Interviews with Stêffani

Stêffani is a fellow career workshop volunteer who helped Andes and I finding people to interview for my school essay about entrepreneurship.  One of the first people Stêffani brought us to was her friend Fabiana and her husband Marcio right after we taught the Saturday career workshop (and so yes we were super exhausted!)

Fabiana -  Fabiana is a hair dresser that has owned her own hair salon for the last year and a half.  Of all the things that she had the most problems with was finding qualified people to hire in her work place.  Fabiana commented that she has had to put up with a lot of worker related problems for a while.  Her concern reflects a general problem that many start up companies face in Brazil.  Unfortunately, Brazil laws tend to favor the employee over the employer, leading many employees to be more lazy, more sloppy, and demand more rights from the work.  Another hair dresser that I interviewed named Cila expressed the same opinion. Cila said she prefers hiring young employees and training them than already experienced workers mainly to avoid problems.  Another difficulty she mentioned in her line of business is the high level of competition.  Compared to the US, Brazil has many more hair salons spread out throughout the country.  On the street close to where we are staying, I counted at least 7 salons on a 2 block span.