Ana Mihăiescu, a new entrepreneur from Romania, runs Deutsch mit Spass company, which provides personnel recruitment services in fields, such as IT, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, as well as foreign language courses in German, English, Italian, French or Romanian. Her main clients are companies, but she also organizes language courses for individuals.

Ana discovered the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs Programme during an event for German-speaking entrepreneurs that took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. It was the right moment to learn about the programme, as she has already been searching for ways to innovate and refresh her business; She was looking for a new and more practical entrepreneurial thinking.

Ana applied to the programme with the help of Fundatia Danis, and then had the opportunity to collaborate with Magdalena Lemp, a successful entrepreneur in Germany, who owns a knowledge transfer agency (Berlin Training) and has many years of experience in education and business.

During the one-month exchange, Magdalena mentored Ana on various areas related to her business. She helped Ana to analyze her company, looking to her competition, presence on market, including online presence, communication with clients, unique selling proposition, etc. Also, Magdalena supported Ana to contact different chambers of commerce, representatives of companies and public employment agencies, in order to better understand the supply and the demand on the HR recruitment market, and then develop a new business approach and new services, and attract EU funding for these. At the same time, during the exchange, Ana had the opportunity to meet with representatives of Romania’s Economic Advisory Council in Berlin and discuss with them about ways of improving Romanian, in particular Transylvanian labour market, by “importing” and training labour force from countries such as Ukraine and Moldova.

Ana is grateful that the exchange made her more aware of certain aspects of her business, such as unique selling proposition, length of services provided or monthly profit, but also it helped her to plan the company’s recruitment services at international level, not only regional and national level. Also, Magdalena helped her to identify the activities that she and her business partner could delegate to other people, allowing the company to grow.

 “I am glad that I succeeded to fulfil my dream and gain a valuable business idea that gave me hope and serenity regarding my future plans to develop my business.” (Ana Mihăiescu, new entrepreneur, Romania)

Magdalena was happy to mentor and support Ana and benefit from different business perspectives she brought while joining Berlin Training: “It is always such a good experience to work with fresh ideas.” (Magdalena Lemp, host entrepreneur, Germany)