Employers report important talent shortages in Romania, study reveals

An estimate of 53 percent of employers in Romania are experiencing difficulty filling critical positions within their organizations, showed Manpower Group’s sixth annual Talent Shortage Survey.

In Romania, as the study reports, the jobs employers have most difficulty filling are skilled trades, engineers and management/executives, mainly do to the fact that candidates lack the necessary experience (28 percent), there are no available applicants on the market (24 percent) or there is a considerable lack of “hard” job skills or technical skills (22 percent).

Compared to the 2010 results, the engineers dropped to second most difficult to fill position, while the skilled trades positions climbed to the first position in Romania’s top 10 jobs employers are having difficulty filling. Unlike 2010, management/executive positions were mentioned by more employers this year, climbing to the third most difficult to fill position from the fifth place the previous year.

“While talent cannot be “manufactured” in the short term, a robust workforce strategy will ensure a viable source of talent at the precise required moments. One of the challenges business leaders face is the fact that the need of talent requiring long term approaches will dispute with the pressure of efficiently delivering short term results – quarterly, half-yearly, annually,” commented Valentin Petrof, ManpowerGroup Romania’s Country Manager.

“The fact that a lot of companies in Romania – 53 percent – are citing a lack of skills or experience as a reason for talent shortages should be a wake-up call for companies, education, government and individuals,” added Petrof. “It is imperative that these stakeholders work together to address the supply-and-demand imbalance in the labor market in a sustainable way,” he concluded.

The hardest jobs to fill in EMEA is the skilled trade position followed by technicians and engineers. Employers in Turkey (48 percent) and Switzerland (46 percent) are also having great difficulties finding the required talent, while those in Norway, Ireland and Poland report the least difficulty with 9percent, 5percent and respectively 4percent.

Full results of ManpowerGroup’s sixth annual Talent Shortage Survey and Fresh Perspectives Paper can be downloaded here.

Manpower Group surveyed nearly 40,000 employers across 39 countries and territories in the first quarter of 2011 to determine the extent in which talent shortages are impacting global labor markets.