the search for technical talent
2019/02/05
This year, too, ten occupations were listed for which it is difficult to find suitable candidates. Causes of the difficult search can largely be divided into three categories: both a quantitative and qualitative shortage but, equally, specific working conditions can also complicate the search: shift work, unhealthy or heavy physical work, stress, atypical status,...
Top 10 bottleneck occupations:
- Site manager/conductor construction
- Industrial installations technician
- Analyst developer ICT
- Production process and methods technician
- Tractor-trailer driver
- Nurse
- Maintenance mechanic
- Mechanical draftsman
- Construction Calculator
- Construction engineering technician
AGEING
The increasing ageing population is having a global impact on the labour market. A large group of experienced workers will soon retire, giving rise to a sharp rise in replacement demand. This applies to all sectors, but certainly the health and welfare sector will be strongly confronted with this in the coming years, and this among both care providers and care users. This sector's problem of finding sufficient staff is primarily among (head) nurses, but finding skilled healthcare professionals and carers is also increasingly difficult.
CLOSURE
The cause of the bottleneck is not always a shortage of candidates or a lack of (high) education. In new bottleneck occupations such as postman, food retail salesperson and kitchen worker, several factors play a role in the problem. The demand for competences such as customer-friendliness, being able to deal with articulate customers and language skills sometimes makes it difficult to find suitable candidates. In addition, specific working conditions such as weekend and evening work, variable hours, part-time and temporary contracts are also important. The gap between candidates' and employers' expectations is sometimes wide and complicates the smooth filling of vacancies.
MOBILITY
Besides the typical causes for bottleneck employment, mobility is also an additional stumbling block. A lot of jobseekers do not have their own transport, the public transport offer is not always satisfactory and congested roads deter potential candidates due to the long commute.
STATISTICALLY TOUGHEST BOTTLENECK OCCUPATIONS
For a few years now, VDAB has also been charting the 'statistically toughest' bottleneck occupations. These are occupations that, based on our figures, we consider to be the toughest bottleneck occupations. Not only do vacancies for these occupations have the hardest time filling, we can be pretty sure that these occupations will remain bottleneck occupations in the years to come. Not surprisingly, a lot of these 'statistically toughest' bottleneck occupations are technical occupations.
Sources:
Wiskeys, (2019). The top ten bottleneck occupations 2019. Accessed on 4 February 2019 from https://wiskeys.be/nl/arbeidsmarkt-beleid/1463/de-top-tien-knelpuntberoepen-2019.html
Vdab, (2019). Bottleneck occupations list 2019. Accessed February 4, 2019 from https://www.vdab.be/sites/web/...
