Many workers are currently being laid off globally from the tech industry. These workers are highly skilled and might present and opportunity to Finnish growth companies, who are seeking new talent.
- Startups need more skilled workers
- In the long run we must invest in education
- In the short run we must seek labor-based migration from global talent pool
- Layoffs.fyi might provide a tool for those that are seeking talent quickly
Finnish labor markets have been suffering from inefficiencies due to the mismatch of skills; the supply of skills of the potential workforce does not match the demand for skills of the employers.
There are, of course, other reasons for tight labor markets than just the skills mismatch, but for rapidly growing starutps it is the number one problem.
Technological advancements have increased the demand for high-skill workers. The changes in the level of technology used have been relatively quick leading to more vacancies that are hard to fill.
In many cases, the employer is competing for skilled workers and not the other way around. This is true, especially with startups, where the impact of one skilled worker could lead to a huge success story.
According to Finnish Startup Community’s Q3/2022 barometer, 49 percent of FSC members listed the lack of skilled workers as a barrier for their growth.
The demand for labor (unfilled vacancies) in Finland – a quick recap
- The number of unfilled vacancies has increased steadily since 2015.
- We can see a drop in 2022 due to the economic slowdown.
- The Share of hard-to-fill vacancies has increased
- The share of fixed-term vacancies has lowered
- The share of part-time vacancies has stayed the same
The quality of open positions might be getting higher, but still there are a lot of unfilled vacancies.
We can find skilled workers from the global talent pool and we need to recruit more agressively.
There is a great demand for skilled workforce and the competition for talent is global. We can increase the domestic supply l in two ways. Education (long run) and labor-based migration (short run).
Huge layoffs have swooped the tech industry in 2022 and this might present an opportunity for Finnish startups to seek new skilled workers. Everything is bigger in America and during economic slowdown the job cuts could be more severe giving opportunity for Finnish companies to recruit.
Layoffs.fyi is keeping track of the layoffs and even collecting the contact information for the workers that are laid off. We are talking about almost 140 K tech professionals laid off in 2022 and 235K since COVID-19.
Most of the workers will find a job rather quickly and Finnish startups might want to attract some of these workers to relocate to Finland.
Could this be an opportunity for Finnish startups to seek new professionals?
Finnish startups could use these directories to find new workers.