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Recruitment to Recruitment Industry News
It’s been an eventful year for the first half of 2008, with many of our clients interested in finding out how others are faring since the ‘credit crunch’ hit us and whether we have noticed any significant signs of panic within the recruitment industry.
The short answer is no. Certainly there is an element of caution and examples of this caution include fewer numbers of clients willing to embrace consultants wishing to transfer across from one sector to another and less of an emphasis on the need for volume recruitment within a short period of time. However recruitment within the recruitment industry is continuing apace, with most of our clients interested in adding talent to their teams on an ongoing basis.
The FPR Index reported the following for April 2008:
“Perms:- In all four previous years of the Index, April has seen a fall in Permanent placements from March - this is the first time we have seen an increase. Hopefully this may mean the worst is over? Or simply the completion of delayed decisions? The rise was 3% over March and 5% over April of last year. April was the best month since October last year.
Temps:- in April experienced an almost identical pattern to April in previous years, with a very slight fall of less than 1% compared to March. This is not unusual, in fact April has always been a low point, usually with a steady climb from May until August. Lets hope so again! Pleasingly, they were 2% higher than April last year.”
In addition to this there have been extremely encouraging reports from a number of our clients, many reporting and increase in projected profits for the first few months of the year and many more reporting performance in line with expectations.
The City
Gloomy newspaper headlines aimed at the City, and the fact that we have a significant City client base, have certainly not deterred us from continuing with plans for our London branch. There are suggestions that, whilst the press has been reporting a widespread loss of staff in the banking and financial sectors from organisations such as JP Morgan, CitiGroup, UBS and Commerzbank, some analysts believe that a continuing skills shortage has lead to a cautious approach to cutting jobs – a fear that it will be expensive to re-hire these skills when the upturn comes. The markets worst hit thus far are those operating in Derivatives, Hedge Funds and Structured Credit. Some of our clients have reported that job losses have been confined to a ‘slim-down’, rather than instances of widespread culling, with contractors seemingly worst hit and permanent business continuing as before. Others have maintained that they have seen no job losses, although the volume of recruitment in the banking and financial sectors has seen a slight decline. Although there is no denying that many of the major banks have been implementing redundancy plans, this does not seem to have provoked widespread alarm amongst recruitment specialists in these areas, many of whom report a shift in the balance of their business rather than a dramatic decline in volume.
London and the Regions
Our clients recruiting in other specialist markets in London and the Regions remain similarly upbeat and, whilst many are no longer pursuing aggressive short term UK growth plans, we have seen little evidence of any dramatic decline in movement of experienced consultants. UK based clients are continuing to add experience to their teams in sectors such as Construction, Legal, Accountancy and Finance, IT, Sales, Marketing, HR, Media, Engineering, Oil and Gas, Supply Chain, Procurement, Retail, Health and Social Care and Pharmaceuticals. Recruitment among our Executive Search clients is continuing as before and Public Sector recruitment continues to thrive. We have seen little change in demand for Branch Managers in both specialist and more general markets and, although there has been a slight decline in movement at Regional Manager and Director level, this is still a core business area for us.
Ireland and International
If anything we have noticed a higher demand for consultants in Ireland, Europe, Australasia and the Middle East. Those of our clients with plans to expand into International markets are continuing to move forward with these. Some are actively looking to recruit fluent linguists with the most sought after languages amongst consultants and experienced recruiters being French, German, Spanish, Polish, Mandarin and Arabic. Others are keen to recruit consultants with good UK market experience to implement overseas, particularly in Australia.
All in all, we are looking forward to the second half of the year with optimism!
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