On the job hunt: These are the hardest vacant roles to fill in the UK
Veterinary surgeons, senior auditors and HGV technicians are among the hardest jobs to fill in the UK, according to new research.
Only 16 per cent of all job postings on job site Indeed fall into the ‘hard to fill’ category, meaning they have stayed on the website for over two months but over half of all veterinary surgeon role posts qualified as ‘hard to fill’.
One contributing factor to labour market shortages in the UK, highlighted last week by the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, was that of a surge in public sector hiring.
The public sector, he said, had grown so much that it created as many jobs as were lost during the pandemic.
Indeed said that most of the jobs in the top 10, which include senior software engineers and veterinary nurses, were specialist roles that often required “many years of education, training and experience.”
They are “all roles that have been hard to fill for several years,” said Indeed UK managing director Bill Richards.
“There aren’t enough qualified candidates to go around, meaning up to half of vacancies take over two months to fill,” he continued.
The shortfall of veterinary surgeons was flagged last week by the British Veterinary Association (BVA) when the body called for people considering buying a dog or cat for Christmas to first check if they could even access a vet.
Brexit and the pandemic were blamed for the staffing challenges among vets, as a result of new legal requirements on food exports to the EU, and more people becoming pet owners while stuck at home during lockdowns.
HGV technicians ranked fifth according to the global jobs listing company with 42 per cent of job ads staying on the site for two months or more.
Although HGV technicians have been in greater demand for some time already due to an ageing workforce reaching retirement, the chronic shortage of HGV drivers this year has drawn greater attention to the sector.
Richards said the shortage was a “worrying development” in the shortage crisis which has disrupted deliveries of everything from food to fuel.
The news comes as 221,000 new jobs adverts were posted in the first week of November – the fourth highest weekly figure since the start of 2020, taking the total close to 2.7m – according figures recently published by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC).