International Organization for Migration (IOM)

training institutions, and so forth. As expected, similar databases are used more
intensively by large firms: the share of firms using mainly this channel to recruit
their personnel is almost 50 per cent among those with more than 50 employees.
Finally, professional intermediaries are used by almost 6 per cent of the firms,
while fairly negligible shares of employers use traditional channels such as job
advertisements in newspapers (2%) or hire through Public Employment Offices
(3%). The marginal role of Public Employment services in placing workers in Italian
firms will be corroborated when looking at the supply side of the labour market.
This weak performance may be due to specific inefficiencies of these public agencies,
but also to the fact that there seems to be a lack of trust and contact between the
Public Employment Offices and the entrepreneurs “who keep perceiving the PEOs
as a public sector agency they have to interact with for mandatory bureaucratic
requirements rather than an agency specialized in providing services to firms and
employers” (Censis, 2010) (p.125).
Table 7.2: Firms’ main recruiting channels, by year, industry, firm size and macro-region,
2007–2010
Informal
channels
Traditional
channels
Professional
intermediaries
Firms’
internal
database
Public
Employment
Offices
Other Total
2007 51.8 6.8 6.8 25.3 5.6 3.7 100
2008 53.7 5.0 8.2 24.7 4.4 3.9 100
2009 49.7 6.1 10.2 21.5 6.3 6.2 100
2010 61.1 2.3 5.7
Year 2010
Industry:
24.6 2.9 3.4 100
Manufacture &
Construction
64.8 1.7 6.2 20.8 3.8 2.7 100
Services 59.0 2.7 5.4 26.7 2.3 3.9 100
Firm size (# employees):
1-9 65.8 2.1 3.9 22.0 2.7 3.4 100
10-49 47.0 2.9 10.2 32.9 4.1 3.0 100
50-249 21.7 3.5 21.7 46.3 2.8 4.0 100
250-499 13.7 2.4 27.7 46.3 4.0 5.8 100
500 10.2 3.7 27.1
Macro-region:
48.9 2.4 7.7 100
North West 56.1 3.1 7.8 26.1 2.6 4.3 100
North East 55.4 3.0 7.2 26.2 3.9 4.4 100
Center 62.7 2.1 4.8 23.7 3.8 2.9 100
South & Islands 69.4 1.2 2.9 22.6 1.7 2.3 100
Informal channels: direct knowledge of the candidate, referral by other employee, acquaintance,
customer or supplier, etc.
Traditional channels: job ads on nespaper, magazines, etc.
Professional intermediaries: temporary workers agencies, private recruitment agencies, trade
associations, internet, etc.
Note: This is table is taken from (Excelsior, Unioncamere, 2011b) (p. 18).
country studIes – ITALY
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