When he began his professional adventure Pete Sampras sat on top of the world, something like 24 years after it’s Nole Djokovic who is at the summit. If there is a field that has changed more than tennis in this time frame it’s the labour market and Rosario Rasizza, founder and CEO of Openjobmetis, leading Italian employment agency (the only listed on the stock exchange), knows something about it. “I decided to support this project because tennis is my passion, it has always been part of my world – debuts Rasizza – and then because there is the concrete possibility to help young talent”.
How did your passion for the racket start?
“I was 13 years old and, being the son of Ignis employees, I could hang around the company’s Cral (employee recreational facility). I passed days and days watching the instructor teach the kids of the tennis school, and it’s there that I became interested, even if at the start I couldn’t take part. Back then sports were not for everyone. Then, one Christmas, I received a racket as a present, the famous VIP branded Adriano Panatta. I began playing against the wall and, after a year, the club’s instructor took pity on me and told me to enter the court.”
Idols of your teenage years?
“All the champions of the time. From the Italians Panatta and Barazzutti to the stars like Borg, McEnroe, Lendl. They were all big matches, huge endless rivalries. When I can I also follow tennis live. In the last years I often attended the Monte-Carlo final, and was witness to Fognini’s victory”.
You owe to tennis also an intuition that went on to mark your entrepreneurial success…
“While waiting to start my military service, I had begun working at the Casciago Tennis Club. My first assignment wasn’t to play tennis but to water the courts and clean the changing rooms. A noble work that enabled me to meet the real business owners. I helped them warm up and in the changing rooms they would tell me of their company woes, which were, trivially, ‘I’m missing this guy, I’m missing that guy, Giovanni did not show up’. Maybe it’s at that point that my passion for this area was born. And it was precisely in that club where I had my first temporary agency workers: they were none other than my ex-schoolmates who I had recruited”.
What affinities do you see between tennis and your work?
“One of the characteristics of tennis that you find in the labour market, especially in my position, is loneliness. I mean, you are alone, there is a moment where you need to decide on your own just like on the court. Then resilience, the ability to suffer and the ability to understand that it is never over. Even after a catastrophic event like the pandemic you can bounce back, there is still a fifteen up for grabs and you can do it.”
Another point of contact with a company like yours is the skill to discover and give value to talent.
“Also the spotting of talent is a job that must be trained. There are characteristics common for all, like professionalism, dedication, sacrifices and in our world most of all availability. Aspects that might seem obvious, but that allow you to understand whether one really has interest to commit. The two world that maybe bring tennis and work together are sacrifice and dream: the dream to be there and the sacrifice made to get there. Which is, after all, what I do every morning. Staying here at the desk and leading more than 650 employees is not easy, but it must be done, even when you would want to do something else.”
Another important aspect is to train one’s own talent pool well.
“The ability to coach new players is fundamental for a company. I had the possibility to train, in part, my son, to whom I conveyed my passion for tennis. He plays well, approaches the net, but thinks he can beat me and I let him believe it. There will be a day when I’ll give him a 6-0 6-0 and it will end there.”