Over 30 highly qualified professionals attend the Be Basque Talent Meeting held in Milan
- The Basque association has carried out this meeting with the aim of attracting qualified talent to Basque companies
On the 29th March Bizkaia Talent held a new Be Basque Talent Meeting in Milan with the aim of attracting highly qualified professionals and showing the way to those people who are considering developing their professional careers in the Basque Country. The event, which was sponsored by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the Basque Government’s business development agency SPRI Group, hosted 34 people.
The Milan meeting took place in a relaxed atmosphere in which Mr Ivan Jimenez, the managing director, and Mr Ander Markina, responsible for the customer relationship service, provided a snapshot of the current situation in the Basque labour market, together with the opportunities for professional development currently on offer in the Basque Country.
The BBTM also featured the testimony of an Italian professional who opted to take a chance on developing his career in the Basque Country, as well as the participation of the IeTeam Consultores consultancy and the Sarralle industrial group, who provided an in-depth overview of the work opportunities currently offered by Basque companies.
One aspect to highlight is the wide variety of professionals who attended the event, both from the perspective of the sectors in which they work (information and communication technologies, scientific-technological, manufacturing, construction etc) and in terms of their origin (33% Basques, 33% Italians, 28% South Americans and 6% from the Spanish State).
Salaries, quality and cost of living and fiscal incentives
One of the main concerns expressed by the participants was related to the question of salaries. Along these lines, Bizkaia Talent provided a comparative study by means of Big Data analysis, of some of the work positions most in demand in the Milan and Basque Country areas: software developers, software engineers and electrical engineers. While in the Milan area there is a better relationship between salaries and cost of living, the fiscal advantages introduced by the Basque Country tax system enable highly qualified professionals to acquire a series of benefits (a reduction of up to 50% of income tax for 11 years when they have resided outside the Spanish State in the last 5 years), which once applied increase their spending power in the Basque Country.
Another incentive which increases interest amongst professionals to move to the Basque Country is the quality of living, an area in which the Basque Country features amongst the top places in Europe, in this case above Milan and its region of Lombardy, according to OECD and European Commission data. To illustrate this 78% of the participants claimed at the Milan BBTM that they could see themselves working in the Basque Country within five years.
Attraction of talent in numerous countries
Since 2008 when the Basque association started to organize its thematic events, it has explored a large number of countries (France, the Netherlands, the United States, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark and the United Kingdom) in its search for qualified talent with work experience in the Basque Country’s strategic sectors. This is, however, the first time that it has organised a BBTM in Italy.
