English
EspañolToday we interview Giorgio Assoldelli, founding partner of G.B. Parrucchieri with his brother Bruno, as well as teacher of many training courses for hairdressers.
• What does your company do?
Our salon in Vicenza deals with men, women and children’s hair styling. We also carry out beard cutting, skin analysis, manicure, make-up, advertising photo shoots.
• What are the services in which you excel?
We are very famous as repairers! It often happens that some people come to us to correct mistakes caused by other hairdressers … and they end up becoming our customers! In fact, we are very attentive to the morphology of people and thanks to the analysis of the scalp with optical fibre microcamera we can perfectly understand what the appropriate treatment for each type of hair is. We also use particular products with a very low ecological impact because we are interested in both the health of people and of the environment.
• How many employees do you have?
In addition to me and my brother Bruno, there are 2 other employees. From mid-November we will also host an Italian trainee.
• What kind of customers do you have?
Our clientele is very varied: from the eighty-year-old lady to the young punk. It’s up to us to make them interact with each other! We also have English speaking costumers, due to our proximity to the U.S. Army military base, and others coming from outside Vicenza. We are not afraid of demanding customers, actually they are a great incentive for us!
• How long have you been welcoming trainees? In which areas? From which country have you welcomed trainee so far?
We’ve been welcoming trainees as hairdressers for several years now. Those we have had so far came from Spain, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Romania, and obviously Italy.
• Which are the tasks assigned to them? What can a trainee learn from you?
Trainees usually start with activities such as hair washing or dyeing (if they already have experience). Then of course it depends very much also on their preparation, motivation etc…
Here they can surely learn to love their work and understand if this is what they want to do in the future. In addition, we do not use foil for color, carcinogenic pigments or electromagnetic sources, which differentiates us from most hair salons and therefore allows trainees to experience something totally new compared to what they learned at school or in previous work experiences.
• How do you organize the placement and the „follow-up“ of the trainee?
The trainees work always side by side with a colleague who teaches them everything they need to know (from tidying up the towels to fulfill the company’s quality standards). Teamwork and collaboration in the workplace are very important aspects for us, which we try to convey to the trainees as well. The whole working day is therefore an opportunity to learn, in which the trainee, looking at colleagues and working first with one and then with the other, never stops to learn.
• How do the company’s employees react to the trainee? And the costumers?
Employees react well to changes, and customers tend to be happy too. I always try to explain to them what this project is about and there are also those who gladly request the services of the trainees.
• How do you get on with trainees from Europe?
Apart from a few cases, we have always enjoyed the European trainees. We also noticed that in general they have a good preparation, I would say better than their Italian counterparts.
• Does your staff speak English? Do you think it is possible to organize traineeships only in English at your company?
My brother Bruno and I, we speak English, so it is absolutely feasible.
• Tell us something funny that happened to you!
Last year we hosted a Spanish trainee, with whom we created such a good relationship of trust and friendship, that one day he confided a very personal matter to me and that pleased me very much. I remember that at the end of his traineeship we organized a dinner together and we are still in touch through Facebook. This was such a nice experience!
Interviewer: Federica Perazzolo, Eurocultura
04/10/2018
