Stability is the desire of all of us, not only in the business sphere, but also in private life. Unfortunately, the year 2022 did not provide us with many days like that. After two pandemic years, we thought the worst was over. None of us expected that we would witness the beginning of a war in our neighbourhood, a crisis on the political scene, or an energy crisis. Despite all the negatives, interest in IT outsourcing has grown and IT specialists are experiencing great times.
What was the beginning of 2022 for you and for SEITEQ?
Well, none of us ever expected such a development of the situation. The beginning of the war in Ukraine affected me a lot. It was a shock and it created a big disbalance between what was happening beyond our borders and my inner values and expectations. We tried to help as best we could – as a company and myself as well. That was the only thing I could do – helping those who needed it.
I knew that we needed to adjust the company’s strategy so that such unpredictable situations would not jeopardize our business. I have responsibility for my family, my employees and obligations to our customers.
At the beginning of the year, we always set a plan and goals that we want to accomplish and define the steps to achieve them. There is a great deal of eagerness, self-motivation and at the same time performance pressure. We know that if we want to succeed, we have to work hard and not give up, just be proactive and “all-in”. Then we have a chance to succeed, as illustrated by the previous years.
Despite the huge turbulences, however, SEITEQ is strengthening its market position. So how are you doing it? What is the “trick”?
It is hard to put it into simple words. It is definitely a set of factors. It is certainly thanks to my team, our employees, the trust of the customers, the quality of our services, business experience and undoubtedly also entering new markets.
So how is the company doing? What results did you manage to achieve in 2022 within IT recruiting and IT outsourcing?
I must say that I am more than satisfied. Despite various swings in the market, it was our most successful year so far. We achieved the highest turnover and the highest profit, surpassing the previous year. We have a potential to expand and we still have a growing trend.
We exceeded the turnover compared to last year and the profit is also higher than in 2021.
What was the business focus of the company last year?
SEITEQ has been operating on the Slovak, Czech and Bulgarian markets since 2009. Years of experience and a number of implemented projects have prepared us for success on international markets. We have accumulated irreplaceable skills, expertise and know-how that is helping us every step of the way.
In the second half of the year, we expanded our activities more beyond our borders. We plan to continue this expansion also next year. Our sales team will focus on international markets.
Why foreign markets? Is Slovakia already “too small” for you?
Definitely not.
“Slovakia is a beautiful market – compact, but incredibly diverse. “
However, unpredictable situations happening around, motivated us to intensify our activity on foreign markets. We have seen it can be risky to bet most of the attention on operating in only one country. Therefore, we decided to diversify the risk by entering other markets, thanks to which we gain a new field of activity, new positions, better projects. The latest additions are customers from Switzerland and Israel. In total, we have projects and customers already from 9 countries. We see the expansion as potential for our further growth.
What changes did 2022 bring to SEITEQ?
What I see as a very positive change is the proactivity on the part of customers. Based on previous cooperations or recommendations, customers is contacting us with a request for cooperation.
Since covid, most activities were moved to a remote environment and there was an increased demand for IT services. The pace of development and innovation has also accelerated. All this brings a lack of IT specialists in companies. Therefore, it is easier for companies to “hire” external IT&TECH experts.
You get an accomplished person who you don’t have to train. You have at your disposal the specialist you need at every stage of the project and the pace of your projects accelerates. So outsourcing is becoming more popular and its benefits are coming to the fore. It provides companies with greater flexibility and the ability to maintain focus on core-business activities.
What trends in IT did you observe in 2022?
The overall trend in outsourcing and recruiting has growth potential. Companies are getting used to looking for external specialists for their local or even international projects. It is slowly becoming standard to work in “remote” mode and therefore geographical boundaries are blurred and the necessity to be allocated or resident in a certain country is becoming redundant.
However, customers, especially in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, are starting to be more specific regarding freelancer selection. Not only price limits are set, but many times we encounter the requirement to have an IT&TECH specialist from a certain country.
In what IT positions and IT specialists were the companies interested the most last year?
We have probably seen the greatest demand for profiles such as Senior Developer, Network Engineer, Cloud Administrator, SAP Consultant, IT Project Manager, or positions with Cyber Security scope.
It is becoming a trend that candidates must be very comprehensive in terms of knowledge and skills. Most important is understanding the needs of the end customer and the ability to implement their requirements into final solution. Cloud administrators must also know how to write a script. Developers, just like administrators, must also be also consultants at the same time – they must understand the business and the specific terms of the customer.
“The demand for standard IT positions, such as junior network administrator or system administrator, is disappearing.”
The prevailing belief is that an IT specialist is a lone wolf. How do you see it from the business point of view?
It is tricky to generalize the personality of such a huge and diverse group into one single statement. As with any team, you have people with certain character and a certain “set” of personality traits. There are no two identical collectives with the same positions and same personalities anywhere.
However, what I noticed from the preferences of our applicants, after two years of home-office, many of them are already asking to return back “to work”. To work offline. It is not a rule, but this tendency has been noticed. They desire to work in teams again, to work on projects together from the office, to have the meetings in person. They want to go back to physical world as we knew it.
What word best describes the past year in IT for you?
I probably won’t sum it up in one word, it was really very “wild” year. But one of the words I would use is definitely GRATITUDE. Gratitude for the fact that we live in peace, that we have everything we need – food to eat, roof over our heads, that we can meet our loved ones, travel, enjoy moments of well-being, relax. We have seen that all this can be lost in a second.
And as for the business area, probably GROWTH, CHANGE and INNOVATION. These words probably describe the previous year the best.
Let´s have a look back at your statements from last year, what do you say about them today? How accurate were they?
I have to say I hit the spot in that last year “tip”. Despite the turbulences in the markets, the demand for IT specialists has indeed continued to grow. The type of positions companies needed to fill through IT outsourcing may be changing a bit, but the growth is there.
And I am very grateful that we have the trust of our customers. We care about open and professional communication within projects. We are glad that our customers see and appreciate it. It’s probably a refreshing change from the empty promises of some entities.
If the last year´s guess worked out so well for you, how do you see the year 2023 for IT specialists? ????
In my opinion, the trend of digitization and automation will come to the fore not only in engineering and technology companies, but in absolutely every type of company – in smaller or larger scale. So I really don’t expect decreasing interest in IT & TECH specialists. They probably have something to look forward to – golden times have come for them and they can choose from a number of interesting projects at a time.
And I’d like to say that we’ll make a “hole in the world” in 2023, but we’ll just have to wait and we´ll see. I believe that our expansion into foreign markets will continue and hopefully will be successful. So we can offer our applicants even more interesting projects and maybe in even more interesting locations ????
Keep your fingers crossed!
