Rietumu Bank HR head: the job market favours employees, but they must use it strategically
Nadežda Maļinovska, head of Human Resources at Latvia's Rietumu Bank, argues in an opinion piece that the labour market has favoured workers for years. She says both job seekers and employers should approach hiring in a deliberate, strategic way.
Nadežda Maļinovska, head of the Personnel Management department at Rietumu Bank in Latvia, writes in an opinion piece on the NRA news portal that the Latvian job market has belonged to employees for several years. Vacancies stay unfilled longer, employers adapt to more flexible working arrangements, and pay competition in some sectors is especially intense. She regards this as a structural situation shaped by demographics, emigration and the pace of digitalisation, and does not expect major change in the coming years.
Advice for job seekers
Maļinovska says companies generally plan recruitment strategically, while job seekers often lack an equally thought-out approach. In her view, nothing in the selection process is trivial: the CV layout, the email address, clothing at interviews and the structure of a cover letter all send signals to an employer. Even with limited experience, a CV can show involvement in projects, volunteering or initiatives.
She argues that the most common obstacle at interviews is not a lack of knowledge but the lack of a clear career vision. Candidates should be able to describe what they have learned over the past 12 months and should research the employer; a cover letter naming a different organisation, she notes, signals the opposite.
Advice for employers
The author says Latvia's demographic situation makes age diversity a strategic necessity, and calls prejudice about older workers' technological skills largely exaggerated. She describes the first 90 days as a critical period: effective onboarding raises employee retention by 25–30%. She also recommends regular conversations with line managers, joint activities outside work and honest exit interviews.
Global trends
Maļinovska cites the World Economic Forum report "Future of Jobs 2025", which projects that by 2030 about 22% of jobs worldwide will be substantially transformed, with around 170 million new jobs created and about 92 million disappearing. In the survey, 63% of employers named the skills gap as the biggest barrier to transformation. In banking, automation and artificial intelligence will change the content of jobs, increasing demand for data interpretation and technology management skills.
