At the end of the match, they exchange a few words. “You’re looking for work, right? asks Renan. An employee of Lidl, he now represents the retail chain for which he has worked for several years. This athlete has never played football in his life. Thursday morning, in Rennes, he nevertheless crossed paths with Lamine, a very skilled 19-year-old fellow with a ball at his foot.
Without this soccer tournament mixing job seekers and recruiters, the two men would probably never have met. By evolving together on the field, they sympathized a little, before taking time to discuss at the end of the match. “I have been looking for work for two or three months. It’s starting to take a long time, I want to find it, ”explains Lamine. Without a driver’s license, the young Rennais is struggling to find a job. After promoting “good pay” and the management that Lidl offers on its logistics platform, Renan praised the carpooling solution that allows employees to come to work.
Hundreds of job seekers present
This first professional contact was made in the hubbub of the soccer fields on the Route de Lorient, in Rennes, where the third edition of the “Ça va matcher” event was held. The idea had germinated in the mind of the Face foundation, during the last Football World Cup in 2018. “The observation was simple. In working-class neighborhoods, young graduates take six to nine months longer than average to find a job. In traditional recruiting forums, they feel stigmatized because they don’t have the right name or address. There, they all have the same outfit, the candidates as well as the recruiters, ”sums up Rachel Gardize, director of the Face foundation.
A hundred people looking for work had answered present this Thursday. “It’s more than any usual appointment,” rejoices the director. Eleven companies were represented and took part in the matches, without anyone knowing who was who.
Arriving in Rennes in August, Enzo is one of the lucky candidates this morning. “Football is a pretext to meet but it works very well. In my team, I felt integrated, I was well received. There was no difference by height, skin color or age. We were all there to play together, ”sums up the 20-year-old kid, with a smirk. This former footballer hopes to make the acquaintance of companies that would agree to take him on trial. But he never imagined that his passion for football could offer him job interviews. “The values of sport are very much appreciated in the company: team spirit, mutual aid, challenge. These behaviors, we can already observe them on the ground, ”summarizes François Neuville, regional manager of Proman, one of the big French temporary work companies.
“We break the codes”
Its CSR manager also played. “We break the codes. Seeing your future employer in sportswear changes the image. Here, we are all equal, we all look alike, ”says Pauline Braibant. By coming here, the young woman hopes to make her business known and make first contacts with young people who are often off the radar of the interim.
If we were far from the level of play of the World Cup which is currently taking place in Qatar, the main thing was elsewhere. Throughout this morning of matches, then during the job dating scheduled for the afternoon, young people from the neighborhoods were able to gain confidence and express themselves, each in their own way. “When they have an interview, they stress, they are not comfortable. Sometimes they don’t show up, though we don’t really know why. Here, it’s less conventional, it plays down the meeting,” says Julie Delourmel, employment adviser at of the We Ker local mission network. “At least we’re relaxed here,” says Lamine.