Hungarian workforce shortage continues in 2018

A trend that’s becoming more and more noticeable in the Hungarian recruitment market is the shortage of a skilled workforce.

While this only used to affect sectors such as IT and engineering, the phenomenon now seems to be expanding to every sector. The unemployment level in Hungary is at an all-time low. As a consequence of the shortage and excessive direct approaching of companies and staffing agencies, salaries jumped almost a massive 15% during the year 2017.

Although this seems to be an upward spiral in 2018, companies will do everything they can to find a way to expand the available talent pool, whether by offering more flexible employment, remote work or atypical employment.

Another hot topic in Hungary for 2018 will be part-time work. While it doesn’t have deep roots in the Hungarian labour market, there is a demand for it from the job seeker’s side. HR and business leaders will have to find a way to integrate the part-time working model into their daily operations.

The circumstances in Hungary are making more companies, and even government organisations, invest in employer branding. The big question of 2018 will be who will be able to target the talent pool in the most effective way and offer unique solutions, besides social media campaigns and visuals, which will bring companies closer to their desired talent.

In terms of recruitment channels and techniques, the expansion of social media and mobile device usage will continue in 2018. While Facebook remains the most widely used social media platform in Hungary, other platforms are also being discovered by employment branding campaigns and direct offerings.

In close connection with the channels, the focus of interest will turn more and more into solutions that can support identifying talent – the keyword for recruitment professionals will be Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its role in recruitment.

The new General Data Protection Regulation – often referred as GDPR – challanges all players of recruitment industry – agencies, job boards, companies. While the new processes are mostly in place already complying the regulations, there are still questionmarks around existing data and how we will be able to utilize it.

The most effective ways to find talent in this situation?

Under these circumstances, more and more positions could become hard-to-fill ones. Direct search will remain and expand its role. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for these difficult to source roles, but there are certain factors which increase efficiency:

The credibility of direct approach – sourcing and recruitment experts must possess some relevant professional knowledge of the expertise they are looking for, especially in the case of IT and engineering roles;
Recruiters must be able to deliver up to date and relevant information;
They must handle talents as a partner of the company, not as a resource;
There must be credible communication of the company culture and expectations;
Recruiters must be able to articulate the attractions and the difficulties of the position;
Recruitment consultants must provide candidate experience.

With such difficulties in recruitment, measurement of each recruitment effort becomes more important than ever. There are plenty of tools, platforms, agencies, job boards, social media opportunities, and events to be sponsored available. Reliable and consistent KPIs need to be defined to make sure we know where to put the efforts and the limited resources available – be it financial or human in nature.

It is not enough anymore to simply recruit for new colleagues, employers must also find a way to retain them. Creating a well-designed retention strategy and executing it in a consistent way can make all the difference.

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