UK employers struggling to fill roles say candidates being too choosy | UK | News | EUROtoday

Company bosses have revealed the roles they’re discovering hardest to fill—and the important thing the explanation why many job seekers are being rejected.

Poor attitudes have been cited in as many as six in ten applicant rejections, whereas many enterprise leaders categorical concern that they’re unable to recruit sufficient extremely expert specialists.

The findings are primarily based on a latest survey highlighting how London-based corporations are struggling to draw appropriate candidates, with many candidates described as overly selective or demanding, notably in relation to versatile working preparations.

In the aggressive UK job market, youthful jobseekers are more and more requesting distant working choices. This development has grown because the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was first declared 5 years in the past this week.

Senior executives at the moment are voicing concern over the lasting results of this shift. A ballot carried out by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), surveying 1,200 managers, discovered that since January final yr, two in 5 of those that witnessed widespread distant or hybrid work in the course of the pandemic have felt compelled to convey workers again to the workplace. About one in seven firms has already begun lowering versatile working hours.

According to the MailOnline, greater than a 3rd of corporations surveyed reported a scarcity of important abilities amongst candidates, with one in 5 citing subpar English proficiency. According to extra MailOnline evaluation, 61% of employers mentioned candidates lacked the “required attitude”—an increase from 58% the earlier yr.

The mostly reported barrier to hiring was inadequate work expertise, flagged in 72% of instances—up from 67% the yr earlier than. A scarcity of acceptable {qualifications} was additionally a difficulty in 63% of instances.

The most difficult roles to fill had been skilled or extremely expert specialist positions, cited by 63% of firms—a rise from 55% the earlier yr and 49% the yr earlier than that. These had been adopted by technical and expert assist roles (58%), expert trades (40%), and gross sales and customer support positions (36%).

Mark Hilton, Policy Delivery Director at BusinessLDN, advised 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.”

He added: “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 present curriculum overview ought to reform our work expertise mannequin to make it extra targeted on focused studying. We additionally want an schooling system that higher embeds cross-cutting abilities that firms worth extremely, corresponding to team-working, resilience and proactive drawback fixing.”

The CMI survey also found that many firms are reversing remote working policies introduced during the pandemic. Over half of the companies reported difficulties in recruitment. In the sample of 1,000 companies, 22% judged job seekers to have insufficient English skills, while 20% highlighted poor basic maths. The research also revealed that 82% of businesses in London currently have live vacancies—an increase from 80% the previous year.

This all comes amid financial pressures on employers following Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget in October and her recent Spring Statement. These included raising employer National Insurance contributions to 15% and lowering the payment threshold from £9,100 to £5,000—despite previous commitments not to raise NI for working people.

Petra Wilton, Policy Director at the CMI, told MailOnline: “The pandemic taught us invaluable classes concerning the office—that flexibility boosts productiveness, that belief in workers drives success, and that nice managers are the spine of any thriving organisation. Rolling again these positive factors dangers eroding the belief and goodwill which have been constructed over the previous couple of years.”

Official figures show that two out of five UK employees now work from home at least part of the time, with two-thirds of managers also doing so. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 28% of employees follow a hybrid working model, while 13% work exclusively from home.

New data from Survation shows that 45% of people in senior positions—such as managers, directors, and executives—now work in a hybrid model, and 22% work entirely from home. In contrast, only 3% of frontline workers in roles such as retail, cleaning, and care have access to hybrid arrangements.

The ONS stated: “While the development in working solely from house has fallen since 2021, a hybrid-working mannequin (half travelling to work, and half at house), has turn out to be the ‘new normal’ for round 1 / 4 of staff.”

Former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg added his voice to the debate last month, saying: “Bosses ought to steer by instance and get into the workplace. If they aren’t there, employers might uncover that they aren’t missed, so it’s of their pursuits to point out up.”