In just two years, the Avio group, a leading industrial group in the design, development and production of space propulsion with more than a thousand employees and headquarters in Colleferro in Lazio but also present abroad, has hired more than 300 people including recent graduates and senior professionals and is now looking for other specialized technicians. But after Covid the job market has changed and hiring has become more difficult than before. The reason is explained, in this interview with FIRSTonline, by Stefano Bottaro, Avio's Personnel Director.
Doctor Bottaro, fortunately your group is an industrial reality which these days is looking for new personnel and which wants to hire 30 specialized technicians – from planners to draftsmen, from system engineers to technologists and quality experts – and 10 units for management including project manager, sales manager and contract officer: do you think you can find them easily on the market or – as happens in many companies – supply and demand struggle to meet and hiring is more difficult than you think?
In the past two years, with the recovery of the labor market post Covid, certainly the search for new professionalism has come more difficult. Covid has changed not only the habits of all of us, but also the processes of many companies, such as ours. Today the companies have resumed working at full capacity and the new projects need highly trained professionals, motivated and available a work more smoothly. People have different needs and priorities than before, so it's not always easy for business needs and individual needs to meet on the same level. In addition, the recovery of activities has put the labor market back in motion e more and more labor demand intercepts less supply. All these factors have made our recruitment work more tiring, but no less effective. In just two years they were hired in Avio Group about 300 Guests, between young recent graduates and senior professionals who hold positions of responsibility. We have made major changes to our selection process, making it faster and more digital, implementing new profile interception platforms and strengthening the HR team.
What age and what curriculum should the personnel you are looking for have?
The Avio Group is a company with over 100 years of history that has evolved towards ithe space sector, sector that requires highly technical and prepared professionalism, therefore our research is 90% oriented towards technical profiles, mainly engineering. Our engineers are specialized in electrical-electronics, aerospace, mechanics, management and come from all over Italy and abroad. There are no age criteria in our selections, we are open to looking for and hiring young graduates, experienced engineers and managerial figures ready to fill roles of responsibility. At this moment, given Avio's future plans, our searches are open to profiles of any age, background in others neighboring sectors (automotive and pharmaceutical for example), and with previous experience on activities that require a know-how precious and innovative for us.
Obviously the Group has grown not only in technical professionalism, but management and staff as well. Our research is also aimed at physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists and our professionals cover important managerial roles within departments such as sales, programmes, purchasing. A large company is not made up only of business functions, Avio has therefore also grown thanks to professionals who carry out important activities in support of the corporate business functions: HR, communication, controlling, administration.
On average, how much does a new hire in Avio earn for the profiles you are looking for?
It is a delicate question that cannot require a clear and precise answer, given the diversity of professionalism who have been hired in recent years, I also believe it is ethically unprofessional to communicate sensitive data concerning the Avio Group. I can definitely say that our company wages they are competitive compared to the reference market. We offer not only positions suited to the person's experience, but also incentive bonuses (MBO and production bonuses) and a welfare system that we are improving and adapting to the needs of our employees. We are working and have worked for the past year at improve our environments of work starting from the canteen, which today we can say is one of our best services.
Furthermore, it is active in these weeks a climate analysis that my team has developed to collect feedback from the corporate population on various topics, including the flexible hours, smart working, the salary-incentive system and many others. The results will allow us to implement further improvement actions and define new management policies, so as to guarantee services that are increasingly in line with the needs of our people.
In the specific case of the Avio group, why is it so difficult to match job supply and demand? Because the headquarters - Colleferro - is far from the big cities, because the salary is not satisfactory, because especially the younger ones love being employed less than once and want more time and more freedom of organization or for what other reason?
As far as the Avio Group is concerned, being present in one town on the outskirts of Rome, about 50 km away, certainly makes our search for personnel more difficult compared to many other companies in the same sector located in Rome. It is a difficulty that adds up to the others, which all the other companies have encountered since the resumption of post-Covid activities. I believe that our position is a weak point and a strong point at the same time, since the professionals who wish to join Avio come from all over the Region and beyond and can decide to find housing solutions that best suit their needs. There are those who decide to live in Colleferro, a few km from the offices, there are those who live in Rome and decide to take a "small daily trip" with little impact on time as they go against traffic, and those who live in towns and cities neighboring, finding a more balanced and less relevant solution from an economic point of view. Our geographical position is therefore a fact, which for those who decide to work with us often involves not only a change of company, but also a change of city. To this must be added another change, in my opinion epochal: the habits and priorities of all of us. More and more today it has become important to create the right and subjective work-life balance and more and more people are putting family and personal interests above job satisfaction. This has forced the companies, and therefore also Avio, to review their processes and internal policies in order to create greater flexibility and solutions, such as smart working, to guarantee everyone more time to devote to personal life.
With "Invest in Lazio", the Region has recently presented an assistance intervention dedicated to multinationals, including in particular a matchmaking service with Universities, Research Centers and SMEs. How do you judge this initiative?
I absolutely find very useful and productive that public institutions, in this case the Region, activate initiatives aimed at creating assistance and support for large companies, such as Avio. The link with local institutions has allowed us over many years to become a point of reference for the city of Colleferro, giving life to initiatives and events (see also all the initiatives undertaken for Colleferro Città dello Spazio 2022) which have given prestige to a city in the Roman province and have allowed our company to increase its attractiveness towards professionals from all over Italy and abroad. Furthermore, the matching with the is fundamental for us world of education, from technical institutes to universities. Many collaborations and projects are already active today that see young school and university students come into contact with our company; being able to also have support from the Lazio Region would represent for us a further step towards a system that immediately puts supply and demand for work online with respect to mutual needs. In summary, I always believe that these initiatives should be supported and implemented; I would add that it would be just as useful to give space to SMEs, which in Italy represent an important basin for our economy.
