We all know about the shortage on the labor market!  We all know that companies are doing their utmost to find and attract talent.  On the other hand, a vast majority of candidates are desperately looking for a new job.

Many recruiters and companies follow the shift of sourcing people based on experience towards skills.

But are candidates also aware of this shift?  And if so, are they really looking for jobs based on their skills and their talent?

Actonomy has analyzed millions of search requests (using our AI algorithms) of candidates looking for a job on jobportals, and we came to the following result :

  • 93% of candidates are still looking for jobtitles or roles
  • only 3,5% of candidates are searching for skills – mainly technical skills
  • about 2,5% of candidates are looking for a specific context to work in – such as type of companies, industries etc
  • about 1% of candidates is looking for general ‘words’ – such as jobs in a specific location, self employed,…

This means that still 93% of the candidates are thinking in what is considered as a traditional way of looking for a new job.

What does this tell us?

  • Candidates are not educated yet to think in concepts such as skills based recruitment.  Candidates are ‘trained’ to think in terms of jobtitles, roles etc and need to be trained to think differently.
  • Candidates are faced with traditional job descriptions and therefore are not searching on skills as they are fear not to find the best job.  Maybe job descriptions need to indicate better what talent, what skills are required rather then indicating a job title and a vague description of the function…
  • Candidates are not yet trained to think in terms of change and do not know their skills.  Candidates working for years as an ‘operator’ think in terms of ‘operator’ and not in terms of what they really did and what skills they really mastered.  As a result, they keep on looking for ‘operator roles’ and not for assignments in which they can use some of the skills they have.

As a result, candidates can get the impression that there is no jobs available for them – not correct maybe they do not search in the correct way!

How would that match with the search behaviour of recruiters?  Would they really search/source already on skills?  A similar analyses will be posted in this blog soon.

Want to know more details on how we did the study/analyses? Or want to know more details on what people are looking for?  Contact us and we will be happy to share more details with you.