Page Outsourcing boasts that it helped Vivo Telefônica Brasil expand its technology and commercial teams, changing 689 lives through RPO, cyber security hiring, software developers, systems analysts, architects, data engineers, sales roles, Gupy ATS management, Salesforce and gamified recruitment. Lovely. Then Brazil’s competition authority walks in with a BRL 783 million antitrust conviction involving Telefônica Brasil, Claro and Oi Móvel over a Correios tender. Page saw a telecom success story. TCAP saw a cartel-fined phone shop with a recruitment funnel bolted to the side.
The Page Connection
Page Outsourcing has a case study about Vivo Telefônica Brasil. Not vague. Not inferred. Not some little logo scraped from the bottom of a pitch deck. Page says it was tasked with creating an RPO to expand Vivo Telefônica’s technology and commercial teams in Brazil.
The case study lists cyber security experts, software developers, systems analysts, architects, data engineers and commercial roles. It talks about candidate searches across Brazil, Gupy ATS management, Salesforce usage, daily, weekly and monthly reporting, manager training, recruitment days and gamified recruitment where candidates had to plan the development of an app.
Then Page rings its favourite little bell again: 689 lives changed.
There it is. The Page hymn sheet. Lives changed. Lives transformed. Lives counted, packaged, polished and shoved into a case study like recruitment is a fucking baptismal font with a dashboard.
But this is Vivo Telefônica. And the public file has a regulator’s boot print on it.
The Phone Shop With A Fine
Brazil’s competition authority, CADE, convicted Claro, Oi Móvel and Telefônica Brasil over antitrust violations in a Correios tender. The companies had formed a consortium to participate in a reverse auction for data transmission services, and CADE said the association harmed the competitive environment and the operations of other market players.
Total fines: BRL 783 million. Telefônica Brasil’s slice was reported at around BRL 121.7 million.
That is not a minor billing wobble. That is not “somebody forgot to tick the compliance box before lunch”. That is a competition authority saying telecom giants fucked with the playing field in a public procurement process.
Page calls Vivo Telefônica a hiring success. CADE called Telefônica Brasil part of the problem.
TCAP calls it a phone shop with cartel stink in the stockroom.
Lives Changed, Markets Bent
Page loves “lives changed” because it sounds soft. It makes recruitment feel noble. It makes the machinery look human. It turns sourcing, screening, reporting, ATS handling and sales hiring into a little moral parade with balloons tied to the spreadsheet.
Fine. Let’s talk lives changed.
Lives are changed when workers get jobs. Lives are also changed when markets are bent, tenders are polluted and public contracts get dragged through antitrust sewage. A public tender is not a toy. It is public money, public infrastructure and public trust.
When the competition authority says the competitive environment was harmed, the damage is not just an accounting note. It is the smell of rigged furniture in a public room.
Page’s case study gives us 689 lives changed. CADE gives us BRL 783 million in fines. Both numbers can sit on the same table. One smells like recruiter perfume. The other smells like burnt wiring behind the switchboard.
The RPO Meat Grinder
Page’s Vivo case study is a proper recruitment machine. Dedicated team, candidate searches throughout Brazil, manager interview training, recruitment days, competency-based interviewing, gamified hiring, ATS control, Salesforce usage, shortlist targets, reports, indicators, strategy, action, results.
All the clean little organs of Recruitment Process Outsourcing.
Page does not just introduce candidates and wander off. It builds pipes. It builds process. It builds the intake system. It warms the funnel and counts the bodies as they move through.
That is why these case studies matter. They are not harmless trophy postcards. They show where Page plugs itself into corporate machinery. And here the machinery belongs to Vivo Telefônica Brasil, sitting inside a wider Telefônica Brasil file that includes a major antitrust conviction over a Correios tender.
Page saw complexity. TCAP saw a recruitment meat grinder screwed onto a fined telecom.
Gamified Recruitment, Serious Filth
The gamified recruitment line deserves its own ugly little corner.
Page says candidates had to plan the development of an app. Lovely. A little digital obstacle course. A nice modern hiring activity. Probably some bright-eyed candidates trying to look innovative while the recruiter watches the clock and the client waits for a shortlist.
But the contrast is fucking grim. On one side, gamified recruitment. On the other, a regulator finding antitrust violations in a public tender.
Mini app challenge in the front room. Competition-law stink in the back.
That is corporate polish in a Page case study: shiny talent language over a floor that creaks when the regulator walks in.
Women In Tech, Over 50s And The Usual Halo Polish
Page also says the Vivo project focused on finding women for tech jobs and people over 50 for shortlist diversity.
Good. Women in tech matter. Older candidates matter. Shortlist diversity matters. Nobody at TCAP is against any of that. The problem is the halo polish.
Corporate case studies love laundering the room through diversity language. They take a hard-edged commercial recruitment project and soften it with human words. Women. Over 50s. Inclusion. Opportunity. Lives changed.
Then everyone is supposed to clap and stop asking what the client’s public record looks like. No. Diversity language does not disinfect antitrust history. A shortlist does not become holy because someone added a woman and a fifty-year-old to the funnel.
If Page wants credit for plugging candidates into Vivo Telefônica’s expansion, Page also gets the question that comes with it: what kind of corporate machine was that funnel feeding?
The Correios Tender Smell
Correios is not some private little clubhouse. It is Brazil’s postal service. A public institution. A national infrastructure body. A tender for data transmission services in that context is not just another sales opportunity.
CADE said Claro, Oi Móvel and Telefônica Brasil formed a consortium for a reverse auction and that the association harmed the competitive environment and other market players. That is the kind of sentence that should make procurement people sweat through the good shirt.
Because behind every tender is the boring bit that keeps public life functioning: competition, price, fairness, access, service and trust. Break that and the whole room starts to smell like someone hid meat in the ceiling.
And here comes Page, years later or elsewhere in the corporate timeline, happily turning Vivo Telefônica into a recruitment success story.
The regulator found a competition problem. Page found a case study. TCAP found the fucking join.
Page’s Favourite Trick
This is Page’s favourite trick. Take the customer, scrub the edges, count the hires, add diversity, add tech, add a quote and call them lives changed.
Vivo Telefônica becomes 689 lives changed. Cyber security. Software. Data. Sales. Women in tech. Over-50 candidates. Gamified recruitment. Gupy. Salesforce. RPO.
Nothing about CADE in the shine. Nothing about the Correios tender in the glow. Nothing about BRL 783 million in fines next to the case-study trumpet.
Of course not. That would ruin the little recruitment picnic.
But TCAP does not work for Page’s marketing team. TCAP checks the floorboards.
The Candidate Question
This one matters because PageGroup is already under TCAP scrutiny for my own Page experience: disability discrimination issues, DSAR mess, redactions, joinder games, ET3 silence and a corporate machine that suddenly got very foggy when a disabled claimant refused to play dead.
So yes, Page’s customer choices matter.
When Page sells itself as a people business, its customers are not decorative wallpaper. They are evidence of where the machine is comfortable plugging in.
Tobacco. Banking filth. Chemical family trees from hell. Disability-as-product. Now a telecom case study sitting beside an antitrust conviction involving Telefônica Brasil.
Different sectors. Same pattern.
Page stands near the money. TCAP stands near the stain.
The Question For Page
Why Vivo Telefônica? Why this telecom case study? Why the shiny RPO story beside a Telefônica Brasil antitrust conviction over a Correios tender?
Did anyone ask about CADE? Did anyone ask about the BRL 783 million in fines? Did anyone ask about Telefônica Brasil’s role? Did anyone ask whether “689 lives changed” sounds a bit sick when the wider corporate file includes a regulator finding harm to the competitive environment in a public tender?
Or did Page just see cyber security roles, software developers, data engineers, sales expansion, women-in-tech polish, over-50 shortlist diversity and another chance to write “lives changed” while the procurement smell sat in the corner with its shoes off?
Because from here, it looks simple.
Page saw a telecom expansion. TCAP saw a cartel-fined phone shop.
The Page Partners Map
This is where Page Partners has gone now. Imperial was recruitment smoke for the cancer factory. BAT was the second black lung. HSBC was PageGroup’s cartel-laundry banker. Evonik was the chemical family tree from hell. The disability case study was the inclusion trophy cabinet. Vivo Telefônica is the cartel-fined phone shop.
Different rooms. Same building. Same corporate habit of polishing the door while something ugly leaks from the back.
Page wants the reader to admire the hiring machine. TCAP is following the pipework.
The Closing Signal
Page Outsourcing can keep the Vivo Telefônica case study. 689 lives changed. RPO. Cyber security. Software development. Systems analysts. Architects. Data engineers. Commercial roles. Gupy. Salesforce. Recruitment days. Women in tech. Over-50 candidates. Gamified hiring.
Lovely.
But TCAP is not reading it like a talent-acquisition manager. TCAP is reading it like someone who notices when a recruitment success story sits near a competition authority’s conviction file.
Page saw a client. CADE saw antitrust violations. TCAP saw the phone shop with the fine notice still warm on the counter.
That is not just a case study.
That is a recruitment funnel bolted to a cartel-fined telecom.
Unredacted.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Page Outsourcing – 689 hires for the expansion of Vivo Telefônica in Brazil
- Page Resourcing – 689 hires for the expansion of Vivo Telefônica in Brazil
- CADE – CADE fines Claro, Oi Móvel and Telefônica 783 million reais for antitrust violations in Correios’ tender
- TeleTime – Cade aplica multa de R$ 783 mi para Claro, Oi e Vivo por formação de consórcio