Professional Skill Shortages Boost Eastern European Recruitment

Increasing numbers of professional and managerial level workers are being recruited from Eastern Europe, because employers can’t find enough skilled staff in the UK.

The latest findings from the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) reveal that 10% of organisations surveyed recruit from Eastern EU countries, making this the most popular source of managerial, professional and technical workers from overseas.

To date, the focus has been on the number of semi and unskilled workers being recruited to the UK. But the latest RCI research, produced by Cranfield School of Management and The Daily Telegraph, reveals that an increasing number of workers from Eastern Europe are being recruited into more skilled and senior roles.

While 10% of organisations recruit to managerial, professional and technical positions from Eastern EU countries, another 7% of organisations recruit from the rest of the EU, while 4% of respondents recruit from Asia and another 4% from the United States and Canada.

Skill shortages are the main reason for overseas recruitment, with 39% of respondents reporting a fall in the quality of job applicants over the last year.

Almost a third of organisations (31%) have increased their overseas recruitment because of skills shortages; 66% say they have experienced recruitment difficulties due to skills shortages and almost all respondents (98%) expect these difficulties to remain the same, or even rise, over the next 12 months.

Apart from using overseas recruitment, organisations commonly respond to these skills shortages by developing existing employees (73%), restructuring the job (61%), or offering increased training as part of the recruitment package (49%).

Commenting on the findings, Shaun Tyson, Professor of Human Resource Management at Cranfield School of Management, said:
The UK simply doesn’t have enough skilled people to meet the demands of a growing economy and an ageing population. Expansion in the economy is becoming increasingly dependent upon attracting high quality employees from overseas. We anticipate European labour markets will therefore grow in significance to employers.

Steve Playford, Recruitment Group Head from The Daily Telegraph, added:

The Telegraph recognized how important it was for clients to expand their search to traditional European marketplaces such as France and Germany when we tied up with Le Figaro and FAZ to launch our Euro Executive package in 2003. It seems natural that UK companies are now looking even further to find the best talent that the continent has to offer.

The latest RCI findings also show that:
- 49% of organisations say skills shortages have increased over the past year while 44% expect them to increase over the next year.

- 39% of respondents felt that the quality of applicants for managerial, professional and technical jobs had decreased over the past year.

- Organisations most commonly increase their use of corporate websites (55%), recruitment agencies (53%) and internal recruitment (48%) as a result of skills shortages.

- 37 per cent of organisations have increased their advertising budget as a result of skills shortages.