Christophe Ros­set is the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor (Con­ti­nen­tal Europe) for Page Exec­u­tive, one of the three brands of Page­Group, a spe­cial­ist recruit­ment agency present in 35 dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Christophe Ros­set grad­u­at­ed from UTC in 1987 with the spe­cial­ty Bio-Industries. 

“With a pas­sion for bio-tech­nolo­gies after my Bac­calau­re­ate D, I became a keen and reg­u­lar read­er of the mag­a­zine Bio­Fu­tur. UTC was clear­ly a ref­er­ence insti­tu­tion in the field and I loved both the cam­pus ambi­ence and the excel­lent rela­tion­ships we enjoyed with our lec­tur­ers, all of whom were high lev­el spe­cial­ists, plus the con­tacts we had with enter­pris­es via our research cen­tre … I have some great sou­venirs of our con­tacts among stu­dents, notably when we were doing group work”, recalls Christophe Ros­set. After grad­u­at­ing, he did his mil­i­tary draft peri­od over­seas in the island State of the Domini­can Repub­lic where he worked at the local Mai­son de France on var­i­ous agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment pro­grammes, in a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Domini­can and French min­istries for Agri­cul­ture. He then moved to L’O­re­al becom­ing one of the Group’s pro­duc­tion engi­neers in a sub­sidiary spe­cial­ized in sham­poo and cos­met­ics for­mu­lat­ing. “My job there was to super­vise the fine chem­istry process­es, before I moved to Cardiff, again with the L’O­re­al Group and I was appoint­ed to a posi­tion of indus­tri­al man­ag­er”, he adds. At that point our young grad­u­ate was tempt­ed by entre­pre­neur­ship; he took over his own fam­i­ly’s busi­ness for a while which they final­ly sold. He addressed him­self to the Michael page spe­cial­ist recruit­ment agents, look­ing for a job in the cos­met­ics sec­tor. “They were look­ing for an engi­neer to man­age recruit­ment of oth­er engi­neers. Two weeks lat­er I signed my con­tract and I’ve been with tem now for 18 years”! 

Evolving within PageGroup

Thus, Christophe Ros­set was one of the first engi­neers to join the Group, for the pur­pose of devel­op­ing the “Engi­neers and tech­ni­cians” branch, exam­in­ing and select­ing can­di­dates for indus­tri­al enter­pris­es, rang­ing from R&D, pro­duc­tion lines to logis­tics and pur­chas­ing. From 1996 to 2001 he set up sev­er­al spe­cial­ist divi­sions Prop­er­ty & Con­struc­tion, Logis­tics & Pur­chas­ing and final­ly Health. IN 2001 Christophe Ros­set was appoint­ed to the Board of Page­Group in France and in 2006 he left with wife and fam­i­ly to head for Mex­i­co. “The objec­tive assigned was to cre­ate the Group sub­sidiary in Mex­i­co, ex nihi­lo. That expe­ri­ence as amaz­ing, both in terms of the entre­pre­neur­ial expe­ri­ence gained and for the dis­cov­ery of the local cul­tures and the encoun­ters I made in Mex­i­co. After 5 years there, the team had 90 col­lab­o­ra­tors, 70 of whom were con­sul­tants. Our role was not to focus on ‘ex-pats’ but to recruit the best local tal­ents for this emerg­ing mar­ket where the needs for skilled labour were very impor­tant, rang­ing from banks to human resource, health and prop­er­ty man­age­ment …” Christophe Ros­set returned to Europe in 2011 when he accept­ed the posi­tion of Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for Bel­gium and Lux­em­burg. Since the begin­ning of 2014, he is gen­er­al man­ag­ing direc­tor for Page Exec­u­tive for Con­ti­nen­tal Europe. “Page­Group has 3 brands: Michael Page for the his­toric activ­i­ties of recruit­ment advice and coun­selling, Page Per­son­nel for those with ini­tial pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence and Page Exec­u­tive for the recruit­ing of exec­u­tive lev­el man­agers. Today, our inter­na­tion­al syn­er­gy must be bol­stered”, details Christophe Rosset. 

The search for new dynamics in Europe

Bio-Notes

• 1987 : Grad­u­at­ed from UTC
• 1987–1993 : Engi­neer with the Groupe L’Oréal, first in France then in Wales
• 1993–1995 : Com­pa­ny head as Deputy Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, fam­i­ly busi­ness H.Rosset
• 1996 : joined Page­Group, France
• 2006: Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Mex­i­co to set up local branch offices for the 3 Page­Group brands: Page Per­son­nel, Michael Page and Page Executive
• 2014 : Man­ag­ing Direc­tor (Con­ti­nen­tal Europe) for Page Executive