Slashdot Mirror
Spain Runs Out of Workers With Almost 5 Million Unemployed (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report:Spanish headhunter Samuel Pimentel just can't find the candidates. After a frustrating search for specialist consultants for a client, he's given up and is casting his net elsewhere. "We were looking for people for two months," Pimentel, a partner at Ackermann Beaumont Group for Spain and Latin America, said in a telephone interview. "We managed to find one in Spain. We turned to Argentina for others." Pimentel's experience reflects a bizarre feature of the Spanish labor market that is hampering the country's efforts to repair the damage from the economic crisis. Even with close to 5 million people out of work, the next prime minister will face labor shortages with employers struggle to find the staff they need. "It's a paradox," said Valentin Bote, head of research in Spain at Randstad, a recruitment agency. "The unemployment rate is too high. Yet we're seeing some tension in the labor market because unemployed people don't have the skills employers demand."
The issue is crystal clear and was to be expected. The government decided to allow the employers to treat employees like garbage, and they did because they could find someone else easily. However anyone with proper skills and education can easily be employed in countries like Germany and the Netherlands due to the EU. Close to a million Spanish people left the country since the crisis.
quote from article
What happens when employers stop re-training employees and start shitcanning anyone as soon as possible, relying on obtaining trained people from the rest of the economy when people are needed again? That's right: trained people are quickly drained from the economy leaving only the trained who command very high wages and the untrained, who cannot be employed.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Having come from two small villages... Bullshit.
Most villages are labor intensive, low mental req, and low profit systems. People share the work because there is too much of one thing to do in the window it must be done. You start working with the sun up (meaning you get ready well before), rest when high, and return home when down (you wash, eat, and sleep quickly). And every day of every season there is a natural schedule that must be followed else you will fall behind.
In most places, most of the family works and contributes in one way or other. You have your upper, middle, and lower classes. Only the upper and middle can afford education.
In return for all this, you are in the upper class if you can afford the middle class equivalents of 1st world countries. You look at any well developing country and one of the first things you see is the lack of youth in villages... Because they all left for the cities.
Yes, a village is a nice relaxing, low stress environment... Mentally. And if you already have the monies, physically too. If you visit a village and see people sitting around... These are the well off rich people. There 4-6 people for each that they are paying daily who work from sun up to sun down.
This. Socialism leads to high unemployment. You can argue about why, about how everyone is doing socialism wrong, about how this is no true socialism, whatever, but what the EU nations do right now creates high unemployment. And the problem worsens over time.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Here is an idea, why not make all Government workers 2 month positions. How many of the leaches currently holding office would do so without any financial security? None, asshole.
If only you knew...
Here in Spain a government worker cannot be fired. Ever.
Pass the entrance exams when you're 20 and you can literally do fuck all, all day long, and you'll still get a paycheck every week for life. Plus Christmas bonus (an extra months wages in December - to get you through the holiday season). Plus a pension.
Right now: All those 5 million in Spain are queuing up for government jobs, not looking at whatever this idiot is offering them.
Between the functionaries doing nothing and the politicians stealing everything it's no wonder the country's in a mess.
No sig today...
This is why the most reliable way of getting hired is bypassing HR entirely, and using your network.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
From the (Bloomberg) article: "From software developers and mathematical modelers to geriatric nurses and care workers, a mismatch in qualifications means companies are struggling to fill posts, even though the unemployment rate at 20.4 percent is the second-highest in Europe".
Yea, right. Mathematical modelers are always thin on the ground and software developers can be, depending on what you ask. Geriatric nurses are an impopular specialisation, and demand is growing fairly quickly. Working conditions tend not to be the best though, so it's not the most popular specialisation. Takes a year and a half to qualify though, and not many hospitals are willing to pay you to do it. Those that are pay you a pittance, fire you the day you graduate, and start with the next bunch of trainees.
Problem is: can you trust current industry demand to guide your choice of curriculum?
Answer: No you can't. Companies (with the exception of the likes of Shell, IBM, GM, Unilever etc.) don't plan any further ahead than 6 months. Easier and cheaper that way. So, current industry demand isn't a very good indicator.
And this: "Pimentelâ(TM)s client asked him for list of candidates trained in "Agile" project management techniques for helping companies boost their productivity by using more I.T. systems. The client was offering as much as 200,000 euros ($220,000) a year -- almost 10 times the average salary in Spain."
Salary's pretty good, especially for Europe. But "trained in agile". Does that mean "attended a few lectures in scrum or whatever"? No. From the rest of the article: you need to have sufficient experience to know what software development is and what the issues are. And then the article lets it transpire that you'll be talking with senior management ... on your project. Sounds like a "development lead with experience in agile" position to me. Definitely not for your average coder, with or without course in "agile" development bolted on.
I can only conclude that the Slashdot headline is a bit misleading. The Bloomberg headline is more accurate, and the article goes on to lambast the Spanish educational system for not paying sufficient attention to industry needs (STEM subjects).
However ... about a year and a half ago I made the acquaintance of a (very smart) Spanish PhD in experimental physics who (1) couldn't find a fitting job opportunity in Spain when she graduated (6 years ago) (2) went abroad to do a doctorate (3) was subsequently unable to find a faculty position (two years ago) in Europe) and went to work as a data analyst for the government.
Several interesting things in this story: she couldn't find a decent job even though she was smart, motivated, and well-educated, she had to look outside Spain to do a PhD (well, some would call that a valuable education in itself), then couldn't find a job in the field for which she had just qualified (experimental physics), and went to do work for which she wasn't "formally" qualified but for which she was quite well prepared (kudos to that HR department).
Now think of your average HR department. Would they have hired her as a data analist? Nah ... too many boxes not ticked. No Hadoop experience, no Java programming certificates, no certificate in SAS, not SPLUNK certified, no Python programming certificates, no Linux certificates (although she did her PhD work on Linux systems like all physicists). Yup. Probably no MS Office certificates either (but perhaps those can be overlooked).
So it's a sum of circumstances: insufficient attention to trivial but "in-demand" qualifications on part of educational authorities to please box-ticking HR departments, HR departments being generally unable to bring any understanding and intelligence to their job (costs too much to have somebody working there who actually understand what the job entails, right ... so keep with the box-tickers). industry as a whole being unable to provide reliable forecasts of future personnel demands.