Some of the talent shortage is real and out of your hands. A surprising amount of it is not. Here is what the evidence says about the part you control, and how to fix it.

Last updated: 28 October 2026

The complaint is familiar in boardrooms and WhatsApp groups across Nigeria: “There are no good people out there.” Yet the same week, thousands of capable job seekers send out applications and hear nothing back. Both things are true at once, which should make any employer suspicious. When qualified people and unfilled roles coexist, the problem is often in the hiring, not in the market.

This guide is deliberately blunt. It looks at seven ways employers create their own talent shortage, with Nigerian evidence first and international research alongside. It is written for business owners, HR teams and recruiters, and it also says plainly which parts of the shortage are not your fault.

A Few Notes Before We Start

The title is a provocation, not a verdict. Nigeria’s emigration wave, unreliable infrastructure and uneven education all shape the talent market, and no single employer controls them. Economists also disagree about how much of any shortage is self-inflicted. Wharton’s Peter Cappelli argues that employers control everything about the hiring process and that much of the skills gap is really a training gap. James Bessen, writing in the Harvard Business Review, argued that the skills gap is real. We think both are partly right, and the Nigerian evidence below supports that view. Most of our Nigerian sources are press reports, stakeholder comments and surveys, and we found no Nigerian figure in the coverage of ManpowerGroup’s survey, so we do not quote one.

The Shortage Is Real, and So Is Your Part in It

ManpowerGroup’s 2026 Talent Shortage Survey of 39,000 employers in 41 countries found that 72 percent reported difficulty filling roles, down slightly from 74 percent the year before. So employers everywhere are struggling.

In Nigeria, the picture is a paradox. Techeconomy reported in July 2026 that the 3 Million Technical Talent programme had trained nearly 300,000 Nigerians by the end of 2025, and that the tech ecosystem faces a saturation of junior developers, designers and data analysts alongside a severe shortage of mid-level and senior engineers. Nigerian talent is also in demand abroad. A July 2026 AllAfrica report quotes a software engineer saying that local employers now compete in a global talent market, which has raised salary expectations and made retention harder. A consultant quoted by Leadership described how emigration has shifted the labour market from employer-centric to employee-focused.

That shift is the heart of the matter. The market changed, and many hiring practices did not.

Problem 1: You Want Ready-Made People and Refuse to Train

Technically skilled seniors are scarce, so employers fish in the same small pond and complain that it is empty. The same Techeconomy report quotes one tech leader saying that many local companies facing macroeconomic pressure are reluctant to hire juniors because of the time and investment needed to train them, which leaves foreign employers and outsourcing firms to benefit from the talent. Another executive in the piece notes that most technical roles are not entry-level and that junior hires need guidance and mentorship.

A BusinessDay columnist, Dr Olufemi Ogunlowo, describes the bind many SMEs and indigenous firms face: they cannot pay international rates and often lack structured internal training systems. A Guardian report on apprenticeships adds that technical and vocational training systems suffer from fragmentation, weak implementation and limited employer participation.

Cappelli makes the same point about the US: employers fear that people they train will leave, so they stop training, and then complain about a skills gap. The cost of not training is hidden because few companies track what it would cost.

Fix: Build a simple apprenticeship or graduate programme with a mentor, a 90-day plan and a clear route to a real role. Our guide to building a pipeline from NYSC and university talent shows how.

Problem 2: Your Requirements Lock Out the People You Need

Harvard Business School and Accenture surveyed 8,720 “hidden workers” and 2,275 executives in the US, UK and Germany. The report found that 88 percent of employers said qualified high-skills candidates are vetted out because they do not match the exact criteria in the job description, rising to 94 percent for middle-skills candidates. The researchers argue that employers rely on automated filters that use negative criteria to winnow the pool, and that an affirmative approach would widen it. A summary on Recruiter.com adds that companies that hire these workers are 36 percent less likely to be affected by talent shortages.

That is US and European data, but Nigerian job adverts show the same habit: entry-level roles that demand years of experience, long lists of tools and degrees that the work does not need. We cover the worst examples in The Worst “Entry-Level” Job Requirements We Have Ever Seen and Five Years of Experience in a Three-Year-Old Technology.

Fix: Write each advert around three to five results the person must deliver, then list only the requirements that predict them. Ask whether a trainable candidate could do the job within a few months.

Problem 3: Your Pay Is Below What the Market Now Pays

Cappelli says that some talent shortage complaints boil down to employers being unable to get candidates to accept the wages offered, which he calls an affordability problem and not a skill shortage. That is uncomfortable but worth testing against your own offers.

In Nigeria, the evidence points the same way. The Intelpoint and AltSchool Africa survey of more than 2,600 workers found that a better offer elsewhere was the top reason people leave, and about 63 percent of respondents earned ₦200,000 or less a month. Remote roles with foreign employers add a new competitor for local firms. If good candidates decline your offers, or accept and then leave within months, price is the first thing to check.

Fix: Benchmark pay against current offers, including remote ones, state the range in the advert and review annually. Our article If You Can’t Pay Fair Salaries, Don’t Hire covers this in detail.

Problem 4: Your Hiring Process Is Slow and Disrespectful

Good candidates talk to several employers at once. SHRM, reporting on the Monster Work Watch survey, says that poor communication was the top reason candidates withdrew, cited by 47 percent, and 46 percent said an interviewer’s attitude made them quit. Those are US figures, but Nigerian candidates describe the same frustrations: silence, repeated rounds, hidden salaries and unpaid assignments. Our guide to nine leaks in the recruitment process sets out what to fix.

Fix: Publish your timeline, cut unnecessary rounds, reply at every stage and train interviewers.

Problem 5: Candidates Do Not Know or Trust Your Company

Smaller firms often assume they cannot compete with big brands, then do nothing about their reputation. Meanwhile, recruitment fraud has made Nigerian job seekers cautious. The EFCC had to warn about a fake recruitment notice in January 2026, and fake employment letters from public bodies have circulated. A genuine employer with a vague advert and a free email address looks the same as a scam.

Fix: Use an official email domain, publish who you are and what you do, describe the process honestly and never charge candidates. Read What Is Employer Branding, and Why Should a Nigerian SME Care?

Problem 6: You Cannot Keep Who You Hire

If people leave within a year, you are always recruiting and always short. Gallup estimates that replacing an employee can cost between half and twice their annual salary. BusinessDay reported that many Nigerian tech firms have started combining roles to cope with talent shortages, and one source in the piece warns that putting several roles in one person makes it a bigger problem if that person leaves.

Often the causes are inside your walls: stalled growth, weak managers, overwork and pay that does not keep up with prices. We explore these in Why Good Employees Quit Good Companies, Managers Should Be Trained Before Managing People and Long Working Hours Don’t Mean Higher Productivity.

Fix: Treat retention as part of hiring. Track how many hires leave in the first year and ask them why.

Problem 7: You Only Look Where Everyone Else Looks

Employers chase the same few profiles: experienced candidates from well-known companies and universities. That pushes up the price and ignores everyone else. Polytechnic graduates, career changers, people who learned on the job and candidates in other cities all sit outside many shortlists. For decades, public-sector employers treated HND holders differently from degree holders, and in January 2026 the Education Minister announced plans to scrap the HND and BSc dichotomy. Employers who still filter on the name of the certificate are working from a smaller pool than they think.

Fix: Widen sourcing, judge candidates on the same skills scorecard and test for the job itself. Build relationships with polytechnics, training programmes and apprenticeship schemes, and keep a talent pool of near-misses.

What Is Not Your Fault

It would be dishonest to blame employers for everything.

The useful question is not who is to blame but what you can change. You cannot stop emigration, but you can make roles more attractive, build successors earlier and train people who will stay.

A 30-Day Diagnostic You Can Run Now

Look at your last five hires, and at the last five offers that were declined.

  1. Time to fill. How many days from advert to start date? Where did it stall?
  2. Requirements. Which requirements did the successful hires not actually meet, and did it matter?
  3. Pay. How did your offers compare with the market, including remote roles?
  4. Drop-off. At which stage did strong candidates withdraw, and why?
  5. Reputation. What would a candidate find if they searched for your company?
  6. Retention. How many people hired in the past two years are still there?
  7. Training. What exactly happens in a new hire’s first 90 days?

The stage with the worst numbers is your first fix.

What Recruiters Can Do

Recruiters can be the honest broker between a client’s expectations and the market.

  • Show clients the evidence on pay, requirements and speed.
  • Push back on unicorn job descriptions before accepting a search.
  • Offer a pipeline plan, not only a shortlist.
  • Advise on onboarding so that hires succeed and stay.
  • Share candidate feedback with clients, including why people declined.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the talent shortage real? Yes. ManpowerGroup found 72 percent of employers worldwide struggling to fill roles, and Nigerian reports describe shortages of mid-level and senior professionals. But much of it is made worse by employer practices on training, requirements, pay and process.

Can small Nigerian companies compete with big employers and foreign firms? Often yes on role clarity, growth, flexibility and culture, but not on price alone. A fair salary, a quick and respectful process, real training and a trustworthy brand go a long way.

Should we hire juniors if we cannot afford to train them? Hiring juniors without support wastes both sides’ time. A small, well-structured programme with a mentor is better than none, and you can start with one or two people.

How do we know if our requirements are too strict? Compare them with what your best current staff had when you hired them. If your top performers would not pass your filters, the filters are wrong.

What if good people just leave anyway? Some will, especially for foreign offers. Reduce the avoidable exits by fixing growth, managers, workload and pay, and build successors so that departures do not stall the business.

The Bottom Line

Talent is scarce, but it is not as scarce as many employers claim. The research and Nigerian reporting point to the same pattern: companies that want ready-made people, narrow requirements, below-market pay, slow processes and weak employer brands create much of their own shortage. The good news is that you control every one of those. Run the diagnostic, fix the worst stage and keep going. When you are ready to hire, you can post a job on MyJobAlly and describe the role, pay and process clearly.

This article draws on ManpowerGroup, Wharton’s Knowledge at Wharton, ERE, the Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, The Register, Recruiter.com, Techeconomy, AllAfrica, Leadership, BusinessDay, The Guardian Nigeria, Intelpoint and AltSchool Africa, SHRM, Gallup, Vanguard, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria and the University of Johannesburg, current as of October 2026. Several sources are press reports, executive interviews, podcasts and summaries of research, and may use different methods. The Harvard and Accenture study covers the US, UK and Germany, and the ManpowerGroup coverage we found does not give a Nigerian figure. We found no national Nigerian dataset on how much of the talent shortage employers cause themselves. The title is a deliberate provocation and not a claim that employers are responsible for every shortage. This article is general information, not HR advice.