The lack of specialists and executives dominates the headlines.

The tables on the job market have turned: the applicants have the upper hand.

This can be observed, for example, on the personnel platform One Hiring.

There, the companies apply to the workers instead of the other way around.

The candidates anonymously post their profile and list their skills, but above all their special wishes: working from home, childcare, part-time and so on.

Mark Fehr

Editor in Business.

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If an employer can offer this, they may ask the candidate for an interview.

Such paradisiacal conditions for applicants were previously only known from the IT industry, where programmers like to treat their employers with condescension.

In the meantime, specialists from many other sectors are also benefiting from such a power imbalance.

Julian Schubert, head and founder of One Hiring, observes such a change in the financial sector and in the auditing and consulting industry.

Sustainability is en vogue

In the past year alone, his platform placed 1,200 specialists in new permanent positions.

Many of them are tax or management consultants from the big four auditing and consulting firms.

They've found a new job with the medium-sized pursuers in the auditing industry, where they're hoping for a better work-life balance, but also faster advancement.

The sustainability business is currently particularly attractive for auditors and consultants.

“ESG is en vogue and totally fits into the world at the moment,” confirms human resources specialist Schubert.

A well-known auditor recently experienced that the generation of young professionals inspired by climate protection and human rights negotiates tough.

At a manager congress, he described to the astonished audience the demand of an applicant specializing in ESG, who made an entrance fee a condition for signing the employment contract.

When the examiner asked about the amount of this "signing fee", he received a striking announcement: one year's salary.

Young people not only want to do good, they also want to earn good money.

The current conditions on the labor market make it possible to implement such ideas.

Many shy away from the risk

Personnel consultant Hellmuth Wolf, partner at Signium, not only observes a shortage of skilled workers.

“There is a lack of suitable candidates, especially at the higher levels,” says Wolf.

"We therefore have to talk about a managerial shortage in particular." Wolf, who specializes in the auditing and consulting industry, also attributes the managerial shortage to the decreasing tendency of young managers to take risks.

If you want to become a partner in a large auditing and consulting company, you have to go into debt to finance your capital investment.

However, many shy away from this because, for example, they have already invested their money in an expensive property or want more time for their private lives.

Medium-sized auditing and consulting firms in particular would have to turn down mandates in some cases

because they lacked young professionals of auditors and tax consultants to work through.

According to Wolf, the plans announced by large companies to create new jobs are often wish lists, since it is becoming increasingly difficult to fill vacancies with young professionals.

"In the end, nobody usually checks how many of the planned hires actually took place," says headhunter Wolf.