Job and skills shortages are a topic on the tongues of most Czech businessmen and women at the moment. The figures speak for themselves: almost as many job seekers as vacancies. But there is a clear mismatch between the skills offered by the jobless and the demands of the jobs on offer, Radio Praha writes.

ʺAt this moment we have something above 215,000-220,000 open jobs in the Czech Republic. For the record, we have never had that since the Velvet Revolution, since the communist time when everyone had jobs. So it’s a very unique situation. It’s a candidate driven market at this moment. So we really switched after the recession and the switch was very fast. That was also very unique because from 2014-2017 we saw a rise of around 150,000 plus in open jobs within three years. That is really, really fast. At this moment we are in the situation where there is an active hunt from the employer for employees and it’s no longer a matching system - job opening and a suitable candidate – but it’s more about candidate attraction,ʺ says Ladislav Kučera, managing director of Hays Czech Republic in an interview for Radio Praha.

Read full interview, listen to a podcast.