From now on, the Government of the Azores provides a regional job-search service for certified professionals, designated as CERTIFICAR, which may be accessed at: www.certificar.azores.gov.pt.

The initiative was presented by the Regional Director for Labour, Vocational Training and Consumer Defence in Ponta Delgada today and aims to disseminate qualified professional among regional companies.
 
According to Rui Bettencourt, the new website, available on the Regional Government portal, already has 7,837 registrations. It services as "social network of accredited professionals", where one may access a wide range of information from profiles, certifications, Curricula Vita, contacts, alert devices to job ads.
 
With this measure, the Azorean Government intends to "bring closer different certified professionals, whether working or not, who wish to change job or find a new job at regional companies," stressed the Regional Director.

It is an "unprecedented and unique initiative that was envisaged in the Regional Employment Plan for 2010 - 2015. It was developed with the purpose of making the hiring of professionals more flexible, thus improving the contact between certified professionals and companies," the Regional Director explained, stressing that the new tool "complements the structural and conjunctural measures of the Regional Employment Plan" as well as "to reinforce a series of measures designed to improve the operation of the labour market."

"One of the factors preventing a more flexible and efficient hiring of good professionals in the Azores is related to the fact that many companies do not know where to find good professionals and the latter do not know where to find companies recruiting staff," revealed Rui Bettencourt. There are nearly 20,000 certified professionals in the Azores in several economic areas. Most of these professionals will be covered by Certificar system by April next year.

For the Regional Director, the new electronic platform brings advantages for professionals, whether employed or  unemployed, since it allows the dissemination of their professional profile to the public in general or just to the entities. This measure is intended to increase the visibility of the professional labour market.

The possibility of searching for job ads posted by entities, subscribing notifications via email on new job ads or other relevant information and the updating of professional information among the Regional Directorate were some of the advantages pointed out by Rui Bettencourt.

With this system, companies can search for certified professionals and access their profiles, subscribe email notifications on new certified professionals or other relevant information, post job ads and receive responses to the ads, gather further information on professional profiles and have access to advanced and unique features.

This Government website will also include other features directly related to vocational training in the Regional.
The new tool was created and designed by Azorean professionals.