What's Hot and What's Not

Strong business conditions for recruiting continue into the new year. When we look at our Best Opportunities and New Jobs each week we see the same industries and types of positions we have seen for a while.

IT, Healthcare, and Heavy Industrial Manufacturing at all levels are still probably the hottest areas. I heard from a client in Civil Engineering / Construction the other day…more layoffs and no real sign of things getting better. We used to do a lot of work for them and hopefully we will in the future again. What this brings to mind for recruiters is that you can die sticking to an industry until it turns around.

Trends, streaks, momentum etc…..all tend to last longer than we think they should.

Todd Kmiec

Todd Kmiec and Associates

todd@toddkmiec.com

Comment by bill josephson on January 16, 2012 at 11:13am: Todd, That's always the million dollar question. We're trained to be specialists. We're told that with staying power outlasting your competition you stand to pick up market share when things rebound.

Remain loyal and persevere, or shift discplines? Shifting means starting over from scratch with recruiting skills credibility but no market contacts. It means much time invested in getting knowledgeable in a new area. On the other hand, sticking with a trending slowdown discipline can put you out of business.

In the I/T world I know corporate internal recruiters are all over the Internet and employee referrals finding people as I/T professionals often heavily use social networking and visible making recruiting problematic as you're either also social networking uncovering the same people internal recruiters are, or time works against you cold calling/networking via phone against Internet efforts. Plus, TPR resistance by companies to paying fees in a market where so many are accessible through technological resources.

I've worked in I/T, Medical Devices, and Defense in my 31 years of recruiting. Never seen a time where picking and choosing is as uncertain.

Enjoy your posts.