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The rarest skills in South Africa

Source: News24, 04/10/2016

The rarest skills in South Africa
While some jobs are in high demand, others are very hard to find as
well. Adzuna.co.za in South Africa has done some research on the most
sought after skills by companies and their demand from job seekers,
crowning those that push both factors the most to be the rarest skills
in the country. By this logic, if a skill is in high demand but low in
supply, this makes it rarer than skills which are low in both
available candidates and low in demand.

From the data generated by listing over 130,000 online job listings in
South Africa, as well as searching through mountains of search
requests by millions of applicants, skills needed for the following
industries and vacancies has risen and is high (see Table 1).

However, cross-referenced is the amount of job seekers available or
looking for the relevant skills, making some qualifications and skills
far more rare to find.

Table 1: Demand for skills by companies crossed with demand for
positions by job seeker searches

Job skill or title Demand from companies Demand from job seekers
"Rareness" factor Average salary - Sept 2016 Average salary - May 2016
java developer 2181 19 114,8 R528 135 R525 369
financial accountant 996 11 90,5 R439 920 R422 844
developer 15601 224 69,6 R470 872 R486 281
php developer 1458 23 63,4 R395 950 R401 590
web developer 1366 32 42,7 R407 987 R442 016
assistant manager 948 25 37,9 R218 449 R197 904
software developer 1219 33 36,9 R496 747 R507 944
recruiter 2450 108 22,7 R513 326 R475 724
net developer 939 50 18,8 R467 460 R457 940
consultant 5644 397 14,2 R277 493 R275 716
technologist 929 70 13,3 R486 118 R473 417
executive 3058 262 11,7 R315 045 R307 892
analyst 4054 361 11,2 R531 762 R529 491
accountant 3934 376 10,5 R418 910 R415 556
pharmacist 1284 192 6,7 R506 418 R568 405
designer 1861 280 6,6 R363 890 R393 921
coordinator 1044 267 3,9 R246 187 R211 475
planner 872 227 3,8 R449 795 R417 609
project manager 1370 359 3,8 R558 330 R551 704
engineer 8238 2266 3,6 R596 996 R565 653
business analyst 1304 361 3,6 R569 417 R548 304
manager 22631 6479 3,5 R498 565 R484 938
quantity surveyor 901 269 3,3 R532 380 R482 622
civil engineer 869 269 3,2 R592 809 R595 538
bookkeeper 1336 490 2,7 R181 150 R205 298
controller 2331 871 2,7 R345 115 R364 566
secretary 1008 464 2,2 R168 895 R187 767
officer 4026 1894 2,1 R286 784 R281 632
technician 2485 1205 2,1 R227 406 R269 947
surveyor 1035 510 2,0 R561 940 R477 961
foreman 891 549 1,6 R453 944 R410 078
assistant 5372 3328 1,6 R151 827 R168 280
clerk 3334 2078 1,6 R141 018 R133 952
supervisor 1514 1102 1,4 R253 359 R260 419
salesperson 1894 1400 1,4 R267 329 R233 467
operator 2311 2500 0,9 R392 775 R408 920
sales manager 1145 1400 0,8 R436 646 R414 721
chef 1409 1800 0,8 R157660 R178 609
nurse 1768 2404 0,7 R283 224 R317 664
mechanic 1330 1827 0,7 R464 945 R439 354
regis nurse 936 3497 0,3 R276 671 R285 932
administrator 4550 18000 0,3 R184 159 R205 468
receptionist 1705 6962 0,2 R97 464 R102 780
driver 1814 14685 0,1 R111 919 R100 373

A 2,0 factor score would thus mean that in essence, twice as many
vacancies exist as job seekers searching for such a position. If this
does not seem rare enough already, bear in mind that the job seeker
looking for work in that skill or job title may not even be qualified
or suitable for the position.
The results contain a few interesting findings, yet the rarest skills
still remain in the technology sector. Engineers and developers,
together with financial skills, are clearly the hardest to find, with
the most demand from firms, yet with the least available
candidates.

Interestingly, recruiters are now a hot skill,
with many organisations and agencies requiring recruitment specialists
in their HR departments.

Jesse Green, country manager for Adzuna South Africa commented on the
findings: "While not every job in demand is posted online, the trends
shown by the sample data are clear and meaningful. Companies must dig
deep to explore new ways of attracting programming and engineering
skills, as well as some of those in the financial or accountancy area.
Management skills too, represent a challenge."

Combining these two data sets gives one a clearer view on which skills
are hardest to find in South Africa, yet not every rare skill is
necessarily highly paid. As a third factor, salary would probably be
able to assist in predicting further the rarest skills in South
Africa, although in some industries, such as textiles, weaving
managers with many qualifications and years of experience do not
necessarily earn as high a income as one might imagine, given that
there are extremely few of these skills in the country. The highest
salaries for those skills in the Table 1 above were for engineers,
pharmacists, project managers, developers and analysts.

"What is interesting to note, which is not shown in these results, is
the change in salaries from May to September, where the rarer skills
have not seen as much growth as one would have expected," says
Green.

Another means of interpreting skill rarity is to see what the
Department of Labour recognises as South Africa`s "critical
skills".

A list of critical skills is published annually and
the list from 2014 is used by the Department of Home Affairs to
determine if a foreign worker may be employed ahead of a South
African. Green, who has a background in immigration services, mentions
that unfortunately this list is becoming outdated and does not take
into account later lists published by the Department of Labour.

With numerous means of finding out which skills are rare, the
technology arena continually shines through as the place to be working
in. Now, with finance skills showing an increasing difficulty to
recruit, it will be interesting to see how companies, and hopefully
the South African government, ensure that South African firms are able
to hire the right people with the best competencies.

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