Building Bang & Olufsen’s Core Tech Team in Bulgaria: A Collaboration with Bica
Founded almost a century ago, Bang & Olufsen is a high-end consumer electronics company based in Denmark. The enterprise has specialized in delivering top-notch audio solutions for its customers. Speakers, headphones, TVs, and soundbars are among Bang & Olufsen’s offerings.
With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the company has announced a strategic turnaround that focuses on a few business areas. Focusing more on consumer needs and prioritizing certain markets, reduction of costs, and strengthening its digital presence are among the key pillars of this strategy change.
Since then, Bang & Olufsen has been looking to expand its teams to build a team that will further streamline the development of its products. In the summer of 2022, Bang & Olufsen partnered with Bica to support the company in entering the Bulgarian market.
The Challenge
Widely recognized as a provider of hardware products, Bang & Olufsen’s expansion to Bulgaria had to have a different perspective. With a highly competitive talent market, it was of great importance to establish the employer brand of the company in Bulgaria and build the core team of developers at the local level.
“By establishing a partnership between the two organizations, our goal was to position Bang & Olufsen within the Bulgarian IT ecosystem by building the first teams of professionals at the local level,” explains Slavka Andonova, Principal Recruitment Consultant at Bica.
Solution
To streamline the recruiting process and make sure Bica and B&O overcome the challenges, the Bica team started the collaboration with a consultancy period and setting strategic goals.
“Before starting the hiring process, it was very important for us to establish the goals of the collaboration and better understand what are the needs of Bang&Olufsen and which are the right approaches to achieve them,” Slavka highlights.
During this consulting process Bica and B&O defined a recruitment marketing strategy, provided an overview of the most common employee rewards and benefits systems on a local level, drafted offer templates, employee contracts and job descriptions.
As a dedicated Recruitment Consultant, Slavka managed to understand the needs of the company and its culture. This allowed her to discover the right candidates that can grow in this environment.
The outcome
After the initial consultation period, the Bica team started recruiting. Just a few weeks after the beginning of the process, Bang & Olufsen secured the first person of Bang & Olufsen’s Bulgarian subsidiary. Slavka established a talent funnel pipeline with specialists in the IT industry who fit the needs of the client.
Two weeks after the official start of the collaboration between the two companies, Slavka and the Bica team secured the first hire – a senior software engineer, and a priority vacancy for B&O.
At the end of this initial recruitment stint, Bang & Olufsen established its core Bulgarian team with 11 developers already working on projects by the company. Their expertise was in 5 different technology fields – design, frontend engineering, Linux/C++, embedded systems, and QA.
Future plans
Continuous development of the talent pipeline and market exploration are among the recommendations shared by Bica for B&O. The consultancy also shared suggestions with Bang & Olufsen that can help in establishing an employer brand locally.