The complex equation between the needs of companies and the skills of candidates is obviously far from being resolved. The most likely hypothesis is that recruiters and candidates no longer understand each other because they belong to French groups that themselves no longer understand each other. The social, economic and cultural matrices that form the background to attitudes and behaviors have changed. New relationships with work are being built and improvised. Employability and confidence in the future are the ingredients.
After thirty years of economic crisis and mass unemployment, external employability is the keystone of the relationship to work. Being “below” the market promises difficulties. Being “in” the market allows you to have a job and keep it. And, above all, being “above” the market allows you to dictate your preferences for rates, working hours or place of residence. Everyone also questions their personal destiny, the meaning of their past history and the future of their life story. But while some are convinced that tomorrow can only take away what they won yesterday, others are certain of their ability to pull through, whatever the game. Confidence in the future is the second dimension that structures the relationship to work. With equivalent employability, we do not make the same choices depending on whether we see ourselves prospering, stagnating or being downgraded in the coming years.
The intersection of employability and confidence in the future draws three groups of French people at work. The least employable and the least optimistic (12.6%)* are disengaged: their age, their qualifications and their employability hardly allow them to imagine scenarios for accessing sustainable employment. At the other end of the spectrum appears the group of very employable and very optimistic workers (13%). Most have left employment: self-employed consultants, start-up creators or multi-investors, their confidence in their skills makes them abandon the security of employment to seek other adventures more in line with the times.
In the middle of the table is the heart of the working population: properly employable, but oscillating between pessimism and optimism, these individuals constitute 45.9% of the workforce. Among them, pessimists and optimists are distinguished by their age. Exceeding 39 years, even among highly qualified individuals, objectively very employable, is to lose attractiveness for a potential employer. And this fear, paradoxically, causes withdrawal and self-elimination behaviors that disconcert companies.
This new reading grid requires, above all, renewed recruitment practices. There is no shortage of candidate pools. But only a minority of active people can currently be reached through traditional solutions such as advertisements or even direct approaches. Employability and trust are the two levers through which to act. First, it is necessary to objectively assess skills, including to reveal to some people the resources they might doubt they possess. But it is also necessary to focus on commitment and trust, that is, on the quality of the link between a candidate and a company.
* Jean Pralong is a lecturer and researcher specializing in human resources management issues at EM Normandie. Samuel Tual is president of Actual Group.
**Barometer on the relationship of the French to work published by Actual group and EM Normandie (April 2024)