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Despite the endless stories of job losses and cutbacks, some industries still have significant skills shortages.

The global economies have really suffered over the last year as a result of the sub prime problems in the USA leading to bank collapses and liquidity problems. In addition the high oil and commodity prices, plummeting stock markets and commercial and residential building activity together will falling property prices has led to a crisis in confidence.

These events have had a catastrophic affect on the construction and financial services sectors with thousands of redundancies. However in the “real economy” i.e. the productive areas, there are still skill shortages in key areas.

The findings from a recent survey conducted by CareerWise Recruitment concludes that there are significant skills shortages in some areas and that the real message is that people will need to be more flexible in terms of location if they want to continue in employment and develop their career

“We have over 200 open positions that we need to find candidates for” says Joe Robbins, Director of CareerWise Recruitment “We are looking for Quality and Manufacturing Engineers for top multinational companies together with Supply Chain and people with Pharma and Medical Devices experience, the issue is finding these people with the appropriate experience that are willing to relocate”

Types of positions on offer:

• Medical Devices/Pharma – Quality/Manufacturing Engineers/Chemists/Biochemists
• Sales / Market Managers
• Senior Managers across all functional areas.
• Supply Chain/Buyers/Planners/Purchasing
• ICT - Software Developers / Technical Support / Systems Engineers
• Specialist Electronics – Engineers (hardware and software), Developers, Microwave/RF engineers

To validate these figures CareerWise Recruitment asked their key Clients if they plan recruitment in 2009 and 2010. These results showed that 53% of companies surveyed have budgets or open positions in place for recruitment in 2009, 22% thought so, but were awaiting approval of budgets, the remaining 25% were unsure at this point.

“This confirms our gut instinct and what we are seeing on the ground “ continues Robbins, “there is a lack of confidence that is beginning to affect the multinational sector, but there are still positions available that need to be filled”

“I strongly believe that the coordinated work by the world central banks thus far, the possibility of significant interest rate cuts, the reduction in commodity and oil prices, a new president of the USA will improve confidence and hopefully we may be out of this as quickly as we got into it”

“We have not fallen off the cliff top, the world is still functioning and hopefully things will pick up sooner rather that later “exclaims Robbins, with all fingers crossed.