Some jobs still hard to fill

Even in an economy with many job seekers, employers can still find some openings hard to fill.

Nurses, for example, remain in demand. Add some other skills to that job requirement, such as speaking a foreign language, international travel experience and the ability to handle crises over the phone, and that makes for a job that can be especially difficult to fill.

Mondial Assistance, an international travel insurer in Henrico County, is looking for people who can meet that need. The company has more than 30 open positions, about a dozen of which are for case managers whose job is to advise and assist clients who suffer health problems while traveling overseas.

"Those can be challenging" jobs to fill, said Heather Harding, a senior recruiter for the firm. "Because we are looking for people that have worked in an emergency environment or have traveled internationally and can empathize with our customers."

It can also be hard to find nurses who want to leave a clinical setting, Harding said. At Mondial, "their work is done over the phone," she said. "It is a new environment for most nurses." The company also recruits other people with medical or emergency experience for case-management positions.

Nurses and engineers and skilled/manual trades are the three most challenging positions to fill in the U.S. this year, according to a survey of 2,000 U.S. employers by the staffing firm Manpower Inc., which attributes the difficulty filling some positions to a skills gap between the work force and the available jobs. Teachers, sales representatives and technicians are also on the Top 10 list.

"I think over time people that are in the job search will retool themselves to be able to fit the openings that are out there," said Kevin Blake, Manpower's regional director for southern Virginia.

At Mondial, for example, speaking a foreign language can be a doorway to landing a job. "Because we are an international company, language skills are always extremely beneficial," Harding said.

Some other Richmond-area employers say there are jobs for which it is still a challenge to find the right person.

Kim Coleman, administrative director of talent acquisition for Bon Secours Virginia, said the nonprofit hospital operator is looking for qualified pharmacists. "We would definitely want to see more applicants that have a hospital background to work in our pharmacies," she said.

Shawn Boyer, president and CEO of the Henrico-based job search Web site SnagAjob.com, said the firm has several open positions in product management and sales for which he has been searching for the right candidates for several months.

"We definitely do have access to a larger talent pool" now, compared to two or three years ago, he said. The jobs that are open, however, "are positions that require a unique set of skills," he said. "And we want people with experience."

Contact John Reid Blackwell at (804) 775-8123 or .