Labour market training and RecruitmentTraining offer solutions to labour shortages and the possibility of finding employment with short training
The challenge for many employment regions and individual companies is that there are not enough workers. By organising labour market training and RecruitmentTraining, it is possible to find solutions to the problem. For jobseekers, training is a safe and often also fairly fast way to find employment.
The aim of labour market training and RecruitmentTraining is to find and train employees for tasks with a shortage of experts.
TE Services plan and implement labour market training in cooperation with an educational institution that organises training in the field for which experts are needed. In labour market training, you can take, for example, basic degrees, vocational training and specialist qualifications or parts of a degree. Labour market training may also consist of continuing education. You can also complete cards or permits that are part of the qualification requirements for different professions.
The recruitment training is implemented by TE Services and the employer. In the training, the students acquire professional competence for the position according to the needs of an individual employer. It can be additional or supplementary training or training to prepare for a change of career. However, qualifications or partial qualifications cannot be completed in RecruitmentTraining.
TE Office will consider the training needs of jobseekers interested in training and make student selections based on this.
Training for different needs
Labour market training is arranged to meet the needs of the employment area, which means that employees are trained in those sectors where there is a shortage of specialists. Primarily unemployed persons or persons whose work is about to end are selected for the training.
- Labour market training qualifies, deepens and updates competence. For example, if you graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 2010 and have not worked in the field, your competence will be outdated. In this case, you have a clear need for training, that is your competence needs to be updated, says Satu Oja, a specialist at the TE Office's training services.
RecruitmentTraining is an opportunity for individual companies to find employees in a situation where no specialists in the field are available and they are not about to graduate from educational institutions in the near future. RecruitmentTraining is tailored to the employer's needs. Persons who pass the training will be employed by the employer, which according to Satu Oja is the greatest benefit of the training.
- RecruitmentTraining provides employment well. The difference with labour market training is that the job in RecruitmentTraining is already waiting. Most of the training takes place at the workplace, so you can also demonstrate your competence to the employer in practice.
Although employers' knowledge of the possibility of RecruitmentTraining has increased to some extent in many sectors because of the labour shortage that has developed in recent years, according to Oja, this form of recruitment is still unfortunately poorly known.
- The advantage of RecruitmentTraining is that TE Office, which is the managing party, will continue to support both the employee and the employer throughout the process. For employers, the recruitment process is lighter when they receive help with the arrangements. During the RecruitmentTraining, the employer will also be able to familiarise themselves with their future employee. In turn, a jobseeker can safely learn a new task in the training, and if a problem arises during the training, TE Office is involved in negotiations, Oja says.
The Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment or the ELY Centre pays 70 per cent of the costs of RecruitmentTraining and the employer 30 per cent of the costs. Employers interested in organising recruitment training should contact their local ELY Centre or TE Office.
Different things affect the popularity of training
Occasionally, there has been more demand for labour market training and RecruitmentTraining among jobseekers than there is supply, but according to Satu Oja, the coronavirus epidemic has reduced the number of applicants to such an extent that there is a shortage of applicants for some training programmes.
Which sectors are the most popular in labour market training and which sectors get less interest?
- Any type of specialist training in which a jobseeker can improve their competence is currently popular. For example, the development of digital skills is worth mentioning. The transport sector also raises interest. Interest in the electricity sector has declined slightly, even though there is a need for specialists. The situation is somewhat affected by the fact that you can now also be trained by means of an apprenticeship, for example. The construction and metal sectors, however, seem to be of little interest at the moment. The popularity of labour market training is always affected by trends, and there are also regional differences, Oja says.
Employers should note that they also have a responsibility for how attractive jobseekers perceive different fields. Satu Oja brings up the restaurant sector, for example, where employees often have to be very committed to their workplace, but in the worst case, there are few hours available. This is, of course, not very attractive.
Explore training opportunities extensively
You can search for labour market training and RecruitmentTraining using the training search on TE Services website. Satu Oja has tips for browsing trainings on the website.
- It is a good idea to first check the available RecruitmentTrainings, as they provide the opportunity to find employment directly in a certain company. If you are looking at labour market training and no suitable training is organised near your place of residence, you should find out what kind of labour market training is available nationally. National labour market training is implemented online, so the place of residence of the jobseeker is irrelevant. It is also worth looking for trainings elsewhere than in the vicinity of your place of residence, because if you have a reasonable number of contact teaching days and your life situation allows you to do so, a little travel will probably not be a problem. The trainings are also often relatively short, which means that at best it can be a fast way to finding employment, Oja says.
To increase awareness of the opportunities offered by labour market training and RecruitmentTraining, Satu Oja and their colleagues have worked on the idea of organising trade fairs focusing on labour market training and RecruitmentTraining. The trade fairs are intended to be a national event, that is they are organised in different parts of Finland at the same time, and they also have visibility in social media in real time. The plans are only in their early stages, but we may hear more about the training trade fair as 2023 progresses.