“Business passports” made in Greece go global

One of the largest certification companies in the world, PeopleCert, which certifies people for skills in management, auditing, IT and language learning, with a presence in 220 countries, although just 21 years old, is Greek. It employs a total of 520 people, of which 420 in Greece - the indirect number of employees reaches 10,000 through the organization of examinations and the staffing of examination centers -, has 12 subsidiaries and this year its revenue is estimated in excess 100 million euros .

Passport

"Certification for a certain skill is a passport to find employment, to immigrate, to be employed by the State, to get a promotion, etc." "The founder and sole shareholder of PeopleCert, Mr. Byron Nikolaidis, states in" Vima tis Kyriakis "and adds: 700 certificates."

Until 2012, when the country entered the hard core of the financial crisis, PeopleCert had revenues exclusively from Greece. "Then we had the following dilemma," says Mr. Nikolaidis: "Do we shrink our operating costs and our work to cope or do we choose extroversion? We chose the second and we were right. In recent years we have been running at a  40% rate of revenue growth. Even during the pandemic we had a slight decline in our turnover but our profits increased by 5%. Now 97% of our income comes from certifications abroad. All our expansion was done with own funds. The company has almost zero debt."

Professionalism

But to what does he attribute this development? "To the ability and in the minds of the Greeks employed in the company, of which 97% are university graduates. Their professionalism and reliability is what promoted us abroad."

Today the PeopleCert group controls about 50% of the US market for ITIL certification...