Jobseekers urged to upskill as sectors eye cheap staff

JOBSEEKERS have been advised to consider what careers they would like to be pursuing in 10 to 15 years’ time because there is every possibility the industry they are considering might have moved to a cheaper economy by then.

According to the National Recruitment Federation there may soon be no place for unskilled workers and even some sections of middle management in the labour market within as little as four years because such roles are being moved en masse to China, India and other low-cost labour forces.

Frank Collins, NRF president, said the jobs that will remain are those which may take a certain amount of upskilling and a large amount of creative thinking.

“There are tens of thousands of jobs out there,” he said. “Scroll down through any recruitment site and see the skills that are required. Often those skills can be achieved through night courses etc. It is free to go into a recruitment agency and find out the skills that are in demand.”

Mr Collins did say that upskilling was not the only key to getting a job.

“The ability to communicate and solve problems is also important. If you have the right attitude the skill bit is not such an issue. The whole concept of re-shoring — sending jobs to cheaper locations such as China and India — does not take into account that in those countries there is not the ability to communicate with the customer that Irish people have.”

Manpower Ireland, which provides workforce management solutions, said it has not noticed a change in the number of jobs available despite the economic downturn.

“When we compare our current number of vacancies with those of the same period last year, we are securing the same number of opportunities. When we examine closely how the market has altered over this period, there are two key differences: firstly the amount of sales activity required to secure the same number of roles has doubled and secondly the recruitment process has been elongated from both a candidate and customer perspective,” said Manpower staffing director Graham Morris.

“The alteration in the employment market over the last three quarter periods has meant that the marketplace has moved from a predominately candidate-led market toward a situation where there is a greater equilibrium between employer and employee demands. The employment market has taken the lead in managing potential employee’s expectations and this means that both attrition rates within organisations and the number of job offers that are being declined has reduced dramatically over the first half of this year.”

The perfect job could be just a double-click away

A QUICK trawl of the internet will show there are thousands of jobs on offer around the country — though not quite so many as the agencies might make out.

A selection of recruitment companies gave their current jobs portfolio figures:

* Irishjobs.ie — 52,000 jobs.

* Recruitireland.com — 30,000 jobs.

* Monster.ie — 15,000 jobs.

* Jobs.ie — 3,500 jobs.

* FÁS jobsireland — 5,008 jobs.

* Hays Recruitment — 2,000 jobs.

* Manpower — 500 jobs.

According to the National Recruitment Federation, the figures provided are often skewed by the fact that many jobs are advertised by a number of companies.

However, the fact still remains that there are significant numbers of jobs available in each part of the country.

Ronan O’Grady, director of Hays Specialist Recruitment. said: “There has been a definite change in the recruitment marketplace over the last few months with certain sectors affected more than others.

“Construction and banking have been affected most but both are still working on a significant number of vacancies.”