UK recruiters reveal the most challenging roles to fill

A new study from CV-Library, the UK’s largest job site, has revealed that 67.5% of recruitment professionals are still struggling to find the right candidates, despite a growing job market. The research, which addressed over 700 of the UK’s leading recruiters, including both agency and in-house professionals, uncovered which job roles pose the biggest challenge for recruiters to fill.

It may come as a surprise to hear that permanent roles are the most challenging to fill, with over a third of recruiters (39.9%) admitting difficulties when it comes to finding suitable candidates for these vacancies. Interestingly, it has been revealed that the least challenging roles to fill are paternity and maternity cover, with 3.3% of recruiters struggling with the former, and 11.5% admitting difficulties with the latter. This perhaps suggests that today’s workers are seeking more flexibility in their careers, or it could in fact be that candidates are looking for more varied work experiences.

When agency recruiters were asked about the most challenging sectors, they revealed that Engineering tops the list as toughest, while the Leisure & Tourism industry takes the title as easiest. Of those asked, almost half of agency recruiters confirmed that Engineering jobs are becoming increasingly difficult to fill, with 49.9% revealing their concerns over finding candidates for these roles. These findings simply highlight the challenges facing the engineering sector; there appears to be an increasing shortage of skills, particularly within those entering the industry.

Coming in second place was the Oil & Gas / Energy sector, with 27.2% of agency recruiters admitting difficulty when trying to fill roles in this industry. The same, however, cannot be said for both the Leisure and Tourism industry; only 1.5% of recruiters had difficulty finding suitable candidates for jobs in these sectors. Similarly, only 2.4% of those surveyed had difficulty recruiting within the Customer Services industry, making it the third-easiest sector for recruitment professionals! This is promising news for those looking to hire staff over the Christmas period the as Leisure, Tourism and Customer Services industries will usually bring hordes of temporary staff on-board to help over the holiday season!