part of the slump. Companies are offering different packages to those on offer a few years ago-if you employ a Polish person they won't need flights back to Britain, for example.
"You find that Poles are prepared to go in at a lower level with [regard to] the potential to rise, whereas ex-pats often think only of the top-level package."
The recruitment industry at its simplest level gives people the opportunity to try their hand at other work. But the final word must go to Spengler Fox's Bromfield, as he reflects on the rewards of his role: "We come across people with excellent skills, well-educated, highly experienced and extremely motivated. They'll have two kids at home but are grinding along sometimes earning just a few thousand złoty a month. And when you give them a shot, the chance that you know they deserve, when you change their life that's great. That's the buzz of this job."
The businesses making this all possible are a growing army of recruitment agencies that are finding solutions to a large variety of employment demands both from Poland and from Poles living abroad. They are meeting an ever-increasing need in countries that have invested heavily in healthcare, whose aging populations are making for greater demand and where low unemployment means natives are turning their backs on the caring professions.
Jacek Molicki, international director of the Dutch-owned Job Net agency, is frank about the market: "It is amazing how this business is growing. If you take the English, for example, they have very few formalities to bring people over, they are open, they are offering relatively good salaries and they are very, very active in this area."
Nurses needed
The Health Affairs journal reported earlier this year that between 1999 and 2002 the number of foreign-trained nurses based in and eligible to practice in the UK more than doubled to 42,000. In America experts estimate that there is an immediate need for 200,000 nurses.
"To illustrate just how bad the situation is, you can look at Poland. We have something like 220,000 nurses in total. So America is ready to employ all our nurses," explains Molicki.
But nurses are not the only professions being sought. "This is also the case with doctors, drivers, care workers and, surprisingly, abattoir workers," he says.
Economic indicator
Estimates suggest that the number of agencies who have registered for one or more of the four fields into which the sector is divided (recruitment for the domestic market, recruitment for aboard, temporary work and human resource advisors) has mushroomed tenfold over the last 12 months. Commentators believe the huge growth in recruitment has been ignited by two significant factors-Poland's improving economy and membership in the single market.
Conall McGuire is managing director of the Warsaw-based Prostream, which sources blue- and white-collar workers for the construction industry in Ireland.
"We set up the company in April with an eye on European accession and haven't looked back," he says.
One of McGuire's biggest challenges has been the difficulty of dealing with officials and bureaucracy in two different countries.
"My two business partners are Polish and they have both said to me that they thought Poland was difficult-but even they were surprised at how stringent the bureaucracy is in Ireland," explains McGuire.
Prostream relies on advertising in local free papers, paid-for publications like Gazeta Wyborcza and its Internet site. But one of its best and most reliable recruitment methods has been simple word of mouth. "People frequently come to us saying 'A friend of mine got a job with you and he's very happy with it. Can I sign-up too?' and this has proved very effective," says McGuire.
"There is a great resource of high quality workers here, and in Ireland unemployment is running at about 4.5 percent and they are facing a shortage of skilled workers."
McGuire, however, has one word of warning: "The biggest problem we have found is dealing with the authorities at the Irish end and that is something anyone going over there to work needs help with."
Shark attack
The Irish-owned Grafton Recruitment Group, which runs 42 offices worldwide and has a turnover of more than E70 million, was similarly inspired by the opportunities of May 1.
The firm's international procurement manager for Central and Eastern Europe, Richard Smith, says: "Demand has been tremendous. We are sending 80 to 100 people a month to jobs in Britain and Ireland.
Smith also warns of the sharks in the industry. "We have been approached by the bus drivers union who told us that an agency in Kraków was looking to recruit drivers but was asking that they pay a zł.4,000 fee to learn English. This is completely illegal."
Like crazy
One of the growing fields of recruitment is the on-line platform used by both agencies and employers to advertise for staff. Rafał Kopczyński is the national key account manager for one of the biggest players, jobpilot.pl, which is part of the monster.com empire.
"This industry has really taken off. In 2002 things were sustainable and slow, in 2003 business was on the up, but in 2004 it's like crazy," says Kopczyński.
"The hiring managers are opening up their recruitment budgets and they're just taking on people as soon as they can. The recruitment business within Poland works on a network basis and the hirers have given jobs to all their friends, brothers and family and now they are hiring because they are desperate for manpower."
Kopczyński has witnessed a move to electronic recruitment as employers dispense with paper applications and attempt to 'discipline' applicants. "You find that many applicants, when they are faced with paper, do not always do themselves justice, the information they supply is not always relevant and this can waste the recruiters time. Electronic applications allow businesses to be more specific about the information they require," he says.
Hunters
At the high end of the spectrum lie the executive headhunting agencies that target top salary posts in international and domestic corporations. This segment was similarly battered by the economy at the turn of the millennium, but now clients are coming back.
"Three years ago the market went through a hell of a trough," says Craig Bromfield, director of executive search in Central and Eastern Europe for Spengler Fox, which launched their Warsaw office just 14 months ago. "I would say every single company on the market suffered, operations were closed and consultants were out of work because the market just disappeared. Clients weren't as willing to pay for these services and their companies were going through a trough too.
"It's really only in the last eight to 12 months that we have seen an upturn with companies being prepared to invest in Poland. This time they have more realistic ambitions than when they first came here a while ago expecting to make a quick killing."
Bromfield explains how the executive search field is broken down: "The head-hunting market in Poland is substantial. There are probably four or five very top-level companies and 10 to 12 mid-senior level companies and the rest fight for business. This can have an adverse effect sometimes because the smaller companies are less likely to have the ethics or the professional approach necessary to maintain the reputation of the market as a whole. These companies can sometimes spoil the market's reputation."
More Poles wanted
Spengler Fox's country manager Irena Pruszyńska says clients are increasingly looking for Polish businesspeople to fill their boardrooms.
"The majority of people we recruit now are Poles and this is different to the recruitment process five or six years ago. What we find in Poland now is a well-educated workforce. Most of the people at management level are at least bilingual and often trilingual and a lot of them have got MBAs. There was always a highly educated element but now education has been broadened out and is much more accessible," says Pruszyńska.
"This turn towards a greater proportion of Poles at the top of companies is also part of the slump. Companies are offering different packages to those on offer a few years ago-if you employ a Polish person they won't need flights back to Britain, for example.
"You find that Poles are prepared to go in at a lower level with [regard to] the potential to rise, whereas ex-pats often think only of the top-level package."
The recruitment industry at its simplest level gives people the opportunity to try their hand at other work. But the final word must go to Spengler Fox's Bromfield, as he reflects on the rewards of his role: "We come across people with excellent skills, well-educated, highly experienced and extremely motivated. They'll have two kids at home but are grinding along sometimes earning just a few thousand złoty a month. And when you give them a shot, the chance that you know they deserve, when you change their life that's great. That's the buzz of this job."
