Bruce Decaster was born and raised on the island of Curacao. He left Curacao in June of 2000 to pursue a bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University in Utah, USA. He went on to obtain an MBA from Thunderbird School of International Management. Since then he has built a career in International Human Resources, overseeing HR operations in many countries for global corporations. Today, he is the President & CEO of Crescentia Global Talent Solutions, an international recruiting firm that provides talent search and HR consultation in multiple countries.
What gave you the idea of starting Crescentia?
I have worked for small, medium, and large sized companies. What these companies tend to have in common is that their recruitment processes move too slowly and they struggle to adapt to the pace of the business. So I kept asking myself the question - How can I fix our recruitment process to make it 1) quick 2) provide a large volume of candidates and 3) effective in all the countries we operate in? Then the idea came to me - Why don’t I have the recruiting team crunch time by working through the night on a pay-as-you-go compensation structure? As I started to work on this model, I realized also that HR departments tend to go to multiple vendors to get what they need. How about if I could create a one-stop-shop process that provides all that HR needs for business in one place? That’s exactly what Crescentia does. We are a one-vendor solution for all HR issues that most companies will ever need, irrespective of their size.
Why do most recruitment processes take so long?
Throughout my career, I noticed that recruitment processes at different companies have, amongst other things, three main struggles:
1) LOW VOLUME: Mangers frequently complain that they are not getting enough candidates to fill their open positions. As you know, from quantity you get quality. Yet, managers are simply not getting enough qualified candidates to look at.
2) LONG PROCESS: For one reason or another, the recruitment process takes way too long. I have seen positions open for 8 months, or 10 months, or even a whole year, which is crazy!
3) COSTLY: The recruitment cost, particularly when using headhunters, is just unreasonably high.
These three challenges are detrimental to businesses who are trying to remain agile in tough market conditions. Additionally, HR managers have to juggle different vendors to get different types of services.
How does Crescentia address these challenges?
1) QUICK TURNAROUND: Our recruitment process is flexible enough to allow our teams to work overnight. This shortens the recruitment time drastically.
2) HIGH VOLUME: Every day our recruiters get a list of 20 to 30 candidates to screen…EVERY DAY! Now, managers are bombarded with candidates to review, which creates another good problem - managers now have to keep up with HR!
3) AFFORDABLE: With our pay-as-you-go model, we drastically reduce the recruitment cost. For example, if we find your dream candidate on the first day of recruitment, we simply stop and the client might end up paying just a little over 1,000 US dollars to fill a six-figure salary position. Let me emphasize this - companies could potentially pay as little as 1,000 US Dollars for a job that pays a salary of over 100,000 dollars. Our mantra is simple: “The biggest share of your organization’s staffing investment should be directed toward your employee-to-be, and NOT toward commission-driven headhunters."
4) ONE-STOP-SHOP: We also have a solution for other problems encountered by HR managers. Crescentia provides services in multiple disciplines. Aside from recruiting, we also do HR consultation, website design, e-learning, translation, resumé writing for job seekers, and much more.
