Head hunting among recommendations, leaving difficulties and decreased technical skills

As those who follow me on Linkedin probably know,

MICROingranaggi is recruiting a CNC lathe operator for a multi-spindle lathe machine.

A simple operation? Far from it, because it is truly difficult to find specialized technical operators (a subject broached many a time in the past). Something that inevitably leads me to reflect once again on the subject of recruiting personnel (with and without specialized skills).

Many businessmen – or, more generally, many Italian employers – tend not to trust people they don’t know and prefer to recruit persons recommended by colleagues, friends, acquaintances or family.
I believe this practice to be the result of the exasperation of the employee-employer conflict that has emerged over recent years and has, in my mind, poorly interpreted the protection of employees (the notoriously weaker party), and led to a very tense atmosphere that is worrying for enterprises.

There is a risk, in fact, that an enterprise will hire incompetent individuals or, even worse, encounter difficulties when this or that employee leaves the firm, where the “false belief” that recommended persons are more reliable has been created, when in actual fact, this is not the case (and usually quite the opposite).

There are many countries, like the USA or even our neighbour Switzerland, where employment relations can be terminated without excessive restrictions, despite being governed by specific regulatory frameworks. And it is no coincidence that these are the countries that have a very low, or rapidly decreasing unemployment rate (thanks to this extreme flexibility on both sides).

Going back to specialized personnel, I get the impression – based also on the feedback from persons in similar situations as that of MICROingranaggi – that

we are witnessing a widespread decrease in technical skills.

A decrease partly due to training problems at an educational level, and partly due to a different modus operandi adopted by enterprises.
Let me explain. In the past when, for instance, the head of the technical department has 10 years to go before retirement, a younger employee was assigned to work alongside him to receive the correct training for the job. This meant that for ten years the company had to pay two salaries instead of one but, at the same time, was able to count on a new head of department for the next thirty years, duly trained to ensure a smooth take over of the position when the retirement time came.
Something that nowadays, for a variety of reasons, does not happen.

Why is this, in your opinion?