Why companies have problems covering their job vacancies and how to solve it

The great paradox of the Argentinean job market is that, despite the fact that the unemployment in Argentina stood at 9% in the third quarter of 2018 according to the INDEC (Statistics and Census Institute), the majority of technology companies (if not all) have trouble covering the positions they’re looking to fill. The difficulties arise both because the candidates don’t have the necessary knowledge, and because of the lack of professional skills and attitudes required.

The underlying issue behind these figures is that the professional skills of people who are currently in a productive age do not match with those currently demanded by the organizations to continue doing business and take advantage of the investments made in the digital aspects.

Obviously, professional competencies are changing. And yes, there is currently a significant gap between skills, knowledge, and attitudes, that will increase in the coming years.

Face up with this reality, a possible analysis is that technology companies do not always know exactly what they need and therefore they tend to be more specific about technology requirements in their requisitions. Because of this, they tend to get overly focused in the technology requirements specs than in actually designing a comprehensive recruitment strategy. This can sound contradictory, but can begin to be understood by taking into account that times in the technology environment are pressing and this leads to not working exhaustively in the management of proficient strategies, which often leads to unsuccessful hiring. On the other hand, it is also true that candidates, knowing that they are “gold dust” in a full-employment job market, ask for exorbitant salaries and benefits.

In addition, we are facing a paradigm shift: Organizations are no longer hiring “geniuses” in a certain technology, they are prioritizing those who may not have as much technical knowledge, but a lot of attitude to learn and many of what are usually called ‘soft skills’, and what happens is that people are not trained to think about their work, to have an attractive conversation, to present themselves, to empathize, to negotiate or to manage time at work. In fact, many times, they don’t know the dynamics of the job they occupy.

How to solve this situation? On one hand, companies are used to hiring IT profiles in exchange of high salaries, without focusing on the professional development of said profiles. Hence, these professionals learned that to increase their salary it is easier to change jobs than to face a negotiation situation. On the other hand, the educational system doesn’t focus on developing “soft skills” either. Nothing and nobody prepares us for our first job position. Therefore, when a company is facing a junior profile, it has to take care of developing these skills that are increasingly important.

To answer the present and future needs as well as to cover the gap between knowledge, skills and attitudes, companies have to help IT professionals learn to think about their at-work-selves, to connect with their position and with the company, to think that work is not something that is done -only- in exchange of a salary. At the educational level, we must focus on “soft skills”. In that sense, the educational curriculum should be reformulated so that children can develop skills such as lateral thinking and creativity, among others.

The future of employment is not something that will happen, it is a problem of the present, and requires an understanding of the knowledge and skills that companies will need in the coming years. This is fundamental if we remember that organizations are the ones that create genuine employment and play a fundamental role in defining the professional competencies that must be developed to guarantee the employability of young people in the future. In this context, candidates should investigate how to develop their digital and “soft skills”, knowing that all resources are on the Internet, just a click away.

Meanwhile, organizations shouldn’t be sorry for the lack of talent but should instead focus on training their employees in the skills they require, because when human capital is considered fundamental and strategic it can be much more profitable than the latest technology implemented.

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