Everything is ready for the Barcelona Talent-ed Summit to be held this Tuesday morning in the Media-Tic building, a conference that will bring together major players in Barcelona's entrepreneurial ecosystem to analyze the opportunity the city has to establish itself as one of the main hubs for attracting qualified professionals in the new post-pandemic era.
The event, organized by The New Barcelona Post and the Barcelona City Council, can be followed both in person and online and will be held entirely in English to facilitate international connections and also give prominence to foreign professionals already residing in the city. The last available places to attend in person can be reserved at this link, where the conference program can also be consulted and access to the streaming platform can be found. The forum will also be broadcast from the website of The New Barcelona Post.
The Barcelona Talent-ed Summit will try to answer several questions. Why is Barcelona positioning itself as a magnet for international talent? What leads large corporations like Nestlé and Pepsico to decide to locate their global technology hubs in the city? What kind of talent is the entrepreneurial ecosystem demanding? What strategies do companies use to attract and retain talent? What aspects should the city improve to accelerate this global talent attraction?
The conference will be structured around two major round tables. The first will feature Yego, Amenitiz, and Typeform, three startups from different sectors with an international vocation born in Barcelona and that have significant talent selection and attraction processes underway. Subsequently, there will be a second table focused on international companies that have opted for Barcelona to establish global technology hubs, such as Pepsico, Ocado Technology, and Nestlé.
Representing the Swiss food giant, which chose to locate its entire global IT and software development department in Esplugues de Llobregat, Cristina Ghetti, director of the Global IT Hub, will attend the summit. More than 600 people from 50 nationalities, 40% of whom are women, already work there.
For its part, the spokesperson for Pepsico will be Imene Zidi, talent acquisition director for the multinational in Europe. Zidi will explain the reasons that led the American group to choose Barcelona to install its global digital center and its hiring plans, which involve hiring around 400 people by 2024.
This panel will be moderated by Julia Meyer-Sommer, global business director at Eres Relocation, and will be completed by Guillem Vila Palau, director of Ocado Technology's development centers in Barcelona, Sofia (Bulgaria), and the United Kingdom.
In parallel, the participants in the startups panel will be Tim Ougeot, co-founder of the electric mobility company Yego; Marcos Morea, Human Resources director at Amenitiz, and Os Fuentes, talent acquisition manager at Typeform. After developing its micromobility model in Barcelona, Yego is now present in Valencia, Malaga, Seville, Paris, and Bordeaux. For its part, Amenitiz has developed a booking platform to simplify the operations of independent hoteliers and has just raised 6.5 million euros in a round led by Point Nine Capital and the Backed fund.
Typeform has raised much more funding to date, around 50 million dollars, to consolidate one of the city's most promising technology companies. The company founded by Robert Muñoz and David Okuniev and directed by Joaquim Lecha ---who was previously at Social Point--- has successfully reinvented the design of the forms we are asked to fill out on any website and already counts major global software giants as clients. After growing at an annual rate of 50%, it exceeds 380 employees, has a turnover of 60 million euros, and expects to reach 500 million in five years. Sergio Pérez Merino, director of Sabadell Venture Capital, will moderate the startups panel.
In the Barcelona Talent-ed Summit, Gizen Baykal, an expert from the company Michael Page, will also participate, who will present the current main trends in personnel selection and the most demanded positions by the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The other prominent presentation will be given by the general director of the Barcelona School of Management (BSM-UPF), José M. Martínez-Sierra, who will address Barcelona's positioning in the global economic and competitive context and its challenges and opportunities in attracting talent. In addition, the Barcelona City Council will present at the conference the main characteristics of the Barcelona International Welcome Desk, the new municipal service for international talent that wants to come to reside in the city or has just settled in.
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