Browsing by Subject "naisvaltaisuus"

For decades, the Finnish education sector has suffered from a lack of qualified early child-hood education (ECE) teachers. If qualified applicants are not available, it is possible to deviate from the eligibility requirements and recruit an unqualified applicant. One of the reasons behind the shortage of labour is the stature and appeal of the profession. Although the im-portance of ECE is widely recognized, frequent changes to its requirements and core func-tions have affected the stature and education of the staff. In fields with shortage for qualified labour, the competition between employers naturally intensifies. This increases the importance of employer branding and well-functioning recruitment process, and some employers attract more applicants than others. This Master's thesis examines how employer branding can be seen in recruitment announcements and what expectations the announcements set for the applicant. The thesis also identifies some of the key challenges faced in the recruitment by the day-care managers and different approaches to facing them. For the thesis, 31 recruitment announcements for ECE teacher’s position were analysed. The announcements were collected from the website of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy and from the recruitment service for the Helsinki metropolitan area. From the analysed announcements, four recruiting day-care managers were selected for interviews for deeper insight into the process. The announcements showed a lot of variation both in terms of content and length. Some announcements did not include any information about the job or requirements for the applicant. In the interviews, managers' responses highlighted challenges with labour shortages and different approaches to overcome those. A diverse perspective to recruitment as well as the manager's own actions in the process can affect the number of applicants. Careful preparation of the recruitment notice, together with creating a smooth recruitment process from the applicant’s viewpoint are critical in a sector suffering from labour shortage.