Page 20 - Nearshoring to Romania

Check CVs, references and education also on the job interview. Some people exaggerate their
experience. Generally speaking, employees proficient in written communication, and with a high level
of planning and organization are relatively hard to find. If these are skills you need from your new
employees, make sure you test these before hiring.
Tests are common and especially when receiving more than 100 first reactions, it is not strange to send
the top 20% a first assignment per email to test the motivation and quality of the candidates. Before
finally hiring someone it is good practice to do an extra test / assessment to make sure the candidate
really has the skills he/she says he/she has.
Be aware that there is a big difference within the labour market of people of different generations. The
youngest working generation is generally very adaptive, pro-active, English-speaking and independent.
The older generations, often educated in a more reactive environment, are most of the time less used to
working in an international environment.
Note that Romanian job seekers often have long CVs. Employees tend to stay often shortly at a certain
job (1-2 years is common) and start working full time jobs at a young age (during university). Reasons
for frequent job-hopping are salary, dynamic business life, companies closing down and conflicts with
managers. When starting to hire, it is an idea to hire immediately a small team of 2-3 people. This will
spread the risk of losing someone and also it will be easier to build up knowledge.

3.3.2 Education
Quality of education in Romania depends mostly on the institutions. When talking about universities, it
is important to check which university was attended. The state universities (including the 'Academy of
Economic Studies' and the 'Politehnica') are normally much more difficult to enter than the private ones
as there are admission exams and the best people normally can be found there. However, during past
years state universities have also admitted students conditioned upon payment of tuition fees similarly
to private universities. Interesting is also to know if someone had received a “bursă” (=scholarship)
from the government, as normally only the best X% of the students receive such a grant.
The university system follows the Bachelor / Master structure. Note that some Master educations (also
at state universities) offer evening courses and most students combine work with study in that case. In
general, a good university is a good selection criterion for recruiting.

3.3.3 Employment Contracts
Although not necessarily in strict observance of the Labour Code (Law 53/2003),it is common practice
to have the first employment contract for limited period (i.e. 6 months). Negotiations are normally in
net EUR salary, although the employment contract will be in gross in RON. Because the employer
handles all tax payments (also those for the employee), the employee is normally only interested in the
net amount.
Many companies also correct for exchange rate differences by paying a monthly or quarterly bonus.
Choosing to do this compensation brings additional administrative work and shifts some of the
exchange risks from the employees to the company.
As a rough indication, one can say that the factor between net salaries for employees and gross salary
costs for company (incl. taxes and social benefits) is around 1,7. If an employee earns 1.000 EUR net,
the total costs for the company are approx. 1.700 EUR). There are salary calculators available online
(see for instance www.convertor.ro).
Note that salaries in Bucharest are on average 20% higher than in the rest of Romania and about 10%
higher than in the ten largest cities in the country.

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Nearshoring to Romania, NRCC 2013