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Happy New Year Everyone!! We enter a new decade…

2009 on the whole would probably be a year for most companies and people to forget. The implications of the credit crunch which began in 2008 were fully felt within 2009 across the world. End-Clients deferred projects which had no immediate return this resulted in consultancies reducing their head count due to having less concurrent projects and increasing consultant numbers on the bench not working. End-Clients reduced their permanent recruitment strategies and all companies looked at ways of cutting costs which resulted in a contracting global employment market.

However it wasn’t all doom and gloom the internal and external pressures that the credit crunch put upon organisations forced companies to reduce costs and streamline services and this resulted in companies developing more intelligent and effective ways of carrying out their business activities.

2009 saw trends such companies increasing their internal resourcing teams to reduce recruitment costs, reducing the number of contractors on their payroll to reduce operating capital and become much more diligent when it came to hiring new members of staff, there’s stories of people going through 6 interviews to get a development job.

The changes which happened in 2009 will have an everlasting effect on the employment market with the landscape changed forever and how things will play out over the next 12 – 36 months no one can fully predict.

They say following a credit crunch there is always one significant change in the employment market and how it operates.

It’s probably a fair analysis to say that the biggest change in 2009 is the rise of Social Media, people are now able to find, get in touch and keep in touch with one another with increased ease and this change will really challenge the need for recruitment companies in the future if they do not continue or in some cases begin to add value in other parts of the recruitment cycle.

So where does that leave the market for 2010?

Well, despite the snow storms which have brought England almost to a standstill in the first 2 weeks of January it is fair to say that the market looks remarkably brighter already. We have had an abnormal amount of enquiries about profiles in the first week of January alone so we are fully confident that this year will be better than last year.
The majority of industry professionals have apparently earmarked Summer2010 as the date when they expect the employment market to be back in full swing and be back to something near pre 2008 levels.

However, it’s all nice us saying the markets going to pick up, I’m sure every candidate who regularly keeps in touch with a recruiter is hearing the same thing, but I’ll let you in a secret most recruiters don’t know what’s going to be happening next week on their own desk, god knows how they could give you a valued prediction of when they think the whole market is going to pick up.

So what I have you is some concrete evidence. Centaur Media Plc is one of the UK’s leading specialist and business publishing information companies. Their major brands include Marketing Week, Money Marketing, The Lawyer, Creative Review, The Engineer, Homebuilding & Renovating and Perfect Information.

Mid-last year they approached us to take part in a survey with 500 other consultants and recruitment directors from leading recruitment businesses and 100 In House HR professionals from leading blue-chip organisations. The results were split with a seperate survery for internal HR and external recruiters.

If you would like a copy of the results of the survey then feel free to e-mail us here at Origin. However key questions and results to those questions are.

Consultants & Recruitment Directors Feedback from survey

When do you expect to see a significant improvement in your recruitment business?
53.6% expected the market to be back in full swing in Spring 2010, followed by 14.7% who felt the Summer 2010 was more realistic.

When we emerge from the recession how do you think the recruitment industry will have changed?
Most people expected the biggest difference post recession will be that there are fewer recruitment companies, 75.6% thought this. This is probably good news as there is the feeling the market is getting saturated with sub-standard recruitment operations. The second biggest expectation post recession from recruitment companies is that Employers’ own recruitment teams will be doing more in house recruitment (59.6%), Third was the increased pressure on fees with 55.6%.

Which of the following types of employment do you expect to see more or less of as a proportion of your clients’ future workforce?
The Answers to this question were split Permanent is expected to stay the same, however 50% of recruiters think there will be an increased demand for contractors in the next 12 months.

Other interesting things to come out of this survey were that 33% of recruitment directors are planning to expand their geographical region of recruitment. This could probably be down to the fact that it is now easy to carry out recruitment activities for roles far away from your base location especially with the reductions of telecoms and the increased ROI of social media.

Everyone who took part in the survey recognised the need to add value in other ways post recession. Also an important fact is 70% of recruitment companies will be expanding their operations over the next 12 months meaning that recruitment directors are expecting an increase in recruitment and it’s not just a line recruiters are spinning to contractors to keep them happy.

In House HR Professionals feedback

Over the next 12 months, do you expect to spend more, less or the same on recruitment overall?
Top Answer: 47.9% to spend less

Do you think your organisation’s business performance will improve over the next 12 months?
Top Answer: 71.3% expected an increase in their businesses fortunes

Will your organisation’s recruitment/resourcing team expand, contract, or stay the same over the next 12 months?
Top Answer: 60% Said stay the same

Do you expect increased pressure to recruit absolutely the right person for the job?
Top Answer: 65.1% expect increased pressure to hire the right person

Do you expect to place increased emphasis on developing your employer brand in the near future (12 to 18 months)?
Top Answer: 80.5% said yes and of those 80.5%, 75.6% planned to do this through increased recruitment training for line managers.

What we took back from the feedback from the answers of the HR professionals is that they planned to recruit more in the next 12 months and were under more pressure now than ever to make sure they find the right person for the job however they planned to spend less on recruitment.

The underlying factor throughout all of this is that everyone perceives 2010 to be a better 12 months than 2009. Recruitment companies are hiring to deal with the expected demand and companies are doing more business and are planning to hire.

However with HR planning to cut recruitment spend recruiters fears that pressure on fees post recession will be a key issue are founded but fears that HR will continue to increase their internal recruitment teams are not.

So 2010 looks set for increased hiring, a lot of candidates have had itchy feet over the past 12 months the news now would be to get your CV ready as I predict there’s going to be quite a bit of movement.

Predictions for 2010:

Premier League to Arsenal, we’re Arsenal fans and our hearts rule our heads

World Cup to Brazil, Europeans have never won the world cup when it’s not been in Europe

Nottingham Forest to get in their Premier League

Andy Murray to win a Grand Slam

Lewis Hamilton to out-do his world champion team mate Jenson Button

Enjoy 2010. Good buy Naughties. Hello Oneties, Teenies?