Frustration is high in job market.
Sometimes it seems that Ukraine’s educational system and labor market exist in parallel universes.
University graduates are frustrated by their fruitless search for jobs that either do not exist or for which they are not qualified.
Companies, in turn, are disappointed by the inability to find specialists in some areas and the need to re-educate employees for jobs that the new hires were presumably educated to perform.
Experts say Ukraine simply lacks good research that would help employers, educators and graduates better link job openings with the skills required.
“I haven’t seen any quality research showing the state of the job market in Ukraine,” said Oksana Semenyuk, human resources director of Kraft Foods Ukraine.
One in three young Ukrainians cannot now find a job, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Social Policy. Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk also sees a problem, including a supply-and-demand mismatch in many professions.
I haven’t seen any quality research showing the state of the job market in Ukraine.
– Oksana Semenyuk, human resources director of Kraft Foods Ukraine.
Tabachnyk says Ukraine has too many economists and lawyers, but not enough engineers, biologists and mathematicians.
He says he is trying to redress the imbalance by redistributing scholarships in universities to better meet market demands.
However, an influential Tabachnyk critic – Sergiy Kvit, director of the prestigious Kyiv Mohyla Academy – said the government never consulted with his university on priorities.
For instance, Kvit said the state ended scholarships for the master’s program in journalism, even though graduates have been successful and needed in the market.
He said the distribution of state funding is “conducted solely by the subjective will” of Tabachnyk.
Experts say that even if Tabachnyk is motivated by the best intentions of making education more market-oriented, he will have trouble doing so because the ministry is not good at predicting future employment trends.
Oleksiy Zvolynskiy, general manager of the HR outsourcing company GP Group, said the government needs to also do a better job of identifying qualifications that employers are demanding.
He said the government’s forecasts are not keeping up with the fast-changing market needs.
Zvolynskiy showed the Kyiv Post a list of professions with the most vacancies in July and August and noted that they differ radically from Tabachnyk’s assumptions.
Kraft Foods’ Semenyuk said the company has had trouble finding good marketing and other specialists knowledgeable about international business and with good English-language skills.
Faced with poorly skilled graduates, Kraft Foods decided to intervene earlier in the education process by identifying students with promise and working with universities on planning courses.
“We collaborate with Sumy State University,” Semenyuk said. Consequently, many graduates are now working for Kraft Foods.
Zvolynskiy said other companies are also identifying talented students.
Firms are also doing more in-house training or simply inviting specialists from abroad.
To start with, Zvolynskiy said better information is needed from leading companies about their needs. “Based on this research we could create a prognosis of the job marker for the next two to five years and make this information public,” Zvolynskiy said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected].
