Estonia's labor market is saturated with managers
Tallinn City Government has just confirmed Margit Viilip as the new director of Kadriorg Park, chosen from among 97 candidates. According to recruiters, such competition for a single position is to be expected, as there are currently more senior executives on the labor market than there are available positions.
Tallinn's Director of Human Resources, Vilve Raik, said that interest in applying for the position of head of Kadriorg Park can be considered extremely high.
"We can say that our management recruitment competitions have always attracted a large number of candidates, but Kadriorg Park really does stand out," Raik said.
Raik added that, overall, interest in leading Tallinn's city agencies has grown in recent years. As examples of recent recruitment processes, Raik mentioned the competition for director of the Environment and Municipal Services Department, which drew 65 applicants, and the position of director of the Culture and Sports Department, which attracted 85 candidates, among others.
Raik attributes this strong interest both to Tallinn's fairly high reputation as an employer in recent years and to the fact that there are currently more top executives eager to test themselves in new roles than there are positions available on the labor market.
"Anything involving general management probably attracts a lot of interested people, which is why the competition is so intense. Demand exceeds supply, leading large numbers of candidates to apply," Raik said.
Karl Oder, Head of Communications and Marketing at CV.ee, one of the leading job portals in the Baltic states, said that job postings have declined over the past three years, which has increased competition for individual positions.
"Compared to 2023, we now have only about a third of the job postings we had back then. At the same time, the number of candidates has increased by about 30 percent on average across different categories and fields. That essentially means competition for jobs is higher — not only for specialist roles, but also for leadership positions," Oder explained.
Estonia's state-owned passenger rail operator Elron is also currently searching for a new CEO. As of last Wednesday, Elron's supervisory board had received 53 applications for the position, said Andres Allikmäe, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of AS Eesti Liinirongid. Typically, four to five candidates make it through the initial screening, with whom interviews and, if necessary, suitability assessments are conducted. According to Allikmäe, final decisions regarding the new CEO are expected at the end of May.
In Oder's assessment, the above-mentioned recruitment processes have attracted an expected number of candidates.
"At the moment, it's possible to find far more candidates for these kinds of top executive roles than in the past. You can clearly see that when the economic cycle is in a downturn, at the bottom of the cycle, companies try to optimize and restructure their organizations, which frees up many middle and senior managers. Those people who, so to speak, lose their position or job eventually return to the labor market," Oder said.
It must also be taken into account that not all candidates who apply for a given position are necessarily a good fit in terms of their skills and personal qualities.
"People are ambitious by nature — they try to get better jobs that are more lucrative, more senior, and come with greater responsibility. That's completely normal. And probably not everyone is a one-to-one fit for a particular role. It's always important to distinguish between volume on the one hand and the number of truly suitable candidates on the other," Oder added.
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Editor: Mirjam Mäekivi, Argo Ideon
