Talent shortages in Asia-Pacific high. Manpower Inc. on 20 May released the results of its fifth annual Talent Shortage Survey, revealing that talent is elusive - it's everywhere yet nowhere, as talent shortages persist in many countries and industry sectors.
Thirty-one percent of employers worldwide report having difficulty filling key positions within their organization - a rise of one percentage point from 2009, amidst a perpetual global pool of available workers. The top hardest to fill jobs are Skilled Trades, Sales Representatives, Technicians and Engineers according to the survey of more than 35,000 employers across 36 countries. These are the same top jobs that employers have reported struggling to fill for the past four years, demonstrating that there is an ongoing global mismatch in these key areas. Singapore's IT sector still facing a talent shortage. Singapore’s IT sector is facing a talent shortage and a large number of roles are being filled by foreign or imported talent.
Apart from “in- demand” technically skills such as web/mobile based technologies, cloud computing and virtualization, organizations are also increasingly looking for a combination of IT skills and strong industry specific business appreciation and knowledge. Skills such as project management, architecture, risk management, and development and support (cross-platform/technology) are generally highly sought after by employers. According to Brian Richards, Head of Kelly IT Resources, techno-functional roles that require business acumen along with technical expertise, as well as cross-technology roles that require expertise in a number of technologies, tend to be more attractive to potential candidates rather than pure vanilla technology roles that require only specific technical skills.
Personal Branding. Rebounding economy rewrites contract hiring. (SINGAPORE) The number of employees on term contracts in Singapore has dipped for the first time in at least five years, though staffing companies say pockets of fresh contract hiring remain in sectors like finance.
Statistics released by the Ministry of Manpower on Tuesday showed that the number of residents on term contracts fell 5.5 per cent to 186,300 as at June this year, from 197,200 in June last year. Contract workers shrank to just 11.5 per cent of the total workforce - the lowest proportion since 2006, when such data was first collected. This reversal of the steady uptrend in contract hiring comes with the economy's unusually strong rebound and the corresponding pick-up in permanent hiring, people in the staffing industry say.