Miloš Turinski from the Infostud Employment Center stated that Serbia is a labor market with a high deficit and that artisans, drivers, as well as engineers and IT experts are most in demand for higher positions.
“If you ask any employer from any industry today, they will tell you that it is really very difficult to find qualified and quality workers, and on the other hand, what is still a challenge for them in the market is to retain existing workers. We have a situation where new candidates and employees can choose their workplace, working conditions and employer, and on the other hand, employers have to fight who will be better in order to get quality employees”, he stated for Tanjug, talking about the current situation on the labor market in Serbia.
When asked if today’s diploma guarantees a job or if skills have become more important than formal education, Turinski pointed out that although the best balance is to have both a diploma and skills, a diploma is no longer crucial for a job and it will not be the only one to secure a job.
As he stated, what will surely secure a job with a diploma is the set of skills that a worker needs to possess in today’s market conditions, bearing in mind that the most demanded of all workers today is the ability to learn, adapt and apply everything acquired and learned.
Turinski said that today craftsmen find work much easier than engineers because there is a greater deficit of craftsmen in Serbia and the demand for them is at a really high level, and added that this can be seen in the fact that a large number come from abroad to fill the positions that our market requires.
“This does not mean that engineers do not find work easily, and they are somewhere in a deficit category, just not to the extent that they are craftsmen. We also lack IT experts, but some with higher seniority, such as mid-level and senior. What has fallen in demand in this category are positions intended for juniors, that is, those who have yet to enter the labor market,” he said.
When asked for which positions the most advertisements are published, and for which candidates are the most difficult to find, Turinski said that the labor market in Serbia in the past 20 years shows a similar picture, namely that employers are mostly looking for workers in the trade and sales category, which shows that there are bad working conditions in that category and that candidates are ready to change employers for slightly better conditions.
According to him, the second sector on that list is administration, followed by trades and transport, where a large number of C and E category drivers are missing, reports B92.
“There is also the IT industry that is looking for IT employers. The departure of workers to EU countries affects the domestic labor market. We have had a very large outflow of our population only in the last 10 years because they left to develop their qualifications in another market. People from the east come to us who are less qualified and who fill lower qualified positions,” he pointed out.
