Revealed: The jobs UK firms cant fill... and the reason why they are rejecting so many applicants
Company bosses have revealed the roles they are struggling most severely to fill - as well as the key reasons why they are spurning so many jobseekers.
Company bosses have revealed the roles they are struggling most severely to fill - as well as the key reasons why they are spurning so many jobseekers.
Bad attitude is being blamed for as many of six out of ten applicant dismissals, though business chiefs also fear they are missing out on too many highly skilled specialists.
The judgments are outlined in a study showing how London companies struggle to attract prospective employees - with many aspirants coming across as too picky.
In Britains crowded job market, many younger applicants are increasingly demanding they should be able to work from home, according to recent figures.
Meanwhile, employers have also been raising alarm about a shortage of knowledge when it comes to maths and English when interviewing potential recruits.
More and more people have settled into home living while working since the first Covid-19 pandemic was declared five years ago this week.
Concerns from senior executives about staff working from home follow a poll of 1,200 managers by the Chartered Management Institute.
Researchers found that, since January last year, two in five managers who saw remote or hybrid working during the pandemic felt they ought to order employees back to the office.
About one in seven respondents told how pandemic-era flexible working hours had now been scaled back.
More than a third of firms told of workers lacking the necessary skills - with one in five says English skills were sub-standard.
Further MailOnline analysis of the poll findings show that 61 per cent of employers felt applicants were unsuitable due to lacking the required attitude - up from 58 per cent the previous year.
The most frequent drawback was said to be a shortage of work experience, accounting for 72 per cent of rejections - up from 67 per cent annually.
And insufficient qualifications were found in 63 per cent of cases.
The type of position which companies have been struggling most to fill were said to be professional or highly skilled specialists, with 63 per cent highlighting this as a concern - up from 55 per cent the previous year and 49 per cent 12 months earlier.
That was followed by technical and skilled support roles, cited by 58 per cent of bosses surveyed.
Then came skilled trades (40 per cent) and sales and customer service positions (36 per cent).
Mark Hilton, policy delivery director at not-for-profit advocacy group BusinessLDN, has now told MailOnline: Firms are finding it more difficult to fill professional and highly-skilled roles than any other, with demand particularly strong in fast-evolving sectors like tech, financial services and life sciences.
At the same time, more and more businesses are telling us that job applicants don’t have the right attitude, work experience or qualifications.
Against that backdrop, the need for businesses, policymakers and training providers to work together to ensure that our education system produces the skills firms need has never been greater.
The current curriculum review should reform our work experience model to make it more focussed on targeted learning.
We also need an education system that better embeds cross-cutting skills that companies value highly, such as team-working, resilience and proactive problem solving.
The figures come as the CMI also suggested that firms were rowing back on pandemic-era policies that had encouraged employees working from home.
And they said more than half of companies they surveyed were struggling to recruit, while the survey of 1,000 companies found 22 per cent judging employees to be lacking English skills and 20 per cent basic maths skills.
They discovered that 82 per cent of enterprises across London had live vacancies, up from 80 per cent last year.
The business group highlighted Chancellor Rachel Reeves Budget last October - which has since been followed by more cutbacks and tax rises in her recent Spring Statement.
She hiked the rate of employer National Insurance contributions to 15 per cent and reduced the threshold for paying the tax from £9,100 to £5,000 - despite an election pledge not to increase NI for working people.
CMI policy director Petra Wilton said: The pandemic taught us invaluable lessons about the workplace - that flexibility boosts productivity, that trust in employees drives success, and that great managers are the backbone of any thriving organisation.
BusinessLDNs Mark Hilton (pictured) told of how firms were still struggling to find the right staff, especially in fast-growing sectors like tech, financial services and life sciences
Rolling back these gains risks eroding the trust and goodwill that have been built over the last few years.
Official figures have shown that two out of five UK workers are working from home some or all of the time – and two-thirds of managers are doing so.
The Office for National Statistics said that for 28 per cent of employees, so-called ‘hybrid’ working had become the ‘new normal - while 13 per cent were working only from home.
The new Survation figures showed that 45 per cent of those in senior posts such as managers, directors and senior officials enjoy a hybrid working arrangement, while 22 per cent work only from home.
Yet only three per cent of people working on a retail shop floor or as a cleaner or carer or other services worker have a hybrid working pattern.
The ONS said: While the trend in working only from home has fallen since 2021, a hybrid-working model (part travelling to work, and part at home), has become the “new normal” for around a quarter of workers.
Former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg said last month: ‘Bosses ought to lead by example and get into the office. If they are not there employers may discover that they are not missed so it is in their interests to show up.