IT Jobs Market Update

So, here we are, the third global crisis of my recruitment career. I witnessed the misery of the post 911 downturn, where the demand tap was turned off instantly.  The somewhat slower decline and recovery from the GFC, and now an illness preying on an anemic economy.

Obviously, there are huge issues facing the world from a health and economic perspective. However, I’m restricting any commentary to my area of expertise: the jobs market.

I’ve spoken to a number of fellow recruitment experts over the last days, and in each case they have seen a significant decrease in activity in most areas except tech support, distribution, call centres, telco and health care. To back this up, Gartner are reporting 49% of businesses have total recruitment freezes in place.

 From a statistical perspective, I’ve been recording the number of roles advertised on Seek since things really got serious. On the 11th of March there were 147,000 live advertisements across Australia. As I write this a month later there are only 54,000 advertisements remaining – a 63% decrease. And most of those roles were advertised more than 2 weeks ago! In the IT market the story is similar. While the proportional drop is slightly less, 15,500 advertisements down to 7,300 –a 53% decrease, with a similar proportion of new to old advertisements.

I would expect to see a flattening of the jobs curve at some point; I’m hopeful that with the world adjusting to a new normal, we may be much closer to the bottom of the cycle than the top. And If you have the capacity to hire now, it presents a once in a generation opportunity to access great talent with limited competition.

A major challenge facing businesses who are currently recruiting is managing the large number of applications while ensuring your brand is not detrimentally affected by poor post application experience. There is also the challenge of onboarding large numbers of staff in this constantly changing global situation. If you’d like more information on how we can assistant with either of these scenarios, please reach out to me.

To those looking to hire and those looking for work, I’m happy to provide the following advice.

If you’re hiring…

1.      Spend your budget. Do it NOW. Pay in advance if you like. We had many of our customers do this in the GFC. It enabled them to deliver where others could not.

2.      You’re going to see a lot of candidates abandoning contract roles and running for the safety of perm. This means you’ll have access to new talent pools but raises the question of tenure. Will these candidates disappear as soon as the good times come back? I would advise to take the best of this new cohort but keep balance in your team. At its heart there should be members who have a track record of long tenure permanent employment.

3.      There will still be competition for the best talent. Those who are currently employed may be nervous about leaving a secure role at this time. Make sure your key selling points to candidates include stability and minimisation of risk.

 If you’re looking for a job…

 1.      Really? But you’ve got a job. Unless it’s likely to end or you really hate it, perhaps staying where you are is not a terrible idea.

2.      Rate each job in terms of stability, and the potential of your prospective employer to recover at the end of the crisis.

3.      Use your network. People want to minimise the risk of every hire during tough times. Introduction of an individual who is a known entity de-risks the recruitment process and eliminates competition associated with an advertised role.

 Some final thoughts about this crazy world

It has become very apparent to us at this time that we are a sum of many parts. We are not just a recruitment team. We are a community of customers, contractors and candidates, so many of whom have been part of us for years. In the past few weeks we have reconnected with many of you, sharing insights and experiences that we could never have imagined. We are always here if you want to ask someone about job prospects, about how to handle difficult conversations with employees or employers, or just want to have a chat.

We were recently contacted by a long-standing customer of ours, a leading Australian charity. They asked us to recruit for them for free during this time. Their revenues have gone to near zero and demand for their services has gone through the roof. We were happy to agree.

And finally, a few months ago Balance Recruitment had a boarding meeting. We were a little nervous about the economic conditions at that time (but not as nervous as we are now!!!). Two of our shareholders and mentors, Geoff Morgan (ex Morgan & Banks, Talent2 etc) and Sean Foster (ex-Candle) commented that in the tough times, the customers you’ve looked after for many years will look after you; the service you’ve provided over the years will be paid back with loyalty.

We look forward to riding out these tough times together.

Paul Foster