Talent survey highlights marked shortage of engineers

10 Jun 2011

Manpower’s sixth annual Talent Shortage Survey has revealed employers are finding it more difficult now to find engineers compared to the previous survey, while sales positions continue to be the hardest to fill.

Engineers are the second-hardest job category to fill now, compared with the eighth hardest in the 2010 survey.

“While not all Irish employers are feeling the pain associated with the global talent shortage, some continue to be frustrated by the conundrum of an over supply of available workers and an under supply of qualified talent,” said Krissie Davies, Manpower Ireland managing director.

“Sales positions are once again the hardest jobs to fill, and in an era when companies are forced to do more with less, jobs have structurally changed and the required skill sets have, too.”

Among employers reporting difficulty filling positions, 13pc cited a lack of “hard” or technical skills as the reason why they cannot find the right talent, with 11pc citing a lack of experience and 8pc of employers saying candidates lacked knowledge of business/academic disciplines/industry or formal qualifications.

Entering the ‘Human Age’

According to ManpowerGroup, the world has entered the ‘Human Age’, where human potential has become the key differentiator and the major agent of economic growth.

As a result, skills will rapidly become outdated and individuals need to maintain a “learning mindset”.

“What we hear from the companies we talk to is that there are an increasing number of opportunities in the sales and engineering sectors but employers are having difficulty finding people with the right level of experience, specific industry knowledge or multilingual skills needed,” said Davies.

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