There are some surprises in a new CareerBuilder survey about the types of jobs recruiters find the hardest to fill.
Marketers and mechanics are among the top 10, according to the survey. So are truck drivers, which is less of a surprise to anyone who’s seen the help wanted signs on the back of many semis.
So much has been written about most of the other jobs on the list that no recruiter or hiring manager will be surprised to see IT, nurses, accountants, and engineers there. Many search firms have one or more desks devoted exclusively to each of these occupations.
CareerBuilder’s report not only identifies the hardest to fill jobs — according to the 2,000 HR and hiring managers it surveyed — but it put numbers to the jobs. Economic Modeling Specialists (EMSI), which CareerBuilder owns, calculated the number of jobs created in each occupation since the official end of the recession in 2010.
That offered some interesting insights itself. For instance, manufacturing oriented jobs — machine operator/assembler/production worker — grew by 135,363, just slightly ahead of the much more widely publicized increase in nursing.
The EMSI numbers differ from the official counts of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because EMSI aggregates data from multiple sources, massaging it to provide a more complete picture.
In a press release about the survey Brent Rasmussen, president of CareerBuilder North America, said, “Two in five employers (41 percent) reported that they continuously recruit throughout the year, so that they have candidates in their pipeline in case a position opens up down the road.
“The skills gap that exists for high-growth, specialized occupations will become even more pronounced in the years to come, prompting the need to place a greater emphasis on reskilling workers through formal education and on-the-job training.”