September is a month of new beginnings. Young Higher Education candidates will know this Saturday whether they have been placed in the study program of their choice, others are now starting to enter the labor market, after the summer holidays and companies return to normal activity.
The results of the first phase of the National Access to Higher Education Competition will be announced next Sunday. This is followed by the 2nd phase, which takes place between September 12 and 23, with a 3rd phase, between October 7 and 11. More than 61,000 students applied for a total of 55,362 vacancies this year.
According to the Directorate-General for Higher Education (DGES), vacancies in study cycles focused on digital skills training have increased by 3.6% compared to the initial vacancies of the previous year.
Unsurprisingly, courses related to areas of technology remain the ones that guarantee greater employability, as well as engineering and studies related to energy and energy sustainability, “the part of society undergoing the greatest transformation and that will take place in the next five to ten years.” years will need many more professionals,” he says in statements to TSF Pedro Lacerda, CEO of HR consultancy Kelly Portugal.
According to the “Global Trends in Youth Employment” report, released in August by the International Labor Organization (ILO), young people are best placed to take advantage of the green and blue economies. According to this report, about eight and a half million jobs could be created by 2030 through the implementation of sustainable policies.
More and more environmental engineers are looking for wind, solar and electrical energy, the human resources advisor says, as well as professions related to cybersecurity, the Internet or programming.
The pandemic also increased demand among airlines related to online commerce and information technologies due to the “replacement of human resources by technologies in many business areas, such as banking or retail areas, where many companies have changed their physical locations. e-commerce“.
On the other hand, “the more ‘traditional’ professions are also starting to have a very high degree of scarcity, either because universities cannot produce enough professionals to meet the market demand, or because there is a very large exodus outside Portugal”, such as the case with nurses and radiologists.
According to the latest report “Future of Jobs” by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund, released in 2020, jobs in technology fields, such as analysts and data scientists and experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and professions related to strategy and digital marketing, such as social media management, sales and content production, will be the most sought after globally in the future. Rather, it will reduce the demand for administration, assembly, repair and customer service jobs.
According to the World Economic Forum, technology will cut 85 million jobs between 2020 and 2025, but also create 97 million jobs.
Having an exit course is not the only guarantee of employment. Recruiters look for “adaptability and resilience” in a first-time job candidate, Pedro Lacerda says, in light of “a fully global and ever-changing job market.”
Another highly sought after feature is the ability to anticipate. “We have never heard of so many cyber-attacks as we are now. This is driving a series of changes in the job market. Anticipating potential cyber-attacks is one of the priorities of our companies right now,” he explains.
After two years of pandemic, the International Labor Organization believes 2022 will still not be the year of the global recovery in youth employment. Estimates point to 73 million unemployed young people worldwide this year, a figure that is still higher than in 2019.
Portugal is an exception: youth unemployment is already lower than before the pandemic. “The labor market in Portugal has already recovered faster than the international trend in this dimension,” the coordinator of the ISCTE Youth Work Observatory, Paulo Marques, said in statements to the TSF following the publication of the report “Global Trends in Youth Employment”.
There is already some recovery in recruitment, but “slowly and a lot of competition from outside: also those living in Portugal are looking for a large part of the jobs outside Portugal”, whether in telework or not.
Teleworking “is a market trend that has become indispensable”, says Pedro Lacerda. More and more companies are offering telecommuting or hybrid models, focused on working towards objectives rather than tight schedules, on “quality delivery and on-time delivery, which means more autonomy and greater responsibility”.
“The stigma of those who are physically out of work or who are rogues or who are second- or third-class professionals has been broken,” he emphasizes.
According to the World Economic Forum, 84% of employers around the world admit to working remotely, and up to 44% of their employees are able to telecommute. However, 78% expect negative effects on productivity.
On the other hand, it has also changed what candidates look for in companies. “The concept of career is a much watered-down concept than it was 20 years ago, it no longer has the importance it used to have,” says Pedro Lacerda. And “the concept of salary has an emotional salary component that is fundamental”: the “relationship between the candidate and the manager” and “the relationship with the type of work to be done” are important.
Young people try to identify with “the company culture”. They want to know “what is the” dress code of the company, what are the opening hours of the company, what kind of activities? after hours [fora do horário de trabalho] the company does, what kind of people – in terms of diversity – does the company have”, but also “what does the company experience in daily life, what values does it have, what is the reason for the existence of the company The company is direct connected with me, with what I am as a person, with my way of being and thinking (…) Whoever seeks work, seeks this. It seeks, on the border, well-being and happiness.”
“The monetary part is important, of course,” but the days are long gone when “only those who were doctors would have the financial capacity to lead a stable life or only those who were computer engineers would have guaranteed their future”.
.
