Labour market constraints 

The impact of employment services on employment is constrained by whether the area of operation provides employment opportunities for refugee and host community jobseekers.
 

Tips: Some country teams navigated challenging labour markets by targeting opportunities within MSMEs, as well as through skills training and apprenticeship opportunities that would better prepare job seekers for the labour market. For example, in Iraq, the work with an INGO early on in the PROSPECTS programme illustrates how the limited number of jobs available rendered the extension of employment services ineffective. In Uganda, rural employment services engaged local MSMEs to identify job vacancies and worked with local crafts persons to place apprentices.

Limited human resources

Even in countries where governments have frameworks or existing public employment services, it’s still difficult to find successful ways to build capacity and transfer knowledge within national institutions when civil servants and national actors have no incentive to take on the extra training. Early in the project, PROSPECTS hired employment service consultants to receive refugee job-seekers in the offices of Ministry of Labour directorates. The theory was that Ministry career officers would also benefit from capacity-building and exchange knowledge with the consultants. However, knowledge transfer was not evident, as the extent to which public officials had time and resources to dedicate to additional work was overestimated. Ministry officers were reluctant to take on work outside of their job description (serving national job-seekers). If civil servants and national actors have no incentive and if the work is viewed as additional to their existing job, it is less likely to be well received. 
 

Tips: If capacity-building is framed as supporting functions that are already in the job descriptions of civil servants or national actors and is associated with career advancement, this might make investment in capacity-building more impactful.

Lack of trust on the part of  private sector employers

When the quality of services is weak, this can perpetuate a poor image of employment services. In Iraq and Kenya, there was an overall lack of trust among private sector employers in the quality of public employment services. As a result, they were underutilized. Furthermore, several players in the job-matching sector provide more agile and responsive employment services. Many of these are online platforms that are quick to make referrals. While this is not a comprehensive approach to job matching, job-seekers and employers are sometimes more eager to get a match quickly, rather than wait for a suitable match.