What is The Market Like for Job Hunting?

One of the most common questions we get asked as executive search consultants is “What is the market like for job hunting?”

It’s a fair question and perfectly valid. As the vast majority of people we speak to come from an IT sales background, candidates are always qualifying to see whether it is worth investing their time. Nobody wants to enter a process with an extremely small chance of any success.

Reading between the lines, what I actually hear is one of the following:

“I don’t want to spend ages looking, is there something now??”
“Is it even worth me looking just in case better candidates are out there??”
“Is the recession over yet??”
“JUST PLEASE TELL ME IT ISN’T RUBBISH!!”

The good news is that this is the best market I have seen in my career. You might ask me why?

The government have posted that unemployment is at its lowest rate since 2009
New technology is still very much on the rise with the #digital and #social age
We have a 32% rise in live jobs in Jan 2014, in comparison to Jan 2013
Finlay James are well on the way to a record January, off the back of a record December!

So it’s easy to see; companies are hiring, the tech sector is still growing, confidence is high and I believe that it is a good market for those looking for a new challenge. I would say to anyone who asks me about the state of the market – have confidence, the time is now!

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Comment by Keith D. Halperin on January 22, 2014 at 1:04pm: Thanks, Richard. "..this is the best market I have seen in my career" for the folks and clients you work with, but it's certainly not for the typical un(der)employed (wo)man out there...

-kh

Comment by Richard Gibbard on January 23, 2014 at 9:07am: Very true, I suppose we are fortunate enough to work in the tech sector... positivity can breed more positivity within other industries, fingers crossed that it continues to pick up

Comment by Keith D. Halperin on January 23, 2014 at 1:19pm: Thanks, Richard. IMHO, we don't need PMA- we need 15-20 million FT, benefitted jobs that pay 80-120% of the median income, aka "good, middle-class jobs". We have over a $1T of highways, roads, streets, bridges, tunnels, water/sewage treatment plants, parks, schools to repair, smart grid, energy efficiency, renewable energy work to do, high-speed rail lines to construct, hundreds of thousands of classrooms which could use a paid teachers aide, and a Congress and President unwilling to commit or even advocate ANY of these things.

We're getting a few new high-paid (often tech) jobs, lot of low-paid, poorly benefitted service jobs, and not many in the middle range where they're needed.

-kh

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