“Your determination is your advantage, and your personal qualities are your strength.” In front of a gathering of around fifteen volunteers seeking to get back into work, Pierre Alzingre, founder and CEO of Visionari, did not deliver a traditional speech. Joined by Stéphanie Suretat, coach and sophrologist, he spent the entire meeting trying to help them identify their key personal qualities, known as soft skills, that they can highlight during job interviews.
This is also what the program Montpellier-Grabels Zero Unemployment Territory is all about: creating a long-term approach to open up new possibilities for volunteers involved in the initiative. When interviewing candidates, employers no longer consider diplomas alone to be sufficient. Increasingly, they also expect candidates to possess key behavioral skills that are crucial in the workplace, such as creativity, inspiration, listening skills, respect, integrity, teamwork, problem-solving abilities, critical thinking, stress management, and good judgment. In other words, these are interpersonal skills that complement technical skills.
After presenting themselves one after the other, participants were invited to take part in a series of exercises designed to identify their defining qualities and interests: a personality test using the questionnaire on the 16personalities website, followed by the selection of a talent verb and a life verb that resonated with their values.
Inventing, crafting, managing, leading, facilitating, selling, and communicating were the first set; caring, serving, building, protecting, entertaining, nurturing, cultivating, beautifying, and teaching were the second. ”If you combine your soft skills, identified through the personality test, with one of these verbs, nothing can stop you,” explained Stéphanie Suretat.
This novel approach was very much appreciated. ”It’s very innovative. This method helps us discover our skills and who we are, encouraging us to reflect on ourselves,” noted Claire. ”We had a moving, very heartfelt experience. It’s not at all what I expected,” added Hind, who, like the other participants, asked for a follow-up to this meeting.
Pierre Alzingre and Stéphanie Suretat were happy to accept. The pair will return at the start of the new school year to continue the work they have begun, and both are calling on business leaders to contribute their time on a voluntary basis, as they did, to the Cafés des Volontaires events.
“Long-term unemployment robs those who experience it of their dignity and, even worse, it strips them of what little confidence they have left. Helping these people take control of their own lives is what motivated us,” insisted Pierre Alzingre and Stéphanie Suretat, before concluding: ”Not only that, but we also learn a lot from their determination and desire to get out of this situation.”
