In a report, Deloitte presents the evolvement of HR technology in four stages. The first stage describes the period during the 1970s and 1980s, when the main attention of software vendors was on systems that help HR managers make records. During the second stage between the 1990s and early 2000s, capabilities to support recruiting, training and performance controlling were developed. Around 2010, at the third stage, vendors started to offer cloud services and more user-friendly systems to engage with employees’ self-services.

The Deloitte report claims that today we are in the fourth stage of HR technology. In order to react to work environment microtrends, vendors have to design tools that are targeted for teams, individuals and networks and also enhance people’s productivity. At JANZZ.technology, we too think that an HR software should assist HR managers in being more productive and in focusing more on value-added tasks. For example, it should reduce the effort needed for mundane tasks such as screening thousands of candidates and should enable to focus more on value-added tasks such as interviewing candidates. We further believe that this is going to be achieved by means of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

AI for recruiting

Talent acquisition is undeniably one of the most important parts of corporation management. This makes the recruitment software market the most competitive and interesting market to observe. Governmental organizations like Public Employment Services (PES) are also actively seeking solutions to deal with this matter. According to Crunchbase, solely in 2018 recruiting software startups received over $ 600 million of VC finance. In the latest Market Map by HR Tech China, recruiting software vendors constitute the largest part of all HR technology vendors.

The offers made by vendors include the testing and assessment of candidates, background checks, video interviewing and many recruitment platforms. Since early 2017, AI has emerged in the recruiting process. The ensuing rise of recruiting software’s so-called AI capabilities could make any HR manager feel overwhelmed.

‘AI for recruiting’ is an emerging technology used in HR recruitment processes. It employs AI technology and mainly aims to reduce repetitive, time-consuming and banal tasks, which helps recruiters and hiring managers focus on value-added activities. 52% of talent acquisition leaders state that the hardest part of recruitment is the screening of candidates from a large applicant pool. [1] For instance, an AI recruitment software can screen thousands of applications and recommend the top 5 candidates in a blink. Thus, HR managers using AI for recruiting will have more resources to assess the top picks in-depth, which in turn heightens their chance to really find the best suitable candidate.

By contrast, the larger public uses the word AI vaguely and often even inaccurately. Many companies use ‘AI’ to describe their products in order to make them appear as ‘upgraded to the next level’. In most cases, this sort of product advertising promises too much. It is therefore extremely important to be able to evaluate both such products and their vendors. The process is similar to that of hiring: only if you have various ways to assess options, you can find the best one possible.

Evaluating AI for recruiting technology

How should HR avoid over-promised software when choosing from all the products? We have come up with three principles to go by when choosing AI recruitment software:

Principle I: Be aware of the bias within AI recruiting software

Last year, the story about the Amazon AI recruiting tool secretly being biased against women was a wake-up call for all of us: machine learning can be just as biased as human beings. Therefore, it is extremely important to focus on algorithmic fairness and transparency.

You must be aware of how the software processes personal information data such as date of birth, gender and nationality. Which factors does the software take into consideration when matching? And does the software ignore irrelevant factors?

Apart from algorithms you have to make sure that the software has representative training data. In the case of the Amazon AI recruiting tool, the tool turned against female applicants because, for over ten years, the company trained its computer models with resumes summited by male applicants. Hence, make sure you ask your software vendor how they deal with their data source.

Principle II: Be sure to test before you purchase

Before buying a car, you would certainly test drive it first. This rule applies to buying recruiting software as well. Since a recruitment software system is an expensive and long-term investment for your business, it is wise to complete a POC (proof of concept).  In this trial run you’ll find out if the software can really solve your prioritized problems, perform the promised functions and handle your data within the required scale and scope.

JANZZ.technology conducted a POC with an intergovernmental organization to find out if our solution can truly help them save time when finding suitable candidates. Our AI software competed against their HR team in matching candidates worldwide to their open junior intern positions. After screening over thousands of applications, they were pleasantly surprised by our results.

Most good software vendors offer free trials. It is important to prepare your test data well in order to get the most out of your practice and maximally optimize this process. One of the often-ignored aspects when choosing a recruitment software is the maintenance and support needed after the purchase. Only with constant updating, the software is able to develop in parallel with the fast-changing markets, customer requirements and ongoing digitalization. Don’t simply trust marketing lines such as “50 other leading companies from your industry are use our software” or “top 100 out of the top 500 companies are also using our software”.

Principle III: Taking the “soft skills” of an AI recruiting software into consideration

Just like assessing a job candidate by evaluating his/her skills and soft skills, an AI recruiting software has its skills and soft skills as well. We determine the hard skills of a software as functionality, accuracy, data security, speed, languages capability and similar highly valuated competences.

However, many might overlook the soft skills of an AI recruiting software. Soft skills of an AI recruiting software are the ability to deeply understand the language, education, working and social system etc. of your practice region, and the ability to localize certain regions or countries.

For instance, a country like Spain has more than one language: Castilian(Spanish), Catalan, Valenciana, Galician and Basque. A good AI recruiting software should be able to understand the different languages and know the common terms that are used in the four different languages to refer to exactly the same thing.

Conducting job matching across Europe is not an easy task, for instance because each of the 44 countries has its own education system (even with the bologna framework). It is an enormous amount of work to compare the different education levels and match people to jobs. Does your vendor have the right knowledge to solve such problems within your practice region?

Besides language and education, there are many more and equally important categories that need to be taken seriously.  As an international corporation operating in different countries, you want to have a software which understands all your markets.

Limitations of AI 

You may have heard of all the promised benefits of using an AI recruiting software. Before the AI can do its magic, we are here to give you a word of caution. Don’t expect the AI software to make the hiring decision on its own. Many of the previous use cases proved to us that the technology just is not ready yet. “How to make sure the algorithm is really interpretable and explainable – that is quite far off.” [2]

If you are expecting AI and the algorithm to do their job well, it is equally important for you to check your company’s or organization’s readiness for AI, in order to maximize its power. We all know that identifying patterns and making predictions requires a large quantity of data. With the widespread open-source algorithms, the real game changer is the data used to train the algorithms. Any business or organization should have a clear plan on how to generate the quantitative and qualitative data which will help your AI recruiting software get more accurate results, this is economically profitable for your business as well.

JANZZ.technology supplies AI solutions for your recruiting system and helps you find the right skills and talents. The ontology JANZZon! and the smart matching engine JANZZsme! make complex problems such as job and skills matching computable and completely change the way we handle skills and talent searching. The applications of JANZZ.technology are structured semantically, meaning occupations, specialization, function, skills and qualifications etc. are interlinked logically. The JANZZ.technology applications can deliver meaningful results for complex searches in real time and across multiple languages. Our applications are constantly fed with new data generated from our users, therefore they become more accurate over time. Let the tools of JANZZ.technology assist you in finding your best fit candidates.  For a demo, please write now to sales@janzz.technology

[1] ideal. 2019. AI for recruiting: A definitive guide for HR professionals. URL: https://ideal.com/ai-recruiting/ [2019.05.28]

[2] Jeffrey Dastin. 2018. Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women. URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G [2019.05.28]

Eric D. Beinhocker writes in his book The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remarking of Economics that, “over 97 percent of humanity’s wealth was created in just the last 0.01 percent of our history.” It is not until 250 years ago that humankind began to evolve into more prosperous and dynamic societies which offer an extraordinary variety of services. [1] Today our economic wealth is still growing, and the speed of this process has even been accelerated by the digitalization and automation of the 21st century.

A positive consequence of this development is the high standard of living provided by the increased productivity. However, we also need to live with the potentially negative consequences, which are challenging the security of our jobs. With the prospect of self-driving cars, how many drivers will remain employable in the next 5-10 years? When automated factories are combined with AI technology, how can workers keep up with the new skills required to complete their tasks?

In today’s world, quick and drastic changes make the promise of life-long security impossible. Powerful technology and automation pose a threat in almost every corner of business. Leaving us asking ourselves the question: will I still be employable in 10 years? The good news is that our jobs aren’t disappearing, they are changing. Still, in the era of digitalization and automation, our workforce constantly needs to keep reskilling and upskilling in order to stay up to date. It is time to take action.

More effort is required

Corporations are increasingly discussing to foster a learning culture environment. Bersin by Deloitte report that organizations with a strong culture of learning are 92% more likely to innovate, they enjoy 37% greater employee productivity and are 58% more prepared to meet future demand. [2]

Stories such as Starbucks’ partnership with a local university to offer its employees an online college degree program are becoming more frequent. Jeff Bezos describes Amazon’s Career Choice program as follows: “For hourly associates with more than one year of tenure, we pre-pay 95 percent of tuition, fees, and textbooks (up to $12,000) for certificates and associate degrees in high-demand occupations”. [3]

In most of the cases, programs like these are only available in large international corporations with substantial financial capabilities. What about the workers in small and median sized companies who are not provided with these opportunities? Randstad’s Workmonitor survey indicates that more than one-third of American workers have not taken any steps to develop new skills within the past year. While it is sensible to expect employees to maintain up-to-date job skills and to actively seek training opportunities, this responsibility clearly shouldn’t fall solely on the individual’s shoulders. [4]

Barriers stopping companies  

Companies have long been aware of the urgency to increase investment for reskilling and upskilling. In this issue, companies could potentially take the lead instead relying fully on governments. But what are the main barriers stopping them from taking action?

According to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, rethinking and upgrading the current HR infrastructure is considered a priority by 1/3 of the respondent executives. In the US 42%, in Europe 24%, and in the rest of the world 31% of executives believe reskilling and upskilling is a primary concern. However, many companies lack the knowledge of how jobs are going to change, and they are struggling to figure out how digitalization and/or automation is going to change the future skill set needs. This unpredictability makes it hard to foresee which kind of talent they will be needing in the next five to ten years. Of the private-sector business leaders, only 16% have the confidence that they will be able to meet the future potential skill gaps on a large scale. [5]

Small to medium sized companies, as mentioned before, are lacking the capabilities to provide their employees with the necessary training, mostly due to financial inability. For many of them, there aren’t any extra resources available for planning and managing training programs. Even if some of them do offer such opportunities, they are confronted with a bigger risk, for well-trained employees might choose to leave for better employers. 

As stated in the end of the McKinsey Global Institute report, the willingness of the large companies and senior executives to meet challenges lying ahead is strong despite obstacles. However, neither large corporations nor small to medium sized companies should be left alone in this matter, it is important to discuss the role of governments regarding the issue. 

Closing the skill gap is an ecosystem task

Most job trainings are acquired on the job and some job positions are so unique that one cannot receive the right training from any institutional organization. Therefore, it would be efficient for governments to team up with companies to understand and identify skill gaps and to design and conduct training programs, thus preparing the workforce with position-ready skill sets. 

Countries such as Germany and Switzerland attach great importance to their vocational training and apprenticeship models. Their outcome in procuring adult technical skills has shown great success and should be adjusted and expanded to an even larger scale. [6] There are several reasons why this model is especially significant today:

Firstly, due to the frequent updates of technology, the required skills for the jobs have to change more often than before. The model allows the workforce to learn on the job, which will notably minimize the skill gaps. Secondly, the Generation Z born in 1995 and onward have a more practical approach when it comes to education. They adapt to the economics of education and work, measuring their return on investment when choosing what and where to learn. [7] Therefore, the advantage of vocational education and learning while earning matches the learning attitude of today’s generation. Not to mention the economic benefit of having lower youth unemployment rates.   

Low-skilled workers are often left behind by corporate trainings and are most likely to be affected by automation. To solve this issue, governments can provide subsidies to corporation programs to further educate the lower skilled workers. Governments need to ensure a broad-based reskilling, including bringing together different parties such as community colleges and social organizations to provide resources for the vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, such as people with disabilities, single mothers, and refugees. Small to medium sized companies should also be given some degree of financial support when conducting employment training programs. Financial supports could, for instance, come in the form of income tax deductions or public grants to subsidize trainings. [6]

The government of Singapore has taken the step ahead of many others. Singapore has been offering an outstanding program aiming to promote a culture and overall system of lifelong learning and skills mastery. Since 2016, Singapore has added $ 500 into the SkillsFuture account for every Singaporean aged above 25. This account intends to fund citizen approved courses that develop new and relevant skills for career development. The SkillsFuture Singapore Annual Report 2017-18 states that a significant number of Singaporeans have already benefited from this program since the launch.

Maximizing informal ways of learning

Recently, a 14-year-old American boy has been reported to have achieved nuclear fusion in an old playroom in the house of his parents with the assistance of an online amateur physicist’s forum. In its 2019 State of Software Engineers Report, by Hired, it’s claimed that 1 out of 5 software engineers are self-taught. As stated by Tim Cook, Apple is very proud that half of its US employees who were employed in 2018 do not have a formal four-year undergraduate degree. As the resources of knowledge are more open and easier to access, informal education is becoming even more important.

For adults who are already in the working environment, informal education is the most practical way to receive further education while still making a living.  And a significant amount of adult learning is achieved through practical experience, interacting with customers and co-workers and online courses. Therefore, it is important to establish a system to certify the skills people have earned through such informal ways, not only to encourage a learning culture but also to sustain the motivation of learning.

Ironically, while everybody is talking about reskilling and upskilling and how technology is going to change our jobs, some of the fastest growing job fields, such as nursing, medical assistance, elderly care, plumbing and pipefitting, are the ones less affected by technology and automation and don’t need reskilling. However, those jobs are becoming less and less attractive. Perhaps it’s about time to talk less and act on solving feasible problems.

JANZZ.technology has been actively contributing and creating solutions for matching jobs and skills in the digital age such as the newly developed Realtime Labor Market Dashboard. We help corporations, organizations and governments cope with the challenges during the digital transformation and prepare the workforce to adapt to the new labor markets. At JANZZ.technology, we insist on knowing, not guessing. Our technology provides customers with real facts which help make the right decision. The semantic empowered JANZZ.technology is the right tool to rethink and upgrade the current HR infrastructure. For more information, please write now to sales@janzz.technology

[1] Eric D. Beinhocker. 2006. The origin of wealth evolution, complexity, and the radical remarking of economics. Boston, Masaachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

[2] Deloitte. Leading in learning. URL: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/HumanCapital/gx-cons-hc-learning-solutions-placemat.pdf [2019.04.01]

 [3] Scott Mautz. 2018. Amazon is paying its employees $ 12,000 to train for a job at another company. And it’s brilliant. URL: https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/amazon-is-paying-its-employees-12000-to-train-for-a-job-at-another-company-its-brilliant.html [2019.04.01]

[4] David W. Ballard. 2017. Managers aren’t doing enough to train employees for the future. URL: https://hbr.org/2017/11/managers-arent-doing-enough-to-train-employees-for-the-future[2019.04.01]

[5] Pablo Illanes, Susan Lund, Mona Mourshed, Scott Rutherford and Magnus Tyreman. 2018. Retraining and reskilling workers in the age of automation. URL: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/retraining-and-reskilling-workers-in-the-age-of-automation [2019.04.01]

[6] World Economic Forum. 2017. White paper: Accelerating workfore reskilling for the fourth industrial revolution. URL: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_EGW_White_Paper_Reskilling.pdf [2019.04.01]

[7] Jason Wingard. 2018. Training generation Z. URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonwingard/2018/11/21/training-generation-z/#74223a04bde0[2019.04.01]

 

• Do not use graphics or tables
• Follow the formatting rules
• Include unique keywords

Sound familiar? These are some of the tips which can help resumes get through an application tracking system (ATS) and eventually land them in front of an HR manager. However, when it comes to new AI technology used in the hiring process, these tips can no longer guarantee the resume getting past the ATS.

 

What is an ATS and how does it work?

Over 98% of fortune 500 companies, as well as an increasing number of small to mid-sized businesses, are using application tracking systems to filter resumes. [1] The ATS screens through a large number of resumes and passes the most qualified candidates on to the hiring managers. The principal at HR consulting firm Bersin by Deloitte says, “Most companies have thousands of resumes sitting in a database that they have never looked at.” Actually, 75 % of resumes get lost somewhere in the database and are never looked at by a human. [2]

When applicants apply for online jobs, their personal information, work experiences, skills, education and other relevant information is uploaded to the database. The ATS assists human resource personnel in managing the candidates throughout the whole hiring process, including sending applicants automated messages to let them know their applications have been received, giving online tests, scheduling interviews and sending rejection letters. [3]

 The drawbacks of ATS

The biggest drawback of ATS is that many of the earlier systems are designed to look for specific keywords and titles in resumes that match with the advertised positions. Even though some ATS providers claim their system has AI capabilities, the search and match results are still very disappointing. This means that if a good candidate, who is switching careers, has a very similar skill set to the one required for the new position but doesn’t have the exact job title in their resume, the system would miss the candidate.

Sometimes recruiters search for candidates by combining multiple keywords, such as job titles, important skill sets and experiences. Even so, a keyword-based system is not capable of finding adequate candidates with an acceptable degree of accuracy and precision. Moreover, the majority of all searches look for terms that are common, such as “Java”, “Project Manager” or “MS Excel”. Unfortunately, this is not the right approach, for with keyword searching, the more trivial the keyword, the less effective the search and the broader the results.

Other drawbacks of an ATS are that it may not understand all abbreviations and that it can only read a certain format.  According to a joint survey by CareerArc and Future Workplace, in 62% of companies using ATS, “some qualified candidates are likely being automatically filtered out of the vetting process by mistake.” [3]

 The new technology to upgrade your current ATS

It would be pointless to discuss how to optimize resumes in order to “beat” the ATS. Instead, companies should implement the newest AI technology to optimize their application tracking system for a more efficient and accurate hiring process. JANZZ.technology offers the semantic technology which structures occupations, skills, experiences, functions and many more logically interlinked concepts, which deliver relevant search and match results to hiring managers.

With a semantic ATS, you will never miss talents simply because of wording. For example, when searching for a Chinese coach (e.g. for executive mangers who are going to China regularly to meet clients), a semantically powered system will show results including applicants whose job titles aren’t identical but related, such as, Chinese language tutor, Chinese instructor, Chinese teacher or language tutor specialized in Chinese and Japanese.

A semantic matching engine like JANZZsme! has the most comprehensive, multilingual knowledge graph of occupations and skills at its disposal. When the semantic matching engine does a query expansion, searches or matches job ads and resumes, it accesses the ontology concepts, lexical terms and synonyms, which may appear in CVs and job vacancies in up to 40 languages.

For instance, CEOs (US English) will match with Geschäftsführer (German), 首席执行官 (Chinese) and Managing Directors (UK English). Carpenters will be fully or partly matched with joiners and kitchen unit makers. Design illustrators, animation artists and film animation designers are all fully or partly connected.

Taking programing language as another example; let’s say you are looking for programmers to develop .NET. If programmer A has C# on his resume and programmer B knows Python, the smart matching engine JANZZsme! will successfully match programmer A to your open position, because it knows that C# is a programming language of .NET. This is achieved through the interlinked relationship of the concepts stored in JANZZon!.

Precision in matching is achieved through structure and context. However, neither CVs nor job offers are structured efficiently or consistently, which makes it difficult for a keyword search engine to identify the right data type.  A matching engine such as JANZZsme! looks at the type of sought-for data and uses deep learning techniques to identify the correct match while disqualifying matches that are the wrong data type.

CV and job description keyword-based search systems and current CV Parsing technology do not have the same capability to produce high occurrences of accurate matches that contextualized semantic searching and matching has. While the results from a keyword-based search overwhelm hiring managers, a semantic matching engine produces a manageable volume of results, letting hiring managers focus on scanning questionable or unclear data and making the final decision. Thus, radically reducing the amount of needed time and effort.

Do you feel limited by your current ATS (e.g. Oracle Taleo, SAP or IBM Kenexa)? Do you want to optimize it with semantic technology and enjoy more advanced capabilities when searching for candidates, matching open positions and conducting skill gap analyses? To find out how to do so, please write now to sales@janzz.technology

 

 

 

[1] Jon Shields. 2017. Over 98% of fortune 500 companies use application tracking systems (ATS). URL: https://www.jobscan.co/blog/fortune-500-use-applicant-tracking-systems/

[2] Terena Bell. 2017. The secrets to beating an applicant tracking system (ATS). URL: https://www.cio.com/article/2398753/careers-staffing-5-insider-secrets-for-beating-applicant-tracking-systems.html

[3] Alison Doyle. 2019. How employers use application tracking systems (ATS). URL: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-is-an-applicant-tracking-systems-ats-2061926

[4] CareerArc. 2016. 23 surprising stats on candidate experience-infographic. URL: http://www.careerarc.com/blog/2016/06/candidate-experience-study-infographic/

Japanese society, one of the world’s oldest and most homogeneous, is about to change. In December 2018, Japan’s parliament passed an immigration bill that is intended to boost the economy and to tackle the country’s labor shortage.

More precisely, the law is designed to attract foreign “semiskilled workers.” These workers are to be employed in various industries, among others, construction, the hotel industry, agriculture and nursing care; in the latter case, shortages are most acute. Despite some protests from oppositional parties, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his government put the bill through by a vote of 161 to 76. Over the course of five years the immigration bill, which is coming into effect in April 2019, aims to attract 345,000 foreign workers to Japan. [1]

Japanese cities worried about taking in more foreign workers

A survey conducted by Kyodo News in February this year shows that Japanese cities are concerned about the accommodation of more foreign workers. The issues cities seem to worry most about are of economic nature and include questions of how new foreign workers can be provided with livelihood support and with salaries on a par with local Japanese workers’. [2]

Both the oppositional protest and the concerns appear to be justified. In 1993, Japan has already once introduced a program concerned with foreign labor, the so-called Technical Intern Training Program. Its purpose was to attract interns from developing countries and to help them acquire technical skills which they could export to their countries of origin. Despite the good intentions behind it, the program has been abused. Many Japanese companies have misused it as a cheap way of employing foreign laborers. This translates to a majority of Japan’s young foreigners doing low-payed “3K jobs” (the three Ks are short for kitsui, kitanai and kiken, the words to describe work that is “dangerous, dirty and difficult”). Many of them receive less than half of the statutory minimum wage, which has a significant impact on the quality of their life and well-being. [3]

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, Japan wants to complement the new program with a range of measures to support foreign workers in adjusting to Japanese life and to encourage smaller cities to take in foreign laborers. Furthermore, foreign workers’ language proficiency will newly be tested with a focus on spoken Japanese.  “People may have various arguments, but if Japan simply continued along the same path, we would find ourselves in a very difficult situation,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga says. [4]

Aging problem is forcing Europe to relax immigration regulation

The 2018 Aging Report, published by the European Commission, indicates that Europe’s population is continuing to age rapidly, with Germany having one of the oldest populations among European countries. The German population pyramid indicates a negative demographic growth and predicts the country’s arrival at a scary milestone this year: there will be fewer citizens under the age of 30 than such over 60.

To fight these current developments, Germany has taken action. In August and September 2015, the country opened its borders to welcome more than a million refugees. Last year’s employment figures show that since then 400,000 refugees have been integrated in work or training, which seems to vindicate Angela Merkel’s much-criticized approach. “After one year of instruction, most young migrants can speak German well enough to participate in vocational school classes,” the head of BDA (Confederation of German Employers’ Associations), Ingo Kramer, states. [5]

The aging problem also poses challenges for nursing care. Accordingly, many European countries, including Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Finland, are in great shortage of nurses and other professional care providers. To reduce their lack of skilled labor, these countries are introducing relevant policies.

In December 2018, the German government passed a skilled labor immigration law that will make it easier for employers to recruit workforce from outside the EU. In light of Brexit, the UK government is proposing a drastic overhaul of its immigration policy in order to henceforth prioritize high-skilled workers and treat non-EU citizens equally to EU citizens.

A war for skilled migrants

Evidence shows that immigration has played an important role in bringing significant economic benefits, including to the US and Canada. The two countries had the most welcoming immigration policies to attract skilled laborers that aid national businesses in becoming more agile, competitive and profitable in the “war for talent.” Their governments in exchange received more revenue and citizens profited from the momentum created by the influx of high-skilled migrants. [6]

More recently, other countries, too, have expressed their intent to attract skilled foreign workers, which increases the complexity of the skilled migration boom. The most important decision criteria for skilled workers’ choice of country are language and culture. The English-speaking countries of the US, the UK, Canada and Australia are the so-called “Big Four” of skilled migration and take 70% of all high-skilled migrants to OECD states. [7] Countries like Germany and Japan are therefore facing serious competition, even if they increase their policy efforts.

Negative aspects of migration

There are, however, also some negative aspects about large-scale migration. Although concerning a relatively small group of people, these negative consequences will have drastic effects. In essence, (im)migration can create unequal power balances. In John Stuart Mill’s words, it is big governments’ responsibility to ensure that the local and short-term social costs do not overshadow the role of (im)migration “as one of the primary sources of progress.” [6]

Another drawback of migration are the economic losses caused by the “brain drain” in the nations that high-skilled workers leave behind for countries offering higher salaries and better living standards. Most of these left-behind countries are less developed—the departure of their best-trained workers only perpetuates this: not only are they deprived of their high-skilled professionals, thereby they also lose the money invested in these people’s education.

On average, nurses earn 250 to 400 euros a month in Bosnia or Serbia. Compare this to a starting salary of about 1,500 euros in Germany. “We are losing our best experts,” says Zoran Savic, the president of Serbia’s medical workers’ trade union. “Younger doctors will fill in their places, but it takes a minimum of ten years to educate a specialist physician.” [8]

According to data supplied by POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration), between 2012 and 2016 more than 92,277 nurses have left the Philippines. Low salaries have been one of the main push factors. [9] In the Philippines, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing program (BSN) takes four years to complete and costs about 30,000 pesos (576 USD) per semester. If only one third of the deployed nurses mentioned held a public BSN, the country has already lost 140,320,097 dollars that it invested in their education.

Similarly, a Kenyan study shows that in Kenya a doctor’s higher-level education costs are approximately 48,169 dollars. If one adds the preceding costs of primary (10,963 USD) and secondary education (6,868 USD), the total education cost for one single medical doctor amounts to 65,997 dollars. [10] For a country whose economy classifies as lower-middle-income the brain drain caused by the departure of expert workers such as doctors constitutes a major problem.

Migration, the only way to tackle labor shortage  

According to the World Bank, developed countries could generate global economic gains of 356 billion dollars if they increased immigration by a margin of 3% of the workforce. Some economists predict that if borders were opened completely and labor forces could be allocated freely the world economy would produce gains of even 39 trillion dollars over the course of 25 years. [6]

Oxford University professor Ian Goldin indicates that ensuring a strong labor supply augment with foreign workers will become even more crucial in the future. Therefore, today’s governments need to prepare themselves for the labor market challenges laying ahead of them and they can do so by choosing the right tools and technologies to shape the future.

JANZZ.technology offers exactly what is needed to achieve this. With proven high-tech solutions such as the newly developed Realtime Labour Market Dashboard, its unique expertise in occupation and skills data and extensive know-how about the re-skilling and digitization of employment markets, JANZZ.technology provides an array of effective tools. These tools can be used to analyze and correctly predict both the potential and the demand for specific skills in labor markets, as well as provide policymakers and people in charge with the answers to make the right decisions at the right time.

Please write now to sales@janzz.technology

 

 

 

[1] Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi. 2018. Japan passes controversial new immigration bill to attract foreign workers. URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japan-passes-controversial-new-immigration-bill-to-attract-foreign-workers/2018/12/07/a76d8420-f9f3-11e8-863a-8972120646e0_story.html?utm_term=.1f730552bd5d [2019.02.26]

[2] KYODO. 2019. Japanese cities worried about taking in more foreign workers, survey finds. URL: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/02/10/national/japanese-cities-worried-taking-foreign-workers-survey-finds/#.XGKdelxKiUk [2019.02.26]

[3] Christoph Neidhart. 2019. Zuwanderer verzweifelt gesucht. URL: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/ausland/asien-und-ozeanien/zuwanderer-verzweifelt-gesucht/story/19372917 [2019.02.26]

[4] Hiona Shiraiwa. 2018. Japan prepares support for incoming foreign workers. URL: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Japan-Immigration/Japan-prepares-support-for-incoming-foreign-workers [2019.02.26]

[5] Jorg Luyken. 2018. Angela Merkel was right about refugee integration, says German business federation chief. URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/14/angela-merkel-right-integration-figures-show-400000-refugees/ [2019.02.26]

[6] Ian Goldin. 2016. How immigration has changed the world for the better. URL: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/how-immigration-has-changed-the-world-for-the-better/[2019.02.26]

[7] INTHEBLACK. 2016. Which countries are winning the global talent war? URL: https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2016/12/01/which-countries-are-winning-the-global-talent-war[2019.02.26]

[8] Daria Sito-Sucic. 2017. Nurses, doctors leave Balkans to work in Germany. URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-balkans-healthcare-germany/nurses-doctors-leave-balkans-to-work-in-germany-idUSKBN16G18X [2019.02.26]

[9] Don Kevin Hapal. 2017. Why our nurses are leaving. URL: https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/180918-why-nurses-leave-philippines [2019.02.26]

[10] Yusuf Abdu Misau, Nabilla Al-Sadat and Adamu Bakari Gerei. 2010. Brain-drain and health care delivery in developing countries. URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46179307_Brain-drain_and_health_care_delivery_in_developing_countries [2019.02.26]