Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2012. All its percentages describe Spanish job offers from 2011 and the labor market of that time, including the then-new 2012 labor reform.
Everyone knows that, with demand for jobs as high as it is today, the requirements a company sets for the position it offers are the cut-off point for the CVs submitted for a job opening.
What is happening now is that in 80% of the job offers published in Spain, the minimum requirement is a university degree, even though only 14% of the people registered in the endless unemployment queues have one.
The conclusion: either the level of qualifications demanded comes down, or the unemployed get more training.
Analysis
If the university requirement is out of step, the same thing happens with vocational training. The 20% of offers that ask for a vocational training qualification face the fact that only 7% of job seekers meet this requirement.
The labor market is obviously going through an extremely hard time, and not one of the indicators analysed is positive. The hope is that the labor reform will bear fruit through the measures it adopted on workforce training.
Meanwhile, only one word offers a way out of the chaos: talent. Those gifted with this skill are the ones who, right now, manage to land a job.
Experience and languages
Of all the job offers published last year, 28.70% included knowledge of one or more foreign languages among their requirements, and in nearly 50% of cases recruiters checked social networks to find or cross-check profiles.
A quarter of the offers look for previous work experience in the position on offer, and the age they ask for falls between 26 and 35. A third of the professional offers published sought the experience and knowledge of people aged between 36 and 45.
The services sector
The tertiary sector, services, is the fastest-growing part of the job market. This sector alone generates 42% of vacancies, followed by industry with 40%.
The average age sought is between 26 and 35, and the sector includes IT, telecommunications and multimedia content, which account for 14% of the offers.
Sales representatives are still among the most sought-after profiles, a faithful reflection of companies’ need to increase sales and compete with better options. Last year, demand for sales staff reached 48% of all job offers.
Madrid, Catalonia and the Basque Country are the autonomous communities (Spain’s regions) leading the job-creation ranking, while construction, once again, is one of the sectors whose job offers barely reached 3%.
Featured image: Deutsche Fotothek, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
