Focus on youth. How did companies in Ukraine overcome wartime personnel shortages?

The number of new vacancies in Ukraine has been increasing since the beginning of 2024 and has even exceeded the 2021 level. At the same time, the number of resumes is significantly less than the 2022-2023 figures. This was reported by experts of the National Bank of Ukraine in the Monthly Macroeconomic and Monetary Review in March. In their opinion, this may indicate that the enterprise has largely adapted to military conditions and needs personnel to further restore activity. “But the labor supply is limited due to migration and mobility. It is also possible that job seekers will find work or stop looking for personal reasons. According to surveys, at the beginning of 2024, enterprises subsequently realized both the increasing shortage of qualified personnel and the NBU in its review, “This problem To overcome this, employers are more actively trying to attract population groups that were previously excluded from the workforce,” he says. Focus He explored how critical the problem of personnel shortages is now in Ukraine and how large companies attract the right specialists.

The shortage intensifies: Who do employers need and how long does the search take?

Even before the full-scale occupation began, Ukraine was facing a labor shortage. But now, when more than 6 million Ukrainians are forced to go abroad, the economic situation in the country has become even more critical. According to the Ministry of Economy, over the next decade Ukraine will need to attract an additional 4.5 million workers to the labor market.

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Meanwhile, according to Work.ua, as a result, the vast majority of employers will face staff shortages in 2023, which will be further exacerbated by the uneven recovery of the labor market on both geographical and sectoral dimensions. Analysts say employers in the frontier regions and the west of the country may also face staff shortages. Difficulties in hiring for the former arise because people are forced to move to safer areas or abroad. For others, hiring is complicated by intense competition from employers. For example, in the Transcarpathian region the labor market recovered by 167%; There are significantly more employers than there were before the full-scale invasion, and there are not enough candidates for everyone.

“The most difficult thing is to find candidates for vacancies in the categories ‘Medicine, pharmaceuticals’ and ‘Blue-collar specialties, production-collar specialties,’ says an analyst from Work.ua experts.

The companies confirmed: Staff shortages are especially serious when it comes to qualified specialists with good experience . “For example, in the process of selecting medical representatives in cities with a population of over 1 million, only 5 candidates from 33 resumes are interviewed and we choose one of them. Most of the time, we have to start the search from the beginning, because the final candidates do not have all the necessary competencies. In addition, the search time for specialists with unique skills is 1- “It went from 1.5 months to 3 months or more.” Focus Liliya Dubas is the head of the HR department at Teva in Ukraine.

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According to him, the company suffers from a shortage of experts with highly specialized skills and knowledge, especially in the fields of pharmacovigilance, registration and quality control.

“Also in the last two years we have noticed a significant shortage of qualified marketers, even taking into account the possibility of attracting specialists from related sectors such as FMCG,” said Lilia Dubas.

Meanwhile, the Kyivstar company said that personnel shortages are especially felt in “male” professions. “For example, these are engineering professions in technical directorates. In B2B, B2C it is difficult to find employees: supervisors, sales personnel. Narrow-profile vacancies take much longer to fill: auditors, Big Data experts. But the most difficult thing is to find people for vacancies in any direction in front-line regions,” shares Svetlana Konchanina, head of the department for attracting and developing talents at Kyivstar.

Kyivstar says that in the first six months of the all-out war, vacancies in the labor market decreased by 70-80 percent, and there were no problems in attracting personnel. It was an employers’ market: many companies stopped hiring, employers reduced staff, and demand for vacancies exceeded supply. The company also noted that the situation in IT is slightly different due to the decrease in the percentage of foreign orders. But finding DevOps or NetOps remains the same problem as in the pre-war era.

New recruitment programs and employee mobilization

Mobilization has become one of the reasons for the aggravation of the problem of personnel shortages in Ukraine. However, fortunately, many companies have the right to book employees, which helps them retain valuable staff. “Teva in Ukraine has the status of an enterprise critically important for the functioning of the economy and the livelihoods of the population. This allows us to allocate employees who occupy critical positions to ensure the stable functioning of the business and uninterrupted supply of pharmaceutical products,” he said. Lilia Dubas.

The Kyivstar company says that the current reservation procedure defines the mechanism for registering those responsible for military service during martial law, especially those working in enterprises, institutions and organizations that are critical for the functioning of the economy and the livelihood of the population. Population in a special period. And Kyivstar is recognized as such an organization because the company meets the required number of certain criteria, which is a prerequisite for obtaining such a status. “This allows us to book up to 50 percent of our military personnel. The booking procedure is the same for all employers, it is provided at the country level“, they said Focus in the company.

To replace employees who move, businesses resort to either redistributing functions among employees or opening new temporary vacancies.

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“There are cases when a new specialist is recruited to replace a specialist who was subsequently mobilized. But we expect our employees to return from the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, their jobs remain with them. The company continues to care for them, providing monthly payments in the amount of the average monthly income of a mobilized employee, providing corporate insurance and a psychological support program also designed for families of military employees. To accommodate returning employees, the company implemented “4.5.0” for veterans’ reintegration. Nareshti vddom” program. Now we have 16 such people. The program includes training HR employees, working with team leaders and teams, working with relatives of the veteran and actually supporting the veteran,” says Svetlana Konchanina, head of the talent attraction and development department at Kyivstar.

Train an expert. How do companies seek and attract personnel during war?

A business uses various opportunities available to fill a gap. For example, they may hire people with less experience and then invest in training or invest resources in technology and innovation. For some particularly important positions, recruitment is used and wages are offered well above the market level. Often companies resort to searching for a specialist from among those already working in the company. “In accordance with our personnel search and selection policy, we prefer internal candidates when filling open positions. Before announcing an open position in the market, we announce this issue internally and give employees 5 days to think and consult with their managers. 45 Lilia Dubas, “Manager and “We fill a percentage of executive positions with internal candidates,” he said.

A common trend in Ukraine has become the introduction of special programs that motivate company employees to recommend their friends for open positions.

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“Apart from traditional search channels, we have a highly effective referral program for employees. At Teva, employees receive financial rewards when a recommended candidate is hired and completes the trial period. It is also worth adding that recommendations improve the quality of candidates, because employees only recommend people they trust does,” Lilia Dubas stated.

And in the company “Kyivstar” Focus He said that they have launched “BezVagan”, a new responsible employer program that provides the training and development of experts without work experience and where the company trains talent on its own. “As part of the BezVagan program, experts are recruited to the company staff under a 1-year fixed-term contract; they have access to all employer programs, mentor support, as well as a comprehensive training program,” shares Svetlana Konchanina.

It is also important that most companies now rely on young professionals; They offer professional internship programs, employment programs with subsequent training, and special vacancies for students that provide a flexible schedule. “There is a successful cooperation program with Ariel University, which is known for its strong faculties of natural sciences, health sciences and medicine in Israel. Based on this experience, we plan to develop and implement a similar program in Ukraine in the near future. We want to attract talented young people to our company and train them for careers in the pharmaceutical industry.” to motivate for development and career advancement,” notes Lilia Dubas.