Copenhagen: A very common theme on this site is shipping’s failure to truly harness the internet. Once again, e-tardiness plays centre stage on Maritime CEO today, this time in the field of recruitment.
According to Jakob le Fevre, managing partner of Danish HR firm JOB2SEA while online recruiting is the norm in most businesses, shipping is still old school. Shipping is, says le Fevre, “a business of relations”. In the various maritime clusters job distribution for shore-based jobs have traditionally been very much word of mouth.
“There is no doubt in my heart,” le Fevre adds, “that the maritime business will convert solely to the use of online recruitment at a given time, but it will take some years and there is a massive challenge in educating decision makers to think and act differently.”
When it comes to seafarers, shipowners tend to rely on third party crewing companies to get what they need.
“Seafarers are being looked at as a commodity,” warns le Fevre.
A big concern for le Fevre is the increasing likelihood of a severe shortage of shore-based staff.
For companies running ships with Western crew that want more than just money, the challenge, le Fevre says, is to keep getting people with sufficient sailing time from the sea to the office. “There will be a major lack of shore based experienced technical profiles in five to ten years,” the Copenhagen-based boss says. “Young people in Scandinavia don´t want to go to sea,” he says, “life is too primitive there. They want to be online, they want to be part of the decision process, they want healthy food, they want room for exercise and they want to be social with other people.”
Many owners get over these challenges replacing the crew with others from countries with very low income. But, says le Fevre, these merely postpones the pain because these people will soon have demands too and tend to retire much earlier, because they can afford to.
Le Fevre is a big believer in owners getting cadets onboard in a bid to ensure shore staff further down the line.
Judged via the amount of HR movements he sees around the world, Singapore is le Fevre’s pick as the most vibrant shipping centre in the world. Still, given his base, le Fevre says: “Copenhagen has the potential to become the Singapore of Europe.”
“We have the expertise, we have amazing companies and we have hundreds of years of tradition for operation within this field. But Copenhagen needs to improve on internationality. We have to be more open. Welcome foreigners and accept different cultures. Danes are not necessarily good just because they are Danes – we must be able to think in a modern honest and straight business way – who is the best man for the job.”
Engendering this change among the Danish community is clearly a passion for le Fevre.
“I will do whatever I can to change the relatively closed atmosphere to London standard, where you belong whatever nationality, whatever religion, whatever culture you have,” he says. “You become part of a global community, with a set of rules and standards and you will be evaluated based on the results you create. It is my passion in life to work in this direction.”
JOB2SEA now boasts more than 75,000 worldwide visits per month, with more than 17,000 registered users and monthly more than 1,000 jobs. Still strongest in Scandinavia, le Fevre wants to grow next in Germany, Holland and United Kingdom. [06/05/13]
