As the entire world was forced into their homes in 2020, the number of digital transactions increased to never-before-seen numbers; in Costa Rica alone, mobile money transfer transactions increased 700% (SUTEL, 2020), which represented 55 million transactions.

The recent chain of worldwide events, ultimately fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, has accelerated the digital journey of companies around the globe. How can we adapt and be better prepared for this uncertain and technologically disrupted future?  

San José, April 27, 2021. TradeStation, a multinational company in the services sector, announced that it is seeking 100 new hires in Costa Rica. These professionals will join the other 100 employees that the company currently has on its payroll.

San José, Costa Rica. April 14, 2021. Awarded by the International Trade Center (ITC) as the world’s best Investment Promotion Agency for three years in a row, the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE), has recently launched its new website, a digital experience for investors aimed at Industry 4.0 investments along with Costa Rica’s attraction of investment with a purpose to impact the triple bottom line: people, planet, and prosperity.

• Implemented improvements will drive commercialization of high-quality, complex medical devices.
• 300 new jobs will be added during 2021.

Costa Rica, April 9, 2021 – Viant, a life sciences company, announced that it has completed a major expansion at its medical device manufacturing plant located in Heredia, Costa Rica.

• The company has also introduced its ILab, a program designed to help candidates learn English to work with bilingual accounts. 

San Jose, Costa Rica, March 24, 2021. Concentrix Corporation (NASDAQ: CNXC), a leading global provider of customer experience (CX) technology and solutions, announced today the opening in March and April of 2021 of 1,000 new jobs in Costa Rica in sales and technical support for technology and senior property management companies. 
 
During a visit to the company, Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado noted that this growth shows that the country is building long-term relations with investors. For him, this new expansion - which represents a significant number of immediate new jobs - is evidence of the confidence large companies have in Costa Rica.
 
“We have a country-commitment to continue promoting the conditions needed to attract investment, and we are pleased to have partners such as Concentrix that boost candidates’ capacities, giving them more hiring opportunities in quality companies. I reaffirm our commitment to continue driving human talent development and bilingualism to take full advantage of the job opportunities created by the knowledge economy,” stated President Alvarado.
 
“Costa Rica is consolidating itself as a strategic site for us, so in 2021 we will be on a constant lookout for staff in several cities. The level of job commitment and the quality customer service we found in this country led us to reinforce the local operation. We decided, at a critical moment in employment, to offer concrete solutions for reactivating the economy and open up jobs with the best market conditions,” affirmed Juan Pablo Guzmán, country leader for Concentrix.
 
As additional support for those wishing to work for Concentrix, the company has designed ILab, a program that helps candidates gain confidence in the use of English, giving them the possibility of being hired for bilingual accounts. Anyone with a B1 level can participate in a three-week training course of four hours a day, at no cost, helping them reach the B2 level required by the company. This initiative, launched in November 2019, has already graduated 90 people, of which 68% have started to work at Concentrix. 
 
Foreign Trade Minister Andrés Valenciano expressed his excitement, stating, “In 2005, Concentrix decided to opt for Costa Rica and its human capital. Today we see with great pride how this company continues to grow, trusting in this country and creating wellbeing. The news of 1,000 new job openings, which will mean formal job opportunities for Costa Ricans, demonstrates that, despite being a small country, Costa Rica has world-class talent.” 
 
Finally, he added, “Moreover, the ILab will be a valuable tool that will help train employees in English. Ongoing learning is essential for us to be able to tackle the challenges of the 4.0 revolution. It enables us to stay at the forefront in topics of interest, grow as individuals, and continue contributing to society. My sincerest congratulations and gratitude for continuing to choose our country.”
 
Eric Scharf, president of CINDE’s Board of Directors, commented, “Costa Rica has become the quintessential strategic partner for companies seeking technological convergence environments that answer to the needs of industry 4.0. Concentrix is an example of this and today, with 1,000 more jobs added to its local operation, it confirms that Costa Rican human talent has the necessary resilience to respond to the new challenges faced by companies. In Costa Rica, 134,000 Costa Rican jobs depend on multinational companies such as Concentrix.”

In addition to the 1,000 new jobs, Concentrix is also seeking people for professional and executive positions such as:

Costa Rica. March 11, 2021 – Bill Gosling Outsourcing is a technology-focused global Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) provider that specializes in customer experience (CX) solutions, and they are looking to expand Costa Rica operations with over 200 new jobs.

Bill Gosling launched their first site in Costa Rica in September of 2019 and are currently working on launching their second site just 18 months later. “Our Clients have been so pleased with the quality of service and our team that we are ready to expand within the country already. The launch of the second site validates our initial reasons for choosing Costa Rica as the start of our LATAM expansion,” said Dave Rae, CEO of Bill Gosling Outsourcing.

Carlos Alvarado, President of the Republic, commented that “the expansion of a company as established as Bill Gosling offers further confirmation that multinational companies view Costa Rica as a strategic ally in achieving their goals.”

President Alvarado highlighted all the work being done to train Costa Rica’s human talent to take advantage of these excellent employment opportunities; as an example, he cited the new INA Law signed in January, which is designed to prepare Costa Ricans for greater professional opportunities to enter the labor market, thus influencing the country’s competitiveness, productivity, and innovation.

“2020 was challenging for everyone, but with the strength, agility, and mutual commitment with our clients, we were able to navigate through and continue to provide certainty of supply. Thanks to our team’s strength and dedication, we launched new relationships and continued to operate on trust and transparency. This paved the way to launching our second nearshore site,” added Kenny Johnston, President of Bill Gosling Outsourcing.

Andrés Valenciano, Minister of Foreign Trade, pointed out, “this newest expansion of the Bill Gosling company confirms, once again, that we are headed in the right direction with our nation’s value proposal, based on the three Ps: planet, people, and prosperity. This is a leading company in the service sector and has become a strategic ally for our country; its decision to reinvest in Costa Rica reflects our favorable business platform, characterized by a highly competitive environment and highly qualified human resources. Today, we celebrate Bill Gosling’s sustained commitment to Costa Rica in choosing our country as its ally in continued growth and thereby generating 200 new formal employment opportunities for Costa Ricans.”

Currently, the second site is under construction but will be ready for operations by mid-May this year, with some new Clients being serviced out of that site. “Since our expansion into Costa Rica, we have had great success in building our company culture within the team. There is high engagement among the staff globally, regionally, and locally within our community in Belén. We are now ready to grow our team and are looking for applicants who are fluent in English with strong social skills, enthusiasm, and are eager to learn.” – David Clements, VP of Operations at Bill Gosling Outsourcing.

With nine sites across North America, the UK, the Philippines, and Costa Rica, Bill Gosling provides live agent support via voice, chat, email, and other digital solutions in various languages.

Jorge Sequeira, Managing Director of CINDE, commented, “According to the World Economic Forum, Costa Rica is the leader in human capital in Latin America. Multinational companies highly value our productivity and human talent. CINDE’s data shows that in the services sector from 2005 to 2019, productivity per employee, as measured by exports per capita, grew 47% – reaching USD $51,000 in 2019. We are proud of this key aspect, which drives more reinvestments in our country, as is the case with Bill Gosling Outsourcing. This is important news, especially given its announcement less than two years after having opened Costa Rican operations.”

The two sites will be near each other, both located within the El Cafetal Corporate Centre, approximately 15 minutes away from the San Jose International airport. This expansion will bring a combined 500 seat capacity across both sites with additional remote working capabilities for multi-lingual Customer Services positions. 

Those interested in applying, please visit: www.billgosling.com/careers

About Bill Gosling Outsourcing
Founded in Canada in 1955, Bill Gosling Outsourcing (BGO) provides outsourcing services for clients throughout North America, the UK, the Philippines, and Costa Rica.  Services include Customer Service/Support, Accounts Receivable Management, Customer Sales and Acquisitions, and Call Center Technology/Business Process Outsourcing.  With the opening of a second Costa Rican site, this takes the company to a total of 10 sites supporting 2,800 seats. 

This expansion is supported by Bill Gosling’s new private equity partner,Owner Resource Group, who joined the management team led by David Rae (CEO) and Kenny Johnston (President) to invest in growth and to pursue strategic acquisitions that expand service offerings to customers. 

• Markus Sageder to lead Global Software Company’s new Latin America Hub.

San Jose, Costa Rica, March 5, 2021 – San Francisco Bay Area-based software company Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) announced today the official opening of a new Autodesk office for the Latin America region, based in San Jose, Costa Rica. Markus Sageder will serve as the site lead to a cohort of employees largely comprised of inside sales professionals, all working virtually for now to ensure the team’s ongoing health and safety amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The hub office in Costa Rica is where inside sales operations and other teams will come together to drive growth across the Americas, with a focus on the Latin America region. An established member of the Autodesk team and seasoned leader within the sales industry, Sageder joined Autodesk over four years ago and was one of the first 50 people hired to open the company’s office in Barcelona, Spain.

“Given Markus’ deep knowledge of Autodesk’s business and customer needs and being fluent in four languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, and German), I’m confident he has what it takes to successfully build our Costa Rica office. We selected Costa Rica for our Latin America hub because of its global business environment and talent pool, ability to support multiple Americas languages, and its vibrant multicultural capital which offers a great quality of life for our employees,” said Morgan Kirkland, Senior Director in Autodesk’s Americas sales organization. 

• With the opening of its first office in San José, AWS strengthens customer relationships and supports the expansion of cloud computing in Costa Rica.
• AWS will invest in the local market by hiring highly trained engineers, network specialists, and account managers, among other roles.

San José, Costa Rica – February 25, 2021 –Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), a company of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced the opening of its new San José, Costa Rica office, to support the rapid adoption of cloud computing within Costa Rica.
 
Local AWS representatives will work to support organizations of all sizes, from startups to some of the oldest and most established companies in the nation, including those in the public sector, as more Costa Rican companies transition to the AWS cloud. As part of this expansion, AWS also plans to hire highly skilled professionals in sales, marketing, and technical engineering roles; these positions will be based in Costa Rica.
 
The new location will pull together a local group of account executives, solution architects, partner managers, support personnel, and other functions, so that customers can engage directly with AWS – in their local environment, in their native language. This openness is further evidence of AWS’s global growth and the company's continued investment in helping organizations migrate their movements and activities to the cloud. If you would like more information on working with AWS in Costa Rica, please visit https://aws.amazon.com/en/
 
When AWS first launched in Central America, Costa Rican organizations were among the first to adopt its cloud services. Established customers in Costa Rica are now using AWS to run everything from development and test environments to Big Data analytics – from mobile, web and social applications to enterprise-level applications and mission-critical workloads. Among its local clients, AWS now serves some of the best-known and fastest-growing companies in Costa Rica, including Banco LAFISE, Fujitsu, and Snap Finance.
 
“For AWS, Costa Rica is a key market in Central America, where companies rely on AWS to innovate and use the cloud to accelerate time-to-market and expand their businesses to reach customers locally and around the world, especially during these pandemic times,” explained Marcos Grilanda, AWS Regional Director. “The decision to open an AWS office in San José speaks to growing customer demand, the broad pool of talent located here, and the investments we are making to support the adoption of the cloud in Costa Rica. We are very excited to work with more Costa Rican companies and to help them drive innovation within their organizations while maintaining the industry's high standards for reliability, privacy, and security."
 
Andrés Valenciano, Minister of Foreign Trade, continued: “News of Amazon Web Services’ new Costa Rican location offers further proof that Costa Rican human capital is talented, resilient, and trained in professional areas of high demand for industry 4.0. In addition, it demonstrates that our country offers an optimal business climate for foreign companies seeking locations that enable an increase in efficiency, to carry out successful, safe, and innovative productive operations. As a government, we are committed to strengthening our country’s competitive advantages, so that more companies like AWS will choose us as their corporate home base for exporting quality services to the world.”
 
Jorge Sequeira, Managing Director of CINDE, stated: “We are proud to welcome AWS to Costa Rica. With the help of our local talent, AWS will contribute significantly to Costa Rica’s considerable cloud computing sector, which accounts for 54% of all industry 4.0 services that Costa Rica provides to the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as to other Latin American and European countries. As of September 2020, our exports on value-added services had reached $3.7 billion.”
 
Similarly, some clients and colleagues that have worked together with AWS in Costa Rica on AWS cloud adoption programs, highlighted the importance of the company's in-country offices and asserted that they will be of great benefit to Costa Rican companies.
 
Rodrigo Zamora, Executive Director of Grupo LAFISE, stated: “Our relationship with AWS has allowed us to innovate in a more agile and efficient way, bringing us closer to our clients and helping us provide better customer experiences. In 2020, more than 50% of our new clients were captured through digital channels, thanks to our digital onboarding process.”
 
Likewise, Alex Sánchez, Global Head of Cross-GDC Networks of Fujitsu stated: “For several years, Fujitsu has partnered with AWS to offer Costa Rican companies a leading hyperscale platform to host critical systems and drive business innovation. With the arrival of AWS in Costa Rica, we are able to continue in our mission to help more companies migrate to the cloud.”

• U.S. firm created a total of 19 new jobs in 2020, with plans to create a minimum of 15 more jobs in 2021.
• Company’s initial investment totals $2 Million.

Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica. February 24, 2021. Global technology and data analytics company Helm360 announced that it has chosen to set up operations in Costa Rica. The company formally launched its Costa Rican operations in 2020 and is expected to inaugurate its new support center in San Isidro de El General, in Pérez Zeledón, by the end of the year; this represents an initial investment of $2 million.