If salaries were higher, then maybe employers would not have such hard time finding employees?
From the beginning of this year to the end of September, the MojPosao employment website received more than 6,500 offers for jobs in the tourism and hospitality industry, which was 27 percent more than last year. However, the trend was also accompanied by the inability of many employers to find a sufficient number of skilled workers during the tourist season. The situation is expected to worsen next year, reports tportal.hr on October 5, 2017.
This year, tourism and hospitality jobs accounted for more than a fifth of all employment offers on the MojPosao website. The highest number of people, according to profiles in their resumes, is interested in working as receptionists, waiters, travel agency employees, and as maids. The most sought-after professions are barman, chef, assistant kitchen worker, maid, assistant chef and receptionist. Tourism industry job ads received more than 91,000 applications or 10 percent more than last year.
As usual, employers mostly offered fixed-term contracts, which covered more than 60 percent of all ads, which was still somewhat lower than last year. At the same time, 45 percent of ads offered more or less permanent positions, while 23 percent of ads were for part-time workers. Employers were able to mark several different categories of employment in the same ad, which accounts for the percentage inflation.
“Wages in tourism are still among the lowest paid jobs, averaging 22 percent below the national average,” pointed out the website. According to the figures, among the most sought-after positions in tourism, highest salaries were received by cooks, slightly more than 4,800 kunas, while receptionists had an average wage of around 4,200 kunas and waiters about 3,992 kunas.
“Employment in tourism and hospitality industry has reached the peak this season in the inability to find a sufficient number of skilled workers. The additional aggravating factor is that employers usually have to find workers in a very short timeframe, while travel for interviews represented a huge financial burden for job-seekers,” explained the website.
Due to these problems, the second Virtual Fair of Tourism Jobs will be held in February next year to facilitate contacts between employers and candidates, and save on the selection time and travel costs of the candidates.
Assessing that next year will be even more demanding in this regard, due to the greater need of employers and fewer and fewer available employees, the MojPosao website has warned and advised employers to use all available means to improve working conditions, and has called on the Croatian government to increase quotas for import of foreign workers.
“We urge the government to increase quotas for foreign workers as a short-term measure, and to review the actual situation at the Croatian Employment Service with mandatory training and retraining,” said Igor Žonja, the director of the MojPosao website.
Translated from tportal.hr.
