International countries are angling for South Africa’s skilled workers — with the country’s financial services sector one of the first waters where global recruitment companies are casting their nets. Jocelyn Rowe, a British-based recruitment company for the financial services sector, said 19 800 new financial services jobs opened up in the City of London in August, an increase of nearly 500 since last year. At the same time the ratio of applicants to those jobs decreased from 0,87 in 2006 to 0,62 this year.
This should not be seen as a form of skills poaching, however, said Ann Bernstein, executive director of the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE). A booming international skills market should be viewed as an opportunity for South Africa to become more competitive on a global scale, said Bernstein.
Some countries are relaxing visa requirements to attract skilled people. The British government’s highly skilled migrant programme is becoming an increasingly popular route into the country because it allows overseas professionals to spend longer periods working in the country.
Based on a point system that qualifies an applicant as ”highly skilled”, the visa is granted for one year. After that individuals can apply to have it extended for another three years and, after four years in the United Kingdom, they can apply for indefinite leave to remain. Australia has relaxed its working visa programme, giving 18-month working visas to candidates with degrees from recognised international institutions, including from the universities of Wits, Pretoria and Cape Town.
Recruitment drives by foreign companies in South Africa are happening against a backdrop of massive skills shortages in the country, where even the presidency is experiencing a 25% vacancy rate and staff turnover of 13,5%, according to its annual report released earlier this week.
In a bid to fill vacancies in the UK, companies such as Jocelyn Rowe search further afield to source skilled professionals, taking advantage of existing networks to find the people they need.
In early October the company will be in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban to give seminars covering a number of issues like salary expectations overseas, visa requirements and British market conditions. The company is giving R300 in Woolworths’ vouchers to anyone who recommends a friend to attend the seminars on condition that he or she successfully registers with Jocelyn Rowe.
”This is the second recruitment roadshow Jocelyn Rowe has conducted and, based on last year, we expect places to be oversubscribed,” said company spokesperson Belinda Walmsley. She said there is not just a demand from London, but from firms in Scotland and Ireland too. Walmsley said South Africans have a working culture and professional level of qualification suitable to Britain. Australians and New Zealanders are highly sought after too.
”We find that our existing candidates from South Africa who have made the move to London already recommend their colleagues or friends back home,” said Walmsley. ”There is a real network of ‘ex-pats’ sharing information.” The South African government’s Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) is working to acquire and retain the skills needed to reach economic growth targets of 6% a year, but how its success is being measured is unclear.
Bernstein said South Africa operates in a ”global market” and the country should be working to become competitive on an international scale. She said an expanding global skills market is a reality and South Africa should stop playing the victim and begin engaging competitively on a global level. This gives local employers more choice and a wider pool of knowledge on which to draw.
While South Africa might not be able to compete with countries like the UK in terms of salaries, Bernstein argued that it needs to broaden its scope of candidates and become ”less Eurocentric”.
”We can’t compete with rich countries, but we can compete with countries like India, for instance,” she said. However, local policy on migration is ”confused and ambiguous”.
To become competitive in the hunt for skilled workers, Bernstein said South Africa needs to determine the areas where it can compete with international countries and build on those strengths. ”We could be thinking about training people for the global market as an area of excellence and comparative advantage, but we need more skills and investment to do that.”
