Now is the time to join the freight industry in South Africa, especially in the light of ongoing growth and expansion plans of national and international concerns, according to Morne Steffens, senior manager at Communicate Personnel freight division. “There are most definitely more positions available than can be handled by recruiters at present,” he told FTW. “As a national recruitment agent with six strategically placed hubs, the freight division averages 22% of the job orders brought into the business, indicating the high volume of roles available. The market has definitely regained momentum from a recruitment perspective, although whether that will continue remains to be seen as uncertainty is on the increase as a result of global market instability,” he said. There is however a serious skills shortage in the industry and this remains a continuous battle in both South Africa and internationally within specialist industries. The freight industry has a lack of training facilities throughout the country, which compounds this skills shortage issue. Furthermore, Steffens comments: “The IT and finance niches constantly host job fairs which create industry awareness. Unfortunately this is not the case in the freight sector. We are also challenged by the red tape within the department of labour when we find a foreign national with exceptional skills. A tremendous amount of time and effort is required to arrange for the approval of a work permit. The time spent on this process is often not feasible.” Communicate Personnel’s freight division specialises in both sales and operations in the clearing and forwarding, courier, road freight and supply chain industries. Placing sales executives in these industries accounts for around 60% of its placements with the remaining 40% being placements on the operations side. “There is a huge shortage of sales executives with a solid, proven track record, and as the industry has so many competitors it is very cut-throat. This results in an environment where individuals move from company to company chasing better commission structures and better salaries,” said Steffens. “This in turn has a negative effect on the marketability of these candidates as they eventually become branded as “job-hoppers” and they price themselves out of the market. They reach a ceiling in their earning capacity and cannot get re-hired due to their unrealistic salary expectations and poor tenure at one company. There are unfortunately only a handful of companies in the industry that offer decent commission structures. We try to help candidates to find an opportunity where they can get a balance of good commission, fair remuneration and realistic targets.” In order to manage this skills shortage issue Communicate Personnel is constantly advertising through various social media and traditional job portals to entice skills back into South Africa. “An encouraging result of this is that we are getting many more inquiries from ex South Africans wanting to relocate back to SA.” says Steffens. In addition Steffens is very pleased that the lack of training facilities is being address by the state’s approval of maritime school plans in South Africa’s in six port cities by 2013. The South African Maritime Authority’s CEO, Tsietsi Mokhele, said that SA’s education system had to include maritime studies to fill the skills gap. The maritime sector is being ignored as a career choice due to a lack of information of the exciting career paths that can be followed within the industry. “There is also not enough opportunity for coastal region students to physically attend institutions to get degrees, other than by correspondence. Not even recognised maritime institutions offer degrees, only diplomas,” said Steffens. Established in 1981 Communicate Personnel provides national, specialist recruitment in the industries of freight/supply chain as well as finance, IT and engineering. The freight/ supply chain division has offices in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
