Matteo Pasca: companies are looking for more than technical skills

The problem is the preservation of those skills and competences to make quality shoes. Machines can do a lot but by the end of the day what makes the difference between quality shoes and not-quality shoes is the final touch of the workers. So, you need train skilled workers.

You need to train people. If you see the job profiles inside a footwear factory, for those higher profiles like Pattern Makers, Engineers, Production Planners, Chief of Production, you can move people from other regions; but when we talk about people that work in the conveyor line it is very difficult to move these people from other areas so you need to have these people in the area where the factory is located. It is very regional.

Short term strategies mean you have to find someone who is unemployed with experience in a factory and manual skills that are similar to those needed inside a shoe factory and you need to give them specific training on shoes.
Long term strategies means working with long term training: one-year courses or three-year courses under the umbrella of professional training. These strategies don’t help the factories which have immediate need of workers.
So, for those factories who need workers immediately it is much better to work on unemployed people who have similar skills and train them on specific skills on the short term.

Today, the companies are not looking only to the technical skills. We receive a lot of requests from companies for workers, and the first requirement is for good people. Good people means humble, people who get to work in time, means people that won’t be absence from their workplace. These are the priorities of the companies. And then they will also need manual skills and technicalities. But the technicalities you can provide latter.
It is not impossible to find the people, because we have a high unemployment rate, so it is possible to find the people. You need to find them and you need to educate them.