FINNISH EMPLOYERS are widely struggling to find suitable candidates to fill their engineering positions.
The Union of Professional Engineers in Finland has reported that as many as 75 per cent of companies employing engineers have encountered problems in recruitment. The problems, it added, are especially common in the information and communications industry.
Its data is based on a survey on labour supply and demand distributed to the chief executives of engineering companies employing more than 10 people. The 172 chief executives who responded to the survey reported that the number of applicants – let alone skilled applicants – for open engineering positions is generally insufficient.
Katri Manninen, a senior expert at the Union of Professional Engineers, viewed that the labour and skills shortage is attributable to the fact that the rapid pace of technological advancement is making the expertise of even relatively newly graduated applicants obsolete.
“People who graduated 15 years ago do not necessarily have skills that match the needs of today’s working life,” she highlighted.
The survey respondents identified motivation, work experience and fit with the work community as the most important qualities of applicants.
“We need to get all skilled engineering labour into the market. We have more than 4,000 unemployed engineers. For some of them, their skills no longer match the needs of today’s working life. We should further educate the unemployed with different conversion and other quick trainings,” outlined Manninen.
She also suggested that the current project-based funding system for conversion training should be made more flexible.
The demand for engineering labour is projected to mount especially in the information and information technology sectors in the years to come. The demand for coders is increasing constantly, according to Manninen.
“We have to think about how to attract top-notch foreign talent to Finland,” she said.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
Source: Uusi Suomi
