The specialized talent shortage it is a great difficulty faced by companies in Mexico. The proportion of employers that report this problem is 74%, 9 points above the average in Latin America, which is 65 percent.
According to the Talent shortage survey from Manpower, 3 out of 4 companies In our country, it claims to have difficulties to fill its vacancies, this proportion places Mexico in the first place in Latin America in this barrier to business.
“You not only have to create vacancies, you have to train the necessary talent to fill those vacancies,” said Mónica Flores, president of ManpowerGroup Latin America.
The level of this problem in the productive sector is the highest in six years, exceeding by 20 percentage points the highest peak reported in 2015, when the 54% of companies He claimed to have difficulties in finding qualified personnel.
Monica Flores explained that this figure shows the imbalance that exists between many people seeking employment and companies suffering because they cannot find the ideal candidates.
In our country, there are around 5.2 million people in an active job search, this is equivalent to one General Pressure Rate of 9.1% of the economically active population, an indicator that remains far from the 6.2% it had before the pandemic, according to the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE).
The most difficult positions to fill in Mexico are in the areas of operations and logistics; manufacturing and production, sales and marketing; administrative and office support; and in customer service.
“It is a number that makes me a little nervous, because throughout the region we have a very high informality rate and, on the other hand, in formal jobs we do not find the people who fill those vacancies,” said the executive.
The survey identified that five most wanted competencies in human capital by companies operating in Mexico are:
- Accountabillity, reliability and discipline
- Collaboration and teamwork
- You take initiative
- Resilience, stress tolerance and adaptability
- Leadership and social influence.
Globally, the proportion of organizations that report difficulties in recruit specialized talent It has not stopped increasing since 2013 and its growth accelerated as of 2016. In Latin America and Mexico the behavior has had more variations between highs and lows, but from 2019 to date it also maintains considerable progress.
Why this phenomenon?
Monica Flores said that the problems that companies have to fill their vacancies is not linked to the lack of people available in the market, but of professionals with the skills that companies require.
“It is the lack of coordination that we have between the educational, training and training systems, which requires a digital world, accelerated and that changed radically as a result of the pandemic,” he said.
The first place that our country holds in Latin America on this issue “puts the finger on the sore” in the challenges that Mexico has to train the workforce that requires the world of work for postcovid. “If we do not accelerate this process to close this gap, we will have serious problems, because informality and precarious salaries will continue to increase,” warned the president of ManpowerGroup Latam.
In this vein, the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO) warned that Mexicans could lose almost two years of schooling due to the closure of schools, an educational lag that could have “far-reaching consequences for workers and the competitiveness of the country.”
“A country with a population that has fewer skills faces two types of economic costs. At the individual level, workers will have less access to better paid jobs, ”the IMCO stressed in an analysis of the risks of the reality of education in a pandemic year.
The consequence at the country level due to the educational lag, he stressed, would be the loss of 1.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) every year.
The gap between professionals who cannot find a job and companies that cannot find the ideal candidate represents a loss of productivity, competitiveness e investment, said Mónica Flores.
From their perspective, online classes are likely to have an impact on the training of adequate talent for the new market needs due to inequalities in the country, such as access to the Internet or appropriate devices for studying. “We have to address this issue promptly and quickly to close the gap that is opening,” he concluded.
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