Employment, Estonia, Good for Business, Labour-market, Technology

"This much interest is pleasantly surprising as countries and hubs across the world from Singapore to Berlin and San Francisco are fighting over IT talents and the competition is tight. The candidacies of over 5,000 IT specialists means that Estonia's reputation as an IT country is ever more known and people see potential in working here," Kaidi-Kerli Karner, Work in Estonia program manager, said in a press release.

"The impact accompanying the Career Hunt project is significantly wider then flying 20 top specialists to Estonia. The recruitment campaign does not only help the entrepreneurs taking part in the project, but also others planning to hire top specialists. We will continue work with all people who applied for the program and help them meet other Estonian employers who need people with similar skills. Considering that over 200 English-language vacancies in the IT field alone are opened in Estonia every month, this project will enable to find suitable candidates for those positions as well," Karner said.

Work in Estonia in mid-August started the joint project Career Hunt Tallinn 2018 with 12 Estonian employers. In the framework of the project, 20 IT top specialists selected as a result of thorough groundwork and interviewed beforehand will fly to Estonia at the end of November to participate in job interviews. The chosen specialists will be offered a five-day visit to Estonia, during which they will spend two days at job interviews and tests by the employers and the aim of the three other days is to ensure that the top specialists gain the sense of certainty that Estonia is a good place for them to live in.

The deadline for applications to the project was last Sunday. Altogether 5,530 people from 126 countries applied. At present, the process of selecting candidates is ongoing, in specific web interviews and technical tests for choosing the 20 best candidates by assessing the candidates' technical program language skills, English language skills and interest in working in Estonia. The final list of people participating in Career Hunt Tallinn will be determined in cooperation with employers by November 1.

Altogether 12 Estonian employers contributed to the program with their time and money, including Taxify, Axinom, Skype, Global Gaming Group, Proekspert, Topia, Veriff, Nortal, Helmes, Swedbank, Finestmedia and Twilio. These companies already employ foreign specialists, thanks to which they have the experience and readiness to work along with foreigners. The project also involves recruitment partner Jobbatical, advertising and media partner Age McCann Estonia and PR partner Hamburg & Partnerid. The messages of the project have been spread by Estonian embassies abroad, Garage48, Startup Estonia, Robotex, Visit Estonia, Visit Tallinn, Settle in Estonia, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Startupwiseguys and others.

Today, the greatest hindrance of the development of the ICT sector is the shortage of qualified specialists. The solution for this is the simultaneous realization of several measures. Training orders and retraining alone is not enough to fill the gap in the field -- by 2020, the sector will lack an estimated 8,600 specialists, while the total requirement in all sectors for the same year is estimated to be 37,000 ICT specialists. Due to this, the state will not receive 136 million euros of tax revenue a year paid from the workforce alone. The largest obstacles of Estonian startups also include the increasing shortage of specialists and the small number of foreign specialists.