Portugal and Poland: The New Home for Product? Part Two
24th Jul 2024
I hope you enjoyed our blog regarding Portugal and the opportunities you, your team and your company could take in finding your next Product teammates.
Now… onto Poland!
For our search criteria, we chose Product professionals with the following titles:
- Junior Product Manager
- Product Manager
- Senior Product Manager
- Lead Product Manager
- Principal Product Manager
- Head of Product
- Product Director
- Chief Product Officer
Poland: The New Home for Product
Image source: LinkedIn Talent Insights
Compared to Portugal, Poland's Product market is double the size, and also has five major hubs unlike the two in Portugal.
Interestingly, attrition is only 12%! With the UK average at 15% and Portugal at 13.8% your ROI increases by 25% versus UK candidates, and 15% compared to Portugal. Another factor when considering hiring product professionals include cultural thoughts towards work. Polish people take loyalty very seriously, are happy when given an opportunity and value stability in their careers.
Location and Talent Breakdown
Image source: LinkedIn Talent Insights
The need for Product talent is super competitive, and every major hub in Poland has a status of “very high” when it comes to hiring demand. It's worth noting that whilst most areas across Europe increase their Product talent pools by 1% every year, Poland is bucking that trend substantially with highs of 15% at Szczecin, 5% in Krakow, Katowice, Lodz and 4% in Wroclaw. In addition, a 2% increase in Warsaw but they have a healthy talent pool of 5,150, which is an increase of 93% in the last 12 months!
Going deeper, financial institutions seem to be making up most of the hiring including UBS, ING, JP Morgan and Sabre.
Breakdown of Titles - Including Gender Disparity
Image source: LinkedIn Talent Insights
Dark blue = Male
Green = Female
We can see a strong talent pool at the Product Manager level with 700 individuals finding new roles over the last 12 months. The gender balance is healthy with a 45% - 55% Female to Male ratio.
Senior Product Managers have a much smaller talent pool but there is a 40% to 60% split between Female and Male professionals.
From Head of Product, Director of Product Management and Chief Product Officer, these Product leaders make up 11% of the total Product talent pool but again the Female ratio never moves above 30%, with only 10% of Females making up the CPO tranche. These trends are synonymous across all Global markets and isn’t just a reflection in the UK. We can all do better.
Product Takeaways
More and more companies now have access to global talent hubs through the use of HR Tech companies like Rippling and Deel. It’s never been easier to onboard new employees abroad and not need to worry about taxes and laborious documentation.
In the main metropolitan areas in Poland, English is a close second language to most people aged 45 and below. Poland is also becoming a more diverse country thanks to free movement in the EU, and many people from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the UK call Poland home.
Salaries! You can expect to save between 20-40% on average per new hire as the cost of living in Poland is so much less. Like I said earlier, attrition rates are way lower here so you save on yearly expense and save with not needing to re-hire your team as often. A complete win-win situation.
If you aren’t hiring in Poland, you should consider discussing this with your CPO or HR / Talent team. Alternatively, you can get in touch with us to discuss how our Product hiring expertise can help you uncover talent in Poland, Portugal, the UK, and elsewhere.