Sales and operations are the hardest roles to fill in Singapore’s employee-driven market, with employers complaining of a lack of skilled talent.

Despite 93% of employers intending to hire right up till May 2016, the positive hiring outlook is impeded by a shortage of manpower, in CareerBuilder Singapore’s new survey of 157 Singapore hiring managers and HR professionals from both public and private sectors.

While 37% and 25% of organisations are looking to fill sales and operations roles respectively, another one in five are hiring to fill administration roles as well (21%).

Jessica Ang, marketing director at CareerBuilder Singapore, pointed out there could be a number of reasons behind this labour shortage –  ranging from lack of employer branding, to recruiters using the wrong tools in attracting candidates.

However, employers are most keen to use higher starting salaries to attract new employees (32%), a phenomenon most prevalent in the services sector (35%), compared to non-service sector hiring (11%).

Overall, close to two in three employers (62%) stated they will offer starting salaries on par with market standards.

The generosity in pay extended to current employees as well, with over three in four employers (76%) intending to increase salaries.

This promise was highest in the services sector (77%) versus employers in non-services industries (65%).

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In reaching out to new candidates to fill vacancies, online job boards are the most common tool of choice, listed as effective by more than two-third of employers (68%), an increase from the 53% in 2013.

Social media is also gaining popularity, with 25% of hirers turning to it for their talent search.

Apart from manually tapping recruitment platforms, Singapore recruiters were not very enthusiastic about cloud-based recruitment software or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technologies.

Of those surveyed, only 1% were using SaaS in their recruitment efforts, while more than half (51%) were actually unaware of SaaS recruitment solutions.

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