Petko Georgiev is an internet entrepreneur. His portfolio already includes more than 200 projects. He admits that the programmes of the Employment Agency have been a great help, allowing him to expand his team and grow his business.
How long have you been in this business?
It has been 4 years now. It is extremely dynamic, and we work with a very wide range of clients. One of our latest projects was a website for the Sofia Regional Health Inspectorate. We made the website of a plastic surgeon in Belgium. Our work is very varied. Our local clients include hotels, restaurants and real estate agencies.
How many people work with you at the moment?
An entirely young team of 11 people. We started attracting clients little by little. Then the programmes came in and helped us hire people without making a financial investment. We only had to invest time and commitment in them.
You probably remember your first client – which project gave the company its start?
Our first client was the Port of Burgas, and it was a really good start. We were looking at the websites of local institutions and large enterprises. We noticed that their website was terrible – you couldn’t find any information on it. Friends of ours who work in customs services and shipping agencies told us: “Look at what people abroad are doing. You can monitor cargo traffic. You go on the website and see whether the ship has arrived and whether it is unloading.” At one point they asked us: can you actually handle this, or are you just throwing ideas at us? And we said we could. With the support of the board of directors and good coordination with the port’s IT department, it became a reality.
That had a big impact. Having a project like that in your portfolio is very good. We have always been driven by a desire to innovate. We have looked for the problems in a given sector and the corresponding solution. And since this is a business, we then sell it.
How long did it take you to build the new Port of Burgas website?
We completed the port’s website in about a month. Things happen faster now. We work with newer technologies, and with a big team it is easier. We recently won a public procurement contract. From the documents I saw that we had faced serious competition. The sad thing is that we won because we offered the lowest price. Unfortunately, as a Burgas company, compared with the Sofia companies and their high prices, that is the only way we can compete.
How does a small local company cope with the competition?
It is harder for us. That time seems to be passing, but there was a period when people told us: “We have other places to spend our money, but we come to you because it’s cheaper.” You could say we have also moved past the period when we took on everything just to keep busy and gain experience. We have also learned at the client’s expense. But we have moved past that and can now choose our clients. Experience allows you to manage clients properly. We have always believed that if something can be improved, it will also be bought.
How did you decide to take part in the Employment Agency programmes?
Right at the beginning, when we started 4 years ago, we applied for projects through the Employment Agency. There was a programme for providing a first job. It was a big boom and sounded very attractive. Until then there had been no programmes that paid both the salaries and the social security contributions. We put in a lot of effort, because we had to give a lot of attention to people who had never done this kind of work before. Fortunately, some of those people still work with us. Besides that programme, we also took part in the youth employment programme. We plan to apply for the new jobs programme, which is about to open.
Is it easy to work with such programmes?
It is easier for us now, because we have a professional team that has been through this process. The people who come are very interesting. They are young, under 29, already graduated, but with no work experience in their field. Sometimes that is very good, because you take a blank sheet of paper and fill it in the way you need. If someone comes with experience, that sheet has been scribbled on and crossed out. There is little free space to write. You have to turn the sheet over, figuratively speaking.
It is very naive to think that you profit from these programmes because the state covers the pay. The time and energy invested in these people are worth much more. The good thing is that over a period, short or long, these people acquire knowledge and skills that are extremely useful to them. We had three colleagues who did their internship with us, and now one of them has his own company and is doing well.
So your trainees are now competitors?
It is hard to call it competition – he has simply found a niche in which to develop. Bulgaria is among the TOP 5 IT outsourcing destinations in the world. In Europe we are in first place. The IT sector has a huge shortage of staff – 20,000 software engineers are missing. There is plenty of work and no one to do it. The fact that ordinary, little-known companies are contacted by foreign companies shows that the interest is great. It is not like before, when there were 5 big established companies. Now there is work for everyone.
Is it easy to work with such programmes?
It all depends on whether you are willing to deal with it and whether you have an established method of working with these programmes. If you don’t have a good secretary and a good accountant to run around and deliver the documents, things become difficult. Let’s say that for the operational programmes you need to arm yourself with time and patience.
Why do employers avoid turning to the Employment Agency?
Well, you have to take someone under 29 who has graduated and has never worked. Who would want to take that person? The idea is to create a profile of a person who needs a job. Very rarely, however, does the candidate’s actual profile match the profile the employer has created.
Do you have feedback channels with the Employment Agency to tell them, based on your own experience, how things could be made easier?
No. I’ll give an example. We apply for a programme that requires us to provide the company’s current status, criminal record certificates and a certificate of no outstanding liabilities. These documents have a limited validity. We obtain them and submit them to the Employment Agency. Two weeks later a new project comes out that we want to apply for. The documents are already there with them, yet we are asked to obtain them again – instead of someone opening that folder and attaching them. Or we could enter the 21st century and do everything electronically. We need to work towards a single register, with institutions communicating with each other.
There should be more programmes, and an easier way of working with institutions, so that things can be done remotely, online.
Source: gramofona.com
