Poland:
The Recruitment Road Trip
By Ben Austin T 16 entrepreneurcountry
he morning was bitterly cold and utterly soul- less as I waited for the taxi to whisk me off to Luton airport. No-one else around, night- time
still very much
alive in the cloudless sky, and the temperature on the ground in London was as close to Baltic as the capital would ever see. Uncannily, there would be only one way to find out whether the easily flogged colloquial Yorkshire expression of “By ‘eck, it’s Baltic” holds any element of truth on this occasion. In three hours, I’d be in the Baltic region myself. To a nation that lies in the most Southern point of the Baltic Sea. A country that has only governed itself for two hundred years in total throughout its entire history. And a race of people who make up over 2 million of our own population in the United Kingdom. This morning it is a first for me. I would be heading to Poland.
I had birds to kill, and stones to throw. I had a mission to achieve, and people I needed to tick off my list. I appreciate this sounds like something out of James Bond, and really, I’d thoroughly enjoy the devilishly charming charade if only for a moment, but the reality is more like something out of Challenge Anneka in all honesty. I had a charity-minded web venture to develop and explore, time
was ticking, and we needed a seriously capable and affordable team to make the prototype. Offshoring certain development aspects of this was a serious consideration. Poland was on my hit-list, and we had meetings lined up with potential technical partners. It was a kind of ‘get in, and come out with what you can’ kind of raid.
I travelled out there with Neil Tombs and Stephen Foster, a couple of comrades of mine. They were working on their own web app, and were along for the ride to scout and uncover what technical, unearthed talent could be found on Polish soil.
We travelled to Warsaw, Katowice, and Krakow. Each city a direct contradiction to the other. Each shining with its own light resembling very little of its Polish counterparts.
We touched down first in Warsaw. The capital of Poland acts as the economic hub with a population that would dwarf its city neighbours in the country. Lined with a past rich in history and honour, and in today’s world, boasts support for entrepreneurs and small business like few other places in Europe. In fact, it was voted the third ‘Best City for Business’
according to ECER-
Banque Populaire (behind Germany’s Frankfurt and Sweden’s Malmoe) after it polled opinions from several hundred entrepreneurs. I also learned that the Warsaw City Council initiated its own promotional programme entitled ‘Warsaw: The Capital City of Ambitious Business’ to drive entrepreneurship within its own people with grants and training for start-ups, and to also attract other European business owners to set-up in Poland’s capital. It was a delight to see such commercialism and savviness in the heart of a city that
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60