Because you are not competing with other charging businesses, and the brief usually assumes you are.
An EV charging installation role competes for qualified electricians against solar, heat pumps, general construction and the grid. All of those are growing, all of them want the same certification, and most of them can offer work closer to home. A brief written as though the candidate pool is “people who have installed chargers” describes a pool far too small to fill from.
Is it a real shortage or a bad brief?
Both exist and they need opposite responses, so it is worth being able to tell them apart.
In most disciplines, a role running past seven weeks is a brief problem rather than a market problem. A straightforward hire in these markets closes in four to six weeks, and our own average across all roles is 22 days. Past that, the cause is usually a salary band set against the wrong comparison, a title that does not match the work, or a requirement for sector experience the market has not had time to produce.
Installation is the exception, and there is hard evidence for it. In Belgium the Flemish public employment service classifies charge point installation as a knelpuntberoep, a shortage occupation. That is a government designation rather than a recruiter’s opinion. If you are hiring installers in Flanders, a long search is not evidence that your brief is wrong.
What does the advertising pattern tell you?
More than the adverts themselves do.
One Flemish installation specialist has been running near-identical installer and service technician postings across at least ten separate regions simultaneously. Several have been open since December 2025 and were still being edited nine months later. A business does not advertise the same role in ten places at once because it has ten vacancies. It does that because it has failed to fill one.
The same shape appears in Germany, where a single hardware manufacturer has run nine separate field service technician postings across German cities at once. And in the Netherlands, where the signal is different: when the same role keeps surfacing through three different intermediaries, it has not been filled, and the brief usually needs to change.
If you are hiring into this market, assume you are competing with a business that has already failed at the same role repeatedly. That changes what a competitive offer looks like.
Is the qualification the real bottleneck?
Increasingly, yes, and this is the part most briefs miss.
The constraint is shifting from experience to certification. There are more qualified electricians than there are qualified electricians with charging-specific certification, and the certification takes time that a hiring programme rarely has. A brief that insists on both the certification and several years of charging experience is describing a group small enough to name.
The practical move is to decide which of the two you will fund. Businesses that will pay for certification and train someone through it fill these roles. Businesses that insist on arriving fully formed wait.
Does the money fix it?
Partly, and less than you would think, because the comparison is not the one most employers make.
Benchmarking an installer package against other charging businesses is the common mistake. The relevant comparison is the whole electrical trade in that travel-to-work area, including solar, heat pumps and construction. A band that looks competitive against charging and average against the trade will lose.
There is a specific problem in Germany worth knowing about. German employers almost never publish a salary band, the opposite of the UK. That means a candidate cannot benchmark themselves before speaking to you, and a band slightly under market stays invisible until it costs you an offer at final stage.
What actually shifts these searches?
Four things, in rough order of effect.
Widen the pool deliberately. Solar, heat pumps and general electrical contracting, and say in the advert that charging experience is not required if it is not.
Fund the certification. It converts a small pool into a large one.
Fix the geography. These roles are dispersed by design. A role written for one location in a market where the work is spread across a region will struggle, and the successful version usually names a patch rather than a postcode.
Be honest about the travel. Field and commissioning roles in this sector travel, sometimes across borders. Candidates find that out eventually and it is cheaper to say it first.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an installation hire take? Four to six weeks for a straightforward role. In the installer layer specifically, longer is common and not necessarily a sign of anything wrong.
Should we lower the experience requirement? Usually yes, if the certification is in place. The reverse rarely works.
Is this a UK problem or a European one? European, with local variations. Belgium has classified it formally, Germany shows it in advertising volume, and the Netherlands shows it through intermediaries recycling the same role.
If a role has been open longer than it should be and you want an honest read on whether it is the brief or the market, book a discovery call. You get that read whether you work with us or not.
Sources
- VDAB knelpuntberoepen list, 2026
- Net Zero Evolution live vacancy analysis across the Belgian, German and Dutch charging markets, reviewed September 2026