What is hidden in a job advertisement. Personal and professional skills sought by companies.

The objective of the OLINE JB VACANCY Observatory, realised in 2020 by CFMT in collaboration with the University of Milan - Bicocca and specifically with CRISP, is to analyse the trend of labour demand for managers in the service sector by highlighting trends and skills required in advertisements, in order to increase awareness of the changes taking place and at the same time support intervention policies with particular reference to continuous training. The database used comes from a European project promoted by the European Centre CEDEFOP. The study and realisation of the project was entrusted to an international partnership led by CRISP. The main objective is to create a real-time monitoring system of professions and skills derived from job advertisements published on the web in all 27+1 European countries. Professions and skills are classified on the European ESCO standard, a lingua franca that enables the comparison of job applications using all 28 EU languages.

There are more than 16.8 million job advertisements published in Italy on the web and of these, in 2024, about 35.4 thousand, as opposed to 40.7 thousand in 2023, are those referring to managers in the service sector. In these, companies present the professional profile and personal inclinations of the managerial figures they are looking for so that they can write new chapters in their history.

In the last report produced, we recorded an overall drop of 14% in demand for online jobs in Italy in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Demand for executives in the tertiary sector shows a similar, albeit smaller, decline of 11%. This trend is in contrast to previous years, which saw continuous growth from 2021 to 2023.

Lombardy is confirmed as the region with the highest share of advertisements in Italy, followed by other regions in northern Italy. Comparing the trends with the European countries analysed - Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom - the trends are similar to those observed in Italy, with a negative trend for managers in the service and manufacturing sectors, albeit with some exceptions. For transversal competencies, the emphasis in the first half of 2024 is on relationship management and flexibility, together with the ability to work in an organised manner. For vertical skills, on the other hand, the emphasis in 2023 was often on specific technical skills such as ICT management, medical informatics and document management. In the first half of 2024, on the other hand, there is a growing demand for digital and managerial skills such as the use of Microsoft Office, problem solving, and the ability to organise information and resources. The importance of communication and sales skills, and the use of management tools such as SAP R3, also emerges in many sectors.

But not only technicalities, the importance of transversal skills was analysed for 2024, divided into four categories: for managing oneself, people, the internal context, and the external context. The results show a prevalence of interpersonal relationships (42%) and self-management (40%). Comparison with the destruction of transversal skills 2023 shows a greater emphasis on the skills for self-management, a sign of the market's focus on the demand for skills to adapt to change, manage one's time and meet deadlines.