Illustrative stock photo (source: Photo by Alizée Baudez on Unsplash)
The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the transformation of the labour market in Slovakia.
Explore Slovak labour market and human resource trends (for more details visit shop.spectator.sk) (source: Career Guide)
Two main trends can be observed: while the number of IT-related job offers is growing, the number of offers not requiring some previous experience has been in retreat, according to the Profesia.sk job portal.
IT experts wanted
The IT sector had the fifth-largest number of offers back in 2018. More job ads were published only in trade, production, transport and administration.
The latest data show that the share of IT-related job ads is growing every year.
While in 2018, IT job offers composed about 10.6 percent of the offers, a year later it was 11.5 percent and in 2020, it is 12.1 percent so far. Job ads in the IT sector are third in the ranking, following trade and production.
The pandemic has only underlined the current trend. Mass home-office work in companies and a focus on online sales resulted in companies seeking IT experts in particular.
Less opportunities for graduates without experience
This cannot be said for positions that do not require any previous working experience. While in 2017, the lack of labour force resulted in employers lowering their expectations for job applicants, the situation has changed and companies often publish job ads requiring previous experience.
In 2019, 36 percent of job ads were suitable for fresh graduates with no experience. In 2020, it dropped to 32.5 percent.
One of the reasons may be the pandemic since the lower number of job ads increased the responses of job applicants. While in 2019, about 16 people responded to one offer, now the number has doubled.
Share of the offers suitable for graduates that did not require previous experience. (source: Profesia.sk)
Experience important for students
It is important for students to realise they need some job experience, especially in the case of university students.
Among individual degrees of education, the lowest share of the job offers that require experience is in the case of university graduates with a post-graduate degree (MA). In 2020, only 16 percent of job ads were suitable for graduates, while a year before it was 18 percent.
