Abstract
Abstract There is an increasing need for analysing the demand for skills in the labour market. While most studies aggregate skills in groups or use available proxies for them, the authors analyse the demand by employers for individual competences. Such an analysis better reflects reality because companies usually require job candidates to have particular competences, rather than generally defined groups of skills. However, no method exists to analyse on a large scale which competences are required by employers. At a detailed level, there are hundreds of competences; thus, this demand cannot be measured in a sample survey. The authors propose a method for conducting a continuous and efficient analysis of the demand for competences of prospective employees. The method involves collecting online job offers and analysing them with data mining and text analysis tools. The authors use this method to analyse transversal competences in the Polish labour market. Their findings indicate that companies typically required only certain competences—especially ‘language and communication competences’—while neglecting others. The number of job candidate requirements was counter-cyclical. However, the structure of the competences demanded did not change during the analysed period.
Highlights
Looking for a job? If so, do you know what employers expect from you? The sad truth is that job seekers often lack detailed knowledge of employers’ expectations
In the unique internet job offers published during the November 2012–December 2015 period, competences appeared on average 240.2 thousand times per month; which gives us a figure of 2.8 unique competences per job offer
The lowest number of competences per job offer was at the beginning of the analysed period (2.2 competences on average)
Summary
Looking for a job? If so, do you know what employers expect from you? The sad truth is that job seekers often lack detailed knowledge of employers’ expectations. Do you know what employers expect from you? The sad truth is that job seekers often lack detailed knowledge of employers’ expectations. The failure to share information—here, between job seekers and employers—is called information friction. It has been argued that information friction is among the most important causes of the structural mismatch between job seekers and employers, and of long-term unemployment. When job seekers and employers have imperfect information about each other, the former may choose unsuitable fields of education and invest in unsuitable skills. Poor educational policy design may lead to a higher or a lower labour supply than is needed in some fields of education or skill sets. Job requirements may evolve more dynamically than the skills of job seekers
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