Market Signals (Week 30)
The art of interpreting signals (precursors of trends) is - and always has been - important in navigating financial markets and economies. If you are an experienced manager or executive who wants to manage their career and/or job search processes wisely, look at the signals of the job market which are inseparably embedded in the VUCA landscape of today's world.
We usually keep the collected data to ourselves. But these are not usual times, so we decided to share our insights at the end of each week. If the country / context is important, we’ll add them. Otherwise, we’ll keep it general for confidentiality.
This is not a full version of this week’s report. View the complete presentation here:
We’ve continued reaching out to CEOs, HR Directors, investors, board members and candidates that we know personally, to take the temperature. Below you’ll find their shortened quotes in no particular order.
However, we’ll start with a KPI that gives a quite good feel of the overall trend on the job market:
Number of published job ads on LinkedIn
Note: some job ads might have been taken off LinkedIn, not because the recruitment process was put on hold or canceled, but because they are costly, especially if you have dozens of them. A company might have wanted to simply cut costs and move to more cost effective alternatives. Some local job portals are offering substantial discounts.
Initial list of 18 countries
Sorted
Extended list to 38 countries
Sorted
Note: the numbers are collected at the beginning of each week, on Monday afternoon. In the full version of the report you can find separate data for regions such as: Visegrad, Baltics, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Iberia, SEE, BENELUX, DACH, Western Europe and EU.
Worth mentioning
First an overview of the indices:
Index18: This week, 6 countries published more job ads on LinkedIn than in Week 13: Ukraine, Estonia, Poland, Denmark, Lithuania & Slovenia.
Index36: 58% of the countries published more job ads in Week 30 than in Week 15, which is a -10% decrease compared to last week. However, since last week, 80% of the countries saw an increase in the number of published job ads!
The European Union: For the fourth week in a row, the European Union has experienced a positive difference between Week 17 & 30 (+6.01%). The numbers are starting to rise again after 2 weeks of downfall.
Winners of the week: All regions experienced a positive difference between Week 29 & 30. The best result was noted in Northern Europe (+11.35%). The winners of Week 15 & 30 comparison are again, as last week, Baltics & Visegrad. The country with the biggest % increase since last week was Norway (+132.88%)! One of the highest results of Week 15 & 30 comparison was noted in Estonia, a significant +65.38% increase in the number of published job ads.
Losers of the week: Between Week 15 & 30, Southern Europe noted the biggest decrease in the number of published job ads on LinkedIn out of all the regions (-18.39%). The worst result since last week, although above zero, was noted in Western Europe (+3.14%). The country that noted the biggest negative change between Week 15 & 30 was Sweden (-33.30%). The biggest negative weekly difference was noted in Moldova (-16.39%).
Collected Quotes from CEOs and HR Directors:
The vast majority of executives are with market leaders in their respective industries. By default, the board members are members of local boards; if not, we’ll indicate the exception.
IT: We weren’t directly in danger because of the pandemic, but were expecting some difficulties nonetheless. Our salaries were cut by 20% and we noted a two month sales decrease. It wasn’t a great loss – compared to last year, sales dropped only by a few percent.
Biotech: We were involved in building a start-up until March, when all activities had to be suspended.
And candidate quotes:
Global Executive Director / Software Market Leader / Asia: COVID-19 had affected the business in a very negative way. Face to face meetings are extremely important in Asia, but during the pandemic they could only be held through Skype, which prevented the finalization of many projects. I have seen that many recruitment processes were frozen as well, which made it impossible for me to move to another region.
Useful observations & tips for candidates from one of our contacts:
Head of Talent Acquisition / International public organization
Before CV-19, sometimes we'd have only 20 applicants for a post. Now, there's a massive increase. For some roles it's double the amount of candidates – for HR roles, even more! A recent posting received 50 applicants within 12 hours! I can see that online interviews are more stressful for candidates because of all the technical challenges. Consequently, their performance is different. The overall candidate experience is also different – not worse, just different.
I still see two struggles for now and beyond CV-19: to formulate proper remote working policies, and to design appropriate digital onboarding processes.
About the future: everything will depend on the success of developing a vaccine. However, there are definitely elements that are here to stay: remote work if physical presence is not required (it currently saves me 5 hours per week, 20 hours per month on commuting – why would I voluntarily want to go back?) and online interviews!
Tips for candidates:
- Cover the basics: our ATS "enforces" as complete applications as possible. Having said that, it still surprises me that approximately 30% of the candidates still don't get the absolute basics right!
- Don't apply to everything. Constant rejection affects your motivation. Keep applying to the job ads where you see a fit and don't give up!
If you want to discuss your professional situation confidentially or if you are considering hiring Career Angels for support, contact [email protected] who will personally match you with the most appropriate consultant. For efficiency, add your CV and availability for a Skype call.
If you want to contribute, email your signals to Sandra (everything will be kept confidential).
Market Signals published thus far: