Thanks to their less approximate gestures, some college students were doing better than adults. In any case, this is what those who observed and supervised them report in the fall of 2021, when Van Cleef & Arpels launched “De mains en mains”, an event in Lyon intended to initiate young people – and more generally the great public – to the jewelry trades. An experience that generated enough enthusiasm to be repeated this year, from November 26 to December 4.
“If you want to reach people and recruit with a diversity of profiles, you have to make yourself known beyond a circle of regulars. Otherwise, it is always the same people who apply,” says Marie-Aude Stocker. In 2020, this ESCP graduate, human resources director of the jeweler since 2018, suggests building an educational project on the activity of Van Cleef & Arpels. “Just after the first confinement, the media reported how young people, reduced to distance learning courses, lost in the face of the state of the world, felt disoriented. The idea of showing them that our sector could hire and provide professional fulfillment came from there. »
To get out of Parisianism, the brand’s management chose Lyon, where Van Cleef & Arpels, founded in 1906, has workshops. Through Télémaque, an association that promotes equal opportunities, Marie-Aude Stocker comes into contact with the rectorate of the academy. The latter designates an establishment: the Jules-Michelet college, in Vénissieux, which is one of the REP + (reinforced priority education networks). This is how, a year ago, craftsmen from Van Cleef & Arpels went to meet 300 middle school students from 4e and 3e to show them their know-how and allow them to try out certain gestures.
File, polish, crimp
The young people were able to file the wings of butterfly-shaped pendants, polish satin-finish metal to give it shine, set hard stones on an Alhambra four-leaf clover (the brand’s best-seller, which they may have seen on TikTok) and learn the basics of 3D design. “You see right away in some people what is called the intelligence of the hand, says a Van Cleef executive who attended the workshop. It’s amazing and intuitive: a way to hold the tool, to show delicacy…”
The questions asked by college students always revolve around the same themes: “What are your days like? », “How long does it take to make a piece of jewelry? » and, of course, “How much do you earn? “I answered them that, of course, the salaries were not those of footballers, but that, in our professions, there is the spirit of the collective, technical know-how and the guarantee of employment. »
After the first edition, a 14-year-old girl started a CAP. “For a long time, in jewelry workshops, metal was forged, which required physical strength, explains Eric de Rocquigny, Director of Operations and Businesses. The development of lost-wax casting, then of computer-aided design and the improvement of crimping tools, inspired in particular by those of dentistry, left more room for women. »
If Marie-Aude Stocker assures that “From hands to hands”, an event accompanied by demonstrations and an exhibition at the Hôtel-Dieu, “has no firm hiring targets”, she noted that teenagers willingly handed over their CVs. Round tables and a space dedicated to professional information therefore enrich the second edition. This one, always designed to reach about 300 students, is also opening up to a second college (Les Battières, in Lyon), to two new professions (jewelry design and stoning, that is to say the cutting of stones), and extends over two weekends.
“Hands to hands”, by Van Cleef & Arpels, at the InterContinental Lyon-Hôtel-Dieu, 20, quai Jules-Courmont, Lyon 2e. From November 26 to December 4.