Interview with Susanne Schulz
adesta is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2019. Susanne Schulz, Managing Director of adesta, describes in an interview the situation at the time, the motivation for founding the company, its expertise and objectives.
You have become successfully established on the market as a recruitment and outsourcing specialist. Where does your expertise lie?
Susanne Schulz: We offer a full service for applicants and companies. Our core competencies are the recruitment and placement of skilled personnel and different outsourcing services.
A challenging task when you consider that the shortage of specialists is growing every year. What was the reason for founding your company 20 years ago?
Susanne Schulz: During the 1990s both my husband and I had already been working for some years in responsible positions in the industry before we found ourselves in a completely different company construct due to the sale of the company of our employer at that time. This led to the initial ideas for our adesta vision and, thus, to an image of the future which aroused more and more passion within us.
What was this about?
Susanne Schulz: We saw deficits in the industry and believed that there was a real need and desire to change it. Our vision provided a specific solution to shortcomings which we had recognised and therefore did not want to accept.
What were these shortcomings?
Susanne Schulz: At that time, they mainly involved manpower leasing which is now one of ten services in our portfolio. Over 20 years ago, temporary employment was by no means so well-accepted and established as it is today. Firstly, a large number of temporary employment agencies did not use fair practices and lacked respect in their dealings with applicants and employees. Secondly, however, many companies had a negative image because they often treated temporary workers as second-class employees. Employees and temporary employment agencies were very quickly replaceable and superfluous since there were no major difference in the company philosophy and implementation of the services.
We wanted to actively change this image through our own company! This led to the creation of our adesta vision: we wanted to be a permanent and strategic partner of renowned companies (versus a replaceable "no name supplier").
20 years have now gone by, have you reached your objectives?
Susanne Schulz: In all modesty, I am really very glad to say that we are actually now a permanent and strategic partner of many renowned companies here in Darmstadt, in the Rhine-Main-Neckar region and throughout Germany. As a recruitment expert focusing on diversity, quality and swiftness, we operate with passion and great esteem in our dealings with one another. This represents a marked difference in our industry – at least that's what our applicants and employees claim. This is confirmed by our positive image as an employer – also in the service sector of manpower leasing.
Mrs. Schulz, thank you very much for the interview.