The European Commission highlighted that there is a critical shortfall of ICT experts and that there is a mismatch between skills on offer and those that are in demand in the technology market. The Commission also said that Europe might face a shortage of up to 900,000 ICT professionals by 2020, risking its potential for growth and digital competitiveness.
The Netherlands is no exception when it comes to this issue – some employers are saying that they have difficulty filling technical and engineering roles. “It is difficult to find staff with a technical and engineering background even though our positions are office positions and the background is required only to understand what they are buying. Spanish is required for our positions and especially that combination can be difficult. However, we noticed that there are many candidates from outside The Netherlands with a technical background,” says Menno Koeslag, Human Resource Analyst, PDVSA Services B.V. The company is a part of PDVSA group, a Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas organisation.
So, why is there a shortfall of skills and the number of candidates in these fields? A major contributing factor is a shortage of students joining the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields of study or otherwise known as beta subjects in The Netherlands. A quick look at figures from the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) shows that though there has been an increase in the number of students matriculating in beta subjects at universities (at WO level), the numbers are still low. In 2012, of the 43,948 students matriculating at all 13 universities in the country only 6,128 chose beta fields of study. More than 50% chose arts, humanities and business fields of study. Research by the Ministry of Education shows a similar pattern in lower levels of study such as in HAVO, MBO – there is an increase in number of students in beta studies but is significantly lower in number compared to those who chose other subjects.
Analyses by the Research Centre for Education and Labour Market (ROA) also show that the country needs to produce 30,000 additional technology graduates a year to meet growing market demands.
Initiatives have been introduced in The Netherlands and in Europe region-wide to tackle the problems of attracting young people into engineering and ICT education and improving the skills of current employees and retraining unemployed people into these sectors.
The Nationaal Techniekpact 2020 is a joint initiative of the central Dutch government, the business community, trade unions, education providers and the regions. It aims to meet the growing demand for skilled technologists (ICT and sciences sectors). The Pact aims to promote technology or beta subjects so that students would choose these fields of study. It also aims to retain technology workers and help redundant workers – through training and development – in the technology sectors (ICT and engineering).
Some of the measures include:
- By 2020, all 7,000 primary schools in the Netherlands will have science and technology on their curricula
- An investment fund will be created in which the central government, employers and the regions will each contribute €100 million to invest in public-private education partnerships within the region.
- Businesses will contribute by releasing staff for guest teaching sessions, by investing in joint-study programmes or by providing vocational schools (VMBO and MBO) and universities of applied sciences (HBO) with technical installations, work placements, laboratories or machines
- Businesses in the designated top sectors will make 1,000 scholarships available annually for technology-related study programmes at the universities of applied sciences and research universities
- €300 million set aside for training and development schemes to help redundant workers find jobs in technology sectors
In a Europe regional level, the European Commission launched the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs, as a part of its Digital Agenda for Europe, last year to attract young people into ICT education, and to retrain unemployed people. The Commission’s goal is to start increasing the supply of ICT practitioners by 2015, so as to ensure a sufficient number of them in Europe in the near future.
Such initiatives in The Netherlands and in Europe are part of long-term plans of attracting and developing talent in the engineering and ICT sectors. Till then, employers have to cope with the difficulties of the skills gap and managing their talent pipeline.
Priya De Langen