Despite offering above-average salaries and having launched a recruitment campaign visible even on Milan’s trams, the Calabrian entrepreneur Saverio Cutrullà (originally from Piscopio, a hamlet of Vibo Valentia), founder of the Save group, has not yet received even one application for the thirty technical positions open in the offices of Northern Italy. He explained it well in an interview with Corriere della Sera.
«We are looking for electricians, plumbers and bricklayers. Is it possible that in Milan there are only creatives and models?” reads the provocative slogan chosen by the manager, who for 35 years has led the group born in Vibo Valentia and today a point of reference in the sustainable facility management sector, with six companies, operational offices in seven regions – including Milan, Turin, Alessandria, Modena and Abruzzo – and around a hundred employees.
Required figures and salaries
For the Tribiano hub, in the Milan area, Save Group is looking for around 30 professionals:
– electricians
– thermo-hydraulics
– refrigerator workers
– excavatorists
– drivers
– expert labourers
– project manager
The contract offered is that of the Metalworking Industry CCNL, with increases of up to 40% linked to skills and experience.
Salaries start from 1,800 euros per month and reach up to 2,700 euros for project managers. An offer made even more competitive by incentives that can add 300–400 euros to your paycheck.
Despite this, Cutrullà explains, «no job applications have yet arrived. There is an enormous difficulty in finding young people willing to engage in a technical profession, which requires getting their hands dirty.” The required requirements, he specifies, are a diploma from an industrial or professional technical institute; experience is not essential, because a period of coaching is foreseen.
«It seems that many young people aspire to professions considered “lighter”, such as creative ones, models or influencers. But the problem doesn’t just concern salaries: it is a cultural and structural issue.”
Why are there no technicians? The causes according to Cutrullà
The entrepreneur identifies several reasons behind the crisis of specialized manpower, especially in the areas with the highest employment:
– birth rate decline, which reduces the number of available young people;
– new aspirational models, more oriented towards digital or creative work;
– distorted perception of technical professions, penalized by years of narratives that have privileged the advanced tertiary sector;
– absence of a long-term political strategy, which has created a cultural division between “series A and series B” jobs;
– persistence of irregular work in some sectors, which has undermined the credibility of the technical supply chain.
«Specialization is true wealth»
Finally, Cutrullà launches a direct message to young people:
«Technical professions today represent the quickest way to enter the middle-upper class of the future. Specialization is the new form of uniqueness. An electrician, a plumber, a highly qualified maintenance worker or a renewable energy technician are figures that technology will hardly be able to replace. And this unrepeatability translates into economic security and professional stability.”