JAKARTA. Specialist professional recruitment firm Robert Walters has found in its latest Global Salary Survey that Indonesian companies looking to attract key bilingual candidates will have to meet salary expectations, offer quality training programs and present opportunities for international exposure.

“A good command of written and spoken English is a qualification job seekers looking to join multinationals in Indonesia must possess,” Robert Walters Indonesia director Rob Bryson told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview. “As more companies work toward increased cohesion among business units, professionals who understand the business partnering role of their function are highly sought after. Indonesia’s positive economic market conditions and the entrance of multinationals into the market have opened up more job opportunities for the local workforce.”

Indonesia has seen significant growth in sectors, such as professional services, IT and manufacturing. This is largely attributable to the active spending habits in the growing middle class, which has led to a corresponding increase in consumption levels, according to the survey.

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Figures from the survey also suggest that candidates who switched jobs in 2014 expected salary increases of between 25 and 35 percent and that this trend is likely to continue in 2015.

Other key points for 2015 include high demand for skills among accounting and finance candidates, particularly in the financial control, risk and compliance sectors. In addition, there will be more job opportunities for asset managers, investment bankers and insurance specialists. However, the limited candidate pool to fill these vacancies will pose significant hiring challenges.

The survey also finds that at the mid-management level, Indonesian human resource professionals who are able to execute operational plans and drive organizational change will be highly in demand and that senior sales directors and managers with a proven track record will also be highly sought after in 2015.

Bryson added that Indonesian job seekers did not need to worry about the implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community in late 2015 and suggested that it would instead open more opportunities for Indonesian job seekers to expand and develop their full potential.

“For the Indonesian domestic market, we will not see a large increase in other Southeast Asian nationalities coming in to Indonesia. Principally because, on the whole, even though Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast Asia by some distance, it still has some way to go to catch up with wage demands,” he explained.

“On the other hand, in terms of Indonesians going overseas, I see that as being absolutely possible and I think that will increase, though to what level, I am not so sure. I think there will be barriers in terms of language because the common language in Asia in 2015 probably has to be English, with the local language coming second.”

Bryson said that the trend of increasing white-collar professional demand in Indonesia was in line with the overall development of developing economies and their job markets.

“In terms of the global perspective of the job trend, we see every region and economy is slightly different. In the emerging markets of Southeast Asia, Asia in general, South America, Africa and the Middle East, there is higher demand for white-collar middle- and senior- level professionals,” Bryson said.

Bryson added that in established markets, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, the job markets were still affected from the recession that lasted from the second half of 2008 until the end of 2014.

”If you look at Europe, that is still an area that is very much struggling in general terms and is continuing to be under serious economic headwinds. Australia, principally because of commodity prices, had a tough time in 2014 and will have a tough time in 2015 as well,” he predicted. (Hans David Tampubolon)