With unemployment remaining at the lowest levels seen since 2007, organisations are chasing an increasingly elusive talent pool in order to fill their skills gaps and allow their businesses to grow.
To help us understand how this is impacting organisations globally, we asked nearly 40,000 employers in 43 countries and territories:
- How much difficulty they are having filling roles compared to last year
- Which skills are the most difficult to find, and why
- What are they doing to solve talent shortages
Have a look at the infographic above to find out more about what employers from across Ireland told us.
Professional talent shortages in Ireland
Technicians (quality controllers, technical staff), Engineers (chemical, electrical, civil and mechanical) and Professionals (project managers, lawyers, researchers) were all ranked in the top 10 for the hardest skills to find in Ireland. Medium sized (50 - 249 employees) organisations are experiencing the greatest difficulties in filling job vacancies.
The key reasons cited for the difficulty in finding the right talent are: a lack of candidates with the right experience (28%), a lack of applicants (26%), and skills (18%), an expectation for higher pay than is offered (7%) and a lack of the required soft skills (7%).
Organisations with skills shortages in these areas, and other fields struggling to find niche talent such as IT, should revisit their approach to talent, building an effective talent strategy made up of the four key elements:
- Build - invest in learning and development to grow your talent pipeline
- Buy - Go to external market to find the best talent that can't be built in-house in the timeframe required
- Borrow - Cultivate communities of talent outside the organisation, including part-time, freelance, contract and temporary workers to complement existing skills
- Bridge - Help people move on and move up to new roles inside or outside the organisation.
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