International job market? Yeah, right...

wonder – how international is the international job market? Or am I just very naïve? For the past years there have been a flurry of different messages on the job market. In particular one message is recurring and that is that employers have a hard time filling positions because the competence is elsewhere. More and more I believe that is sheer nonsense. Employers and recruiters simply don't want to recruit from anywhere but across the street.

Yes, I realise that recruiters are caught between a rock and a hard place and that their hands might be tied by the demands of their customer. But at the same time, their customer must be able to rely on the fact that they are presented with the best candidate. And what if that candidate should happen to be based “elsewhere”? Are we then put in the left heap for unsuitable candidates? I am convinced that when a future employer finds (thanks to their recruiter!) “The” candidate the funds will be there.

There is really nothing to this post other than that I wonder how international the international labour market actually is…