Carmen Méndez – Bizkaia Talent
‘Bizkaia Talent is a non-profit organisation supported by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia along with other private organisations based in the Historical Territory of Bizkaia. It was established in 2005 and had a multi-disciplinary young team working to develop the conditions and procedures for the recruitment, engagement and retention of talented people in innovative projects in Bizkaia, thus giving a boost to fields of innovative advanced knowledge.
’Bizkaia Talent provides the community with a number of free services such as relocation, aid, contact making, guidance and intermediation. Why did we come to think that all these services were necessary to the Bizkaia society? Because we had the know-how. And what is our know-how about? It is based on the results of a series of investigations made by Bizkaia Talent jointly with universities, market research companies and consulting firms to help our society move forward, working and innovating.
’Bizkaia Talent also attends local, national and international career fairs, technology breakfasts, seminars and other events where we show our know-how. We are members of the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Network (RVCTI) and belong to the mobility network Euraxess Services of the European Commission, which in 2008 designated us as a Local Contact Point, or local support centre for this European and international network.’
Andoni Cendoya – HR Manager at Industria de Turbopropulsores (ITP)
Engagement meetings
‘When Basque researchers and highly qualified people decide to work abroad, they lose touch with our industrial reality, which has changed a lot in the last years. Engagement meetings are really important, as they help bridge the information gap, bringing information on Bizkaia and the Basque Country closer to Basque professionals and vice versa.’
The need to attract talent from abroad
‘Companies in every industry need to hire highly qualified professionals with broad international experience, since they add huge strategic value for the future
Bizkaia Talent’s aid programme
‘Since it was established, ITP has faced one big challenge: training professionals at the international business level, which entails big efforts. The programme from Bizkaia Talent enabled us to take a shortcut recruiting professionals directly. This is very important to us. We have been recruiting professionals this way for the past two years.’
Alejandro Moreno – Manager at Baltogar (High performance industrial fans)
Collaboration with Bizkaia Talent
‘Bizkaia Talent collaborated with us in talent recruitment for a research project in the field of fluid dynamics. As we are small company, one of our difficulties in recruiting professionals is that we do not have a network of contacts to select highly qualified people and we do not know how to reach these people so that they learn about our projects.
Bizkaia Talent’s collaboration led us into a top-class scientific world, which in a way enabled us to recruit the talented people we were looking for to launch our project.
’We attended the European Career Fair @ MIT, organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was a very interesting experience that gave us the chance to talk with professors at the university, who explained in detail how they teach at the MIT. The first thing we learned is that Bizkaia Talent can get people interested in learning about Bizkaia and the Basque Country. We made contacts with highly qualified people, and identified three or four of them who could head our research programme at the Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics (BCAM), BCAM-Baltogar.
’In the past years, we realised that we needed to manufacture products with extra features, because as a result of globalisation, standard or labour-intensive products are manufactured abroad. So we began developing new products with special geometry, which requires the use of applied mathematics for the creation of model optimising software oriented towards improving performance. BCAM wants other firms to participate in our advanced research so that we can produce special fluid dynamics software to use in the development of our value-added products.’
Azucena Castro – Director at OWL Genomics
‘I got my PhD in Biology from the University of the Basque Country. After graduating, I worked in France, Portugal and Argentina. Then I carried out several research projects until I began working in the field of biotechnology, not as a researcher but in managerial positions.
’The firm OWL Genomics was established in 2002 in Madrid. In 2004, it moved to the Bizkaia Science and Technology Park because it featured facilities and opportunities that were of great importance to our sector, that is, biotechnology. A number of companies specialising in biotechnology were established together with cooperative research centres, and the Government and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia were implementing policies to facilitate the establishment of such companies and the recruitment of qualified staff.
’Thanks to Bizkaia Talent we recruited someone from Manchester, England, who had the qualifications we were looking for. Our market is a global one, from the perspective of both our products and the staff in our organisations. For this reason, the aid provided by Bizkaia Talent is of so much merit.’
Alfonso Martínez Cearra – General Director at the Association for the Revitalisation of Metropolitan Bilbao, BM 30
‘By and large, the quality of life in Bizkaia is extraordinary; its society is highly developed, its lifestyle is humane, people are sociable, and the environment and landscape are wonderful. Bizkaia’s features might not be unique nor the best in the world, but they are difficult find all together, in the same place.
’For 20 years, Bizkaia witnessed a huge development of infrastructure and facilities, all that is required to create the adequate conditions for growth at the human, social, technological, entrepreneurial or cultural levels. In my opinion, the following step will consist in trying to help people understand that our opportunities are much better than those we had 20 years ago. We must take advantage of them.’
Bizkaia Talent
‘Bizkaia Talent is currently a key organisation when it comes to recruiting talented professionals who would otherwise be difficult to reach. The organisation provides many things, but I would like to point out institutional support. In other countries, they greatly value private or public projects that enjoy solid support. Bizkaia Talent realises this, the importance of the support institutions like the Provincial Council of Bizkaia can give to foreign professionals who come here to work in our projects.’
Engagement of world-class professionals: Charles Landry
‘The project launched by BM 30 together with Charles Landry, “Creativity in Bilbao-Bizkaia”, was aimed at raising awareness among institutions, businesses, citizens and the whole society in Bizkaia of the importance of fostering creativity. We need to start trusting ideas too, not only projects.’
Paola Salanueva – HR Manager at Histocell
‘Noray Science Group uses Bizkaia Talent’s job exchange and relocation services. Through Bizkaia Talent we have been able to post our job offers and find highly qualified Basque scientists and technologists who were living outside the Basque Country.
’Besides, Bizkaia Talent invited us to the workshop held in Barcelona to contact and engage Basque scientists working in the field of bioscience in that city. Bizkaia Talent represented us employers at the MIT Fair in Boston and at ESOF in Turin, Italy. However, what we appreciate the most is the relocation service. In November 2009, Histocell hired a biomaterials engineer, Scott Rapoport, an expert in biotechnology hailing from USA, and had to deal for the first time with all the legal procedures required to hire a non-EU citizen.
’Bizkaia Talent continued assisting us so that the American scientist could adapt naturally to his new environment in Bizkaia, getting to know the local culture and weather, the tourist attractions, the administrative procedures at the town hall, the health service system, driving licence validation and, most importantly, accommodation.’
‘Bizkaia Talent is a non-profit organisation supported by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia along with other private organisations based in the Historical Territory of Bizkaia. It was established in 2005 and had a multi-disciplinary young team working to develop the conditions and procedures for the recruitment, engagement and retention of talented people in innovative projects in Bizkaia, thus giving a boost to fields of innovative advanced knowledge.
’Bizkaia Talent provides the community with a number of free services such as relocation, aid, contact making, guidance and intermediation. Why did we come to think that all these services were necessary to the Bizkaia society? Because we had the know-how. And what is our know-how about? It is based on the results of a series of investigations made by Bizkaia Talent jointly with universities, market research companies and consulting firms to help our society move forward, working and innovating.
’Bizkaia Talent also attends local, national and international career fairs, technology breakfasts, seminars and other events where we show our know-how. We are members of the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Network (RVCTI) and belong to the mobility network Euraxess Services of the European Commission, which in 2008 designated us as a Local Contact Point, or local support centre for this European and international network.’
Engagement meetings
‘When Basque researchers and highly qualified people decide to work abroad, they lose touch with our industrial reality, which has changed a lot in the last years. Engagement meetings are really important, as they help bridge the information gap, bringing information on Bizkaia and the Basque Country closer to Basque professionals and vice versa.’
The need to attract talent from abroad
‘Companies in every industry need to hire highly qualified professionals with broad international experience, since they add huge strategic value for the future
Bizkaia Talent’s aid programme
‘Since it was established, ITP has faced one big challenge: training professionals at the international business level, which entails big efforts. The programme from Bizkaia Talent enabled us to take a shortcut recruiting professionals directly. This is very important to us. We have been recruiting professionals this way for the past two years.’
Collaboration with Bizkaia Talent
‘Bizkaia Talent collaborated with us in talent recruitment for a research project in the field of fluid dynamics. As we are small company, one of our difficulties in recruiting professionals is that we do not have a network of contacts to select highly qualified people and we do not know how to reach these people so that they learn about our projects.
Bizkaia Talent’s collaboration led us into a top-class scientific world, which in a way enabled us to recruit the talented people we were looking for to launch our project.
’We attended the European Career Fair @ MIT, organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was a very interesting experience that gave us the chance to talk with professors at the university, who explained in detail how they teach at the MIT. The first thing we learned is that Bizkaia Talent can get people interested in learning about Bizkaia and the Basque Country. We made contacts with highly qualified people, and identified three or four of them who could head our research programme at the Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics (BCAM), BCAM-Baltogar.
’In the past years, we realised that we needed to manufacture products with extra features, because as a result of globalisation, standard or labour-intensive products are manufactured abroad. So we began developing new products with special geometry, which requires the use of applied mathematics for the creation of model optimising software oriented towards improving performance. BCAM wants other firms to participate in our advanced research so that we can produce special fluid dynamics software to use in the development of our value-added products.’
‘I got my PhD in Biology from the University of the Basque Country. After graduating, I worked in France, Portugal and Argentina. Then I carried out several research projects until I began working in the field of biotechnology, not as a researcher but in managerial positions.
’The firm OWL Genomics was established in 2002 in Madrid. In 2004, it moved to the Bizkaia Science and Technology Park because it featured facilities and opportunities that were of great importance to our sector, that is, biotechnology. A number of companies specialising in biotechnology were established together with cooperative research centres, and the Government and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia were implementing policies to facilitate the establishment of such companies and the recruitment of qualified staff.
’Thanks to Bizkaia Talent we recruited someone from Manchester, England, who had the qualifications we were looking for. Our market is a global one, from the perspective of both our products and the staff in our organisations. For this reason, the aid provided by Bizkaia Talent is of so much merit.’
‘By and large, the quality of life in Bizkaia is extraordinary; its society is highly developed, its lifestyle is humane, people are sociable, and the environment and landscape are wonderful. Bizkaia’s features might not be unique nor the best in the world, but they are difficult find all together, in the same place.
’For 20 years, Bizkaia witnessed a huge development of infrastructure and facilities, all that is required to create the adequate conditions for growth at the human, social, technological, entrepreneurial or cultural levels. In my opinion, the following step will consist in trying to help people understand that our opportunities are much better than those we had 20 years ago. We must take advantage of them.’
Bizkaia Talent
‘Bizkaia Talent is currently a key organisation when it comes to recruiting talented professionals who would otherwise be difficult to reach. The organisation provides many things, but I would like to point out institutional support. In other countries, they greatly value private or public projects that enjoy solid support. Bizkaia Talent realises this, the importance of the support institutions like the Provincial Council of Bizkaia can give to foreign professionals who come here to work in our projects.’
Engagement of world-class professionals: Charles Landry
‘The project launched by BM 30 together with Charles Landry, “Creativity in Bilbao-Bizkaia”, was aimed at raising awareness among institutions, businesses, citizens and the whole society in Bizkaia of the importance of fostering creativity. We need to start trusting ideas too, not only projects.’
‘Noray Science Group uses Bizkaia Talent’s job exchange and relocation services. Through Bizkaia Talent we have been able to post our job offers and find highly qualified Basque scientists and technologists who were living outside the Basque Country.
’Besides, Bizkaia Talent invited us to the workshop held in Barcelona to contact and engage Basque scientists working in the field of bioscience in that city. Bizkaia Talent represented us employers at the MIT Fair in Boston and at ESOF in Turin, Italy. However, what we appreciate the most is the relocation service. In November 2009, Histocell hired a biomaterials engineer, Scott Rapoport, an expert in biotechnology hailing from USA, and had to deal for the first time with all the legal procedures required to hire a non-EU citizen.
’Bizkaia Talent continued assisting us so that the American scientist could adapt naturally to his new environment in Bizkaia, getting to know the local culture and weather, the tourist attractions, the administrative procedures at the town hall, the health service system, driving licence validation and, most importantly, accommodation.’
