My name is Marcela Oliveira and I am the founder of the course Ricerca Attiva del Lavoro (Active job search). In this article I would like to tell you a little about my story and how I started a course that has achieved so much success, being mentioned even in some national and international newspapers (if you want to read what they wrote, check our Press page).
Once upon a time, there was a young Brazilian woman who arrived in Italy, everything began in December of 2011. Telling so it seems like a fairy tale, but at the beginning of the trajectory it looked more like a plot from a drama book 😉 So, continuing the story … I came to Italy for a short vacation but, I end up fallen in love so much with this wonderful country that I decided to stay in Italy, to continue my studies in psychology.
It was all very sparkling, starting a life in a new country, but unfortunately this animation didn’t last that long. The more time passed, the more I found myself with the harsh reality: I didn’t speak Italian, I had no friends, I faced difficulty with the Italian bureaucracy and the scarcity of work still made it all more difficult.
In short, the scenario seemed totally unfavorable and I began to feel lost and depressed, constantly wondering if my choice had been right. However, I had to act and I decided to react, despite some reproaches regarding my career as a psychologist that I had left behind me.
I committed myself to studying Italian by myself, because I didn’t have the resources to go to a private Italian school and unfortunately I didn’t have any information about the free courses that are available here. When I started speaking Italian better and consequently getting to know more people, I finally had my first job as a waitress.
I was very happy when I had my first financial resources, because I was able to enrol in a private school to learn Italian. After I had reached a good level of italian, I started to attend the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.
Slowly everything started to make sense, but I often thought “how do other foreigners find a job in Italy? Do they have difficulties similar to those I faced? Can I do something for them? ”
• How the course Ricerca Attiva del lavoro was created:
These questions led me to study the issues concerning the socio-cultural inclusion of foreigners in Italy. Since at that time I was doing an internship at the Consulate General of Brazil in Milan, I started studying the Brazilian population. I realised that one of the main reasons for Brazilian immigration in Italy was by marriage and I started interviewing some people who had moved here for this reason.
In the end of my research, I realised that the work had a very big impact on the lives of these women. In other words, women who did not work tended to be more dependent on their husbands and their friendship’ circles used to be around him and his family. As a result, women who were not working showed more signs of depression and were less involved than those who worked.
With this result in hands, I began to question the role of work in the social-cultural inclusion of Brazilians in Italy. I studied the process of integrating Brazilians into the Italian labor market in my Master’s Degree in Psychology discovering that work and language have a CENTRAL role in the process of social and labor integration for foreigners.
I felt that I had to and that I could do something. I spoke with a professor of the Catholic University about my desire and the idea of doing something about this situation. I asked him if it would be possible to create a course that would give useful tools to facilitate the process of job placement for foreigners in Italy. He was very interested and put me in touch with an important Italian employment agency. I designed a four-day course and called it “Ricerca Attiva del Lavoro” (Active Job Search) course, once I finished writing it, I presented the project and it was approved.
So from 2015, I started the Ricerca Attiva del Lavoro (Active job search) course throughout Northern Italy with two main purposes: to help people understand the Italian work environment and to provide them with useful tools that would help them to become more active with their job search.
Specifically, the Ricerca Attiva del Lavoro (Active Job Search) course has a duration of 4 full days (ie we start at 9h and end at 18h), in total, there are 32 hours of course.
– The first day of the course has the theme “getting to know each other”.
What happens with your career when you change country? It is very common for work identity to be weakened and for us to forget our potential, what we know how to do and our knowledge and skills gained over time. My job during the course is to get you in touch with this information in order to make you aware of the professional project you can build. We also learn how the Italian labor market works and what are the best strategies for moving inside it.
– On the 2nd day we have as theme “the tools of active job search”.
In other words, we see how to structure both an ideal curriculum and a cover letter taking into consideration the underlying logic of the Italian labor market.
– In the 3rd day – “how to build a professional network”.
One of the most important channels for finding a job in Italy is the “informal / professional network” and this important topic we will face in the third day. You will receive many insights on how to develop and maintain it. Furthermore, you will learn more about the main types of employment contracts.
– On the 4th and last day, we will see “the selection steps”.
Think about the effort you make to get to the interview, so you don’t want to waste this opportunity, do you!? On the fourth day I will prepare you for this important meeting by giving you advice on how to best manage it. You will get to know the main questions that they may ask you, you will also learn how to answer the most demanding ones. We will do simulations and you’ll receive feedback.
A very important thing to emphasize is that this course is open to everyone, that is to all foreigners regardless of their country of origin, as well as for Italians.
Are you struggling to find a job? Do you feel lost on how and where to look for it? Do you have doubts if you have the ideal curriculum? Do you apply for job positions and nobody gives you a positive feedback?
This is the course for you. Don’t waste time and sign up NOW.
(This course is free because it is funded.)
In conclusion, I sincerely hope that this personal story can inspire you in some way. Hold on and don’t forget that “either we find a road or we’ll build one”.
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