Employment agencies and recruitment of workers in the Czech Republic

In recent years, the market has undergone turbulent changes, facing challenges such as coronavirus lockdowns and the relocation of the workforce from war-affected Ukraine. Despite this, the Czech Republic maintains the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, remaining at 3.5% in the last quarter of 2023. According to a recent survey, over one-fifth of manufacturing, wholesale, and logistics companies currently have more employees than last year. 34% of the surveyed companies plan to hire new workers in the coming months. However, a significant obstacle remains the lack of qualified workers, who are currently a key need.

The trend of companies employing foreign workers has persisted in recent years. There is a long-term shortage of qualified workers in the Czech job market, with businesses struggling to find good electricians, maintenance workers, welders, and other professions. 76% of the surveyed companies already employ workers or manual workers from countries other than the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This is particularly common in the automotive industry, where 97% of companies employ foreigners. Companies usually offer assistance to these workers to help them with adaptation to Czech conditions, both on a work and personal level. A recruitment agency can help facilitate the smooth hiring of foreign workers, handling all tasks related to search for candidates abroad, visa processing and their arrival in the Czech Republic.

One of the ways to increase the flow of potential employees is cooperation with secondary schools and vocational schools. While most companies cooperate with educational institutions, a third of companies either do not see the value in it or lack the capacity. Expanding cooperation between companies and schools is an opportunity to make engineering and other fields more attractive. Language models of artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT, which have experienced a dramatic increase in popularity in the last year, can also help with the recruitment of potential employees, yet only less than a fifth of those surveyed use them for recruitment. Improving this situation is also possible through a professional recruitment partner.

The latest trends in recruitment of workers include extended cooperation with employment agencies, a comprehensive system of corporate benefits and special methods of selecting and educating new employees. When cooperating with an employment agency, value added lies primarily in the following aspects:

Gabriela Hrbáčková Managing Director HOFMANN WIZARD s.r.o. kontakt@hofmann-personal.cz www.hofmann-personal.cz