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What are the multinationals looking for?

"Greece has well trained professionals. We find young people with amazing academic education. I'm surprised by the fact that there are very good doctorates in the market", says Panagiotis Papazoglou, CEO of consulting firm Εrnst&Young Greece that uses this potential to detect jobs in the European market. This trend is becoming increasingly evident in the field of consultancy companies. "Our company is interested in how to offer the exceptional professionals available to Greece an opportunity to work here, in an attempt to deal with the brain drain", notes Papazoglou.

So, Εrnst&Young has established two centres, employing Greek specialists who offer services to foreign companies, mainly banks in England and Switzerland. The headquarters is in Athens but the specialists go abroad for a few weeks if necessary. "These people could have better career prospects and salary abroad but they prefer to work in Greece mainly for family reasons", Papazoglou adds.

The scope of their work is mainly the development of models for analysis of huge amounts of data. These models are ordered by the customer, i.e. by companies abroad, seeking in the international market the most competitive offer and choosing it. And the Greek offers prove to be highly competitive.

"Our advantage is not low labour costs or low wages", says Papazoglou and explains that "the wages are generally the same as for similar positions abroad. The difference is that the people who are working in Greece are over-qualified specialists compared with their counterparts abroad who are working in these companies. There, the competition for the respective positions on the part of banks, IT companies and other sectors of the economy that offer better salaries is high. That is why the candidates prefer these sectors. In Greece, however, that competition is absent and we are able to recruit highly qualified staff and therefore offer better services. This is our competitive advantage", states Papazoglou.

It is believed that this turn to outsourcing services will continue and the trend will become even more intense. "This segment is growing very fast", says Papazoglou, adding that "within one year our programme has exceeded our expectations."

This is not about something new. Initially, the trend was to establish similar companies in India. This fashionable trend, however, is over and similar services have already been offered from Poland, Romania, and recently from Bulgaria. "It is believed that it is better to develop this activity in Europe because it has well trained multilingual staff", emphasizes Papazoglou, who believes that "salaries are not the main thing. Productivity plays a more important role. If you can do the job for a third of the time because you have better trained staff you will still be competitive even if you pay salaries that are twice as high as those paid abroad," he adds.

In view of the extremely high youth unemployment the demand for the offered positions is extremely high. "We are considering 15-20 CVs for one position at present," says Papazoglou. Those resumes meet all the requirements for the position and all applicants could have been employed under different conditions. Under the current conditions, however, the company usually selects 5-6 CVs, conducts three interviews, and ultimately appoints one person.

In addition to the typical requirements of each branch, the development potential of the candidate is also being considered. As explained by Papazoglou, "In addition to academic education, involving a university degree and at least one MBA degree, usually two, we consider the personal qualities. We usually look for people who can work very well together with others and who are team players", he concludes.