By Laura San José
Although it may seem that finding a job in the Canary Islands today, and more specifically in Lanzarote, does not involve the titanic efforts required in other communities, more and more people are turning to different organizations to find a job. Similarly, there are companies that, in order to find a specific worker profile, have to put themselves in the hands of experts who offer them professionals who adapt to their needs.
One of the entities that serves as an intermediary between companies and workers is the Local Employment and Development Agency, which is run by the Councilor for Economy and Finance of the capital's City Council, Manuel Pérez Gopar. Precisely, these days the City Council is carrying out an intense campaign so that citizens know the advantages of this entity, which has been operating for eight years on the Island, and with very optimal results. Currently, they have more than 200 resumes of future workers waiting for companies to be interested in them.
Pérez Gopar asserts that this employment agency was created simultaneously with the development agency and that its objective was to act as an intermediary in the labor market. He comments that "as everyone knows, there are other intermediaries such as temporary employment agencies or the employment office itself, but as we understood that this was a matter of helping citizens, those interested should have more opportunities to find work." It must also be taken into account that this system is useful for the City Council itself, since when they propose their job offers they can draw on these lists. They are also useful when they make calls for the Canary Islands Employment Service Agreement, since they can find out which are the profiles most demanded by companies in the municipality of Arrecife.
The Councilor for Economy and Finance considers that this agency is sufficiently known by the residents of Arrecife, in the same way that the residents of other municipalities know the local employment agencies of the other town councils, since each of the seven town councils on the Island has its own intermediary entity. "Although I am concerned about the residents of Arrecife, I do believe that they know this system, I think it is our obligation to promote it, not only with advertising campaigns, but also with the provision of human and material resources," he assures.
In these eight years of work, the Councilor's assessment of the Employment Agency is totally positive and he provides as data that in the last six months they have sent more than one hundred people to companies in the municipality and outside the municipality and more than 95 percent of them have been hired. For Pérez Gopar this is a reason for pride and he also assures that "the Local Development Agency, through other projects such as workshop schools and employment workshops, also cares about the labor insertion of these students."
In the Councilor's opinion, finding a job in Lanzarote is not difficult, but "it is clear that the one that is found has an enormously eventual and unstable character, which is what everyone wants in order to access a loan and both in Arrecife and in the rest of the Island are the typical ones that have been considered for 15 years, that is, the hotel industry, restaurants and construction." For this reason, what they want to attend to from the Agency are the new employment niches and the new services that are being implemented on the Island and that need qualified personnel to develop them.
The profile of the person who comes in search of work is usually very varied. There are many recent university graduates who are looking for their first job opportunity and also people who have come to the Island and who want to have a greater orientation and a greater knowledge of the municipality. Finally, there are also those who have recently lost their jobs and want to have a new job opportunity. What can unite these three groups is that the ages usually range between 25 and 35 years.
As for the companies that turn to the Agency to find workers, they are usually those related to the issue of construction, especially in the most specialized aspects, or those that are dedicated to cold and heat, which demand qualified technicians.
What this body always takes into account is that the companies that come in search of help have to offer a decent job to the workers. According to Gopar, "we accept the job offers that are regulated through the Canary Islands Employment Service and we do not tolerate proposals that are not legal or that do not involve the correct working conditions for the workers."
For Pérez Gopar it is essential that the company demanding workers offers seriousness and that "it does not reject candidates for rejecting but that it has some foundations because that generates discontent in the job seeker who may think that it is not fair or satisfactory to resort to these methods." Gopar assures that "for the moment we are very happy with how it is working" since they can follow the evolution of all the hiring processes thanks to the work of a social graduate who is an expert connoisseur of the labor market.
