My interview on working abroad

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w689Ik5PHiE&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Alessio Jacona interviewed me right after my keynote speech in Rome, last week. The interview is in Italian but this is the english transcript. Enjoy! 🙂

AJ:Luca Sartoni, Teamleader at 123people. Now you work in Austria, after ten years of freelance activity in Italy. Which is the distance between your previous work experience and the present one?

LS: I travel a lot so i’m not too far from the my country. But i have to say that the work environment is very different in Austria compared to Italy. It’s true that i was a freelance in Italy and now i work in a corporate environment so it’s not easy to compare.

I find very difficult to explain to my Austrian colleagues some of the most common italian practices. For instance the internships. Not a single international company would ever rely a relevant activity within the business only on the internship workers. It Italy is pretty common to rely on people working for free.

Out of Italy is not common to be late on payments and to rely on strange accommodations between companies. Everything that is business is strongly regulated and everything is defined in written form.

Then i have to say that competition is really lower in the italian market.

AJ: Which advices would you give to other people regarding work experiences in another country?

I don’t want to take a position between who says that we should stay in Italy to raise up the country and the others who say we have to leave. I don’t believe there’s a common solution for everybody.

What i strongly suggest is to broaden the horizon and to look out of the border if you decide to stay and to pick up the best of your country if you decide to leave.

AJ: how Italy is perceived from Austria?
LS: Italy is a very interesting market. Also for my company it’s on of the key markets, and we decided to start the italian service pretty soon, even before more commonly considered high growing markets.

But Italy has issues, as i said before the first one is the bad attitude with the international news. In Italy we prefer a local news from a small town in the country rather than follow the international news regarding the world economy.

Then the language. For instance i met romanian students and i discovered that they graduate speaking four languages: Romanian, Russian, English and another one that they choose at the university. Of course if you know three more languages than me you have much more chances to compete in the job market. This is something we should care more in Italy.