Greenfield site in Iasi, Romania. Zero to 13 in 2 months, Zero to 48 in 10 months, Zero to 98 in 12 months, Zero to 220 in 24 months.

Faced with a series of talent pools, with dwindling available talent and aggressive competitors, the SaaS producing software used for Clinical Trials was looking for a new site to establish an office. It needed to have access to the existing office network, by air or road, the English language was a prerequisite as being the “lingua franca” for the company, there needed to be a great talent pool, recognised universities and available talent coming out of these, a first rate internet infrastructure….. and so the list went on.

The solution was Iasi, Romania – better known cities like Cluj and Bucharest were seen as being as overheated as London, and cities in Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, where so many companies had headed in the search for great talent.

Initially basing ourselves for interviews in the Hotel International, in the Palace area, we started interviewing Software Designers (Java, Agile), Test Engineers, Team Managers and Software Architects. We were impressed with the calibre of candidates we met, their command of the English language, their technical expertise and motivation. Three weeks of interviews resulted in us issuing 13 offers and having the people start with us, with the initial inductions held in the UK and Finland. The new employees spent a week in London, meeting other company members, undergoing an induction as to the history of the company, how the various departments collaborate and work together and then 3 weeks in Helsinki to first observe a Scrum and subsequent release and then to run a Scrum themselves. Whilst they were undergoing their induction other candidates were being interviewed for more R&D staff and Product Owners. On the first week of April, we welcomed the first 13 to the newly refurbished, top floor offices in the Moldova Building. More interviews, more offers, more starters.

In addition to the Java Developers and Test Engineers, we recruited an Office Manager, Finance Manager, IT Support, a Middleware team (Tuxedo), and started recruitment for the teams in the Operations Directorate – Localisation, Business Intelligence and Application Specialists. By October we had 48 people in place with more due to commence. Within 12 months we were up to 98 hires, 2 shy of a round 100, but these were lined up and the recruitment continued. By January 2019 we had filled the top floor, and close to filling the 2nd floor office with 220 permanent employees working out of the offices in Iasi, Romania.