About a month ago, Amazon (the famous online retailer out of Seattle) made a relatively quiet announcement of it’s smart move to open two Business Development Centers in Romania. With key management in place, job interviews are already underway for several positions in Bucureşti (the national capital, located in the southeast) and Iaşi (with its famed university, in the northeast). Current listings are for human resource administrators, which seems to indicate their intention to expand, and IT professionals such as programmers and database administrators.

I lived in the Seattle area for years and have been an Amazon customer since about 1998, so I am aware of the intelligent risks Jeff Bezos takes to grow his giant company into a retailing powerhouse. With India being all the rage in follow-the-pack outsourcing, it is rather refreshing to find out Amazon has the wherewithall to search beyond the asian subcontinent for additional talent opportunities.

There is an enormous amount of IT talent in Romania just waiting to be discovered. Granted, the immediate post-communist era lent itself to some undesirable behaviors online, but those days are fading rapidly. For companies looking to play it safe, the best choice would be to hire or consult with an IT-savvy American who lives in Romania (you know, someone kind of like me!) in order to bridge cultural gaps and solidify business trust issues. In any event, there are smart, eager, capable folks throughout Romania and Amazon is clever to get here early.

Of course, if you’re a Romanian job candidate, then you should definitely put forth the effort to apply/interview with a leading-edge international commerce giant like Amazon just for the career experience alone. It’s my opinion that most Romanians do not understand American business particularly well, so working for Amazon will open new worlds and doors for you.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2005 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.