Recruitment Market 2009

So how are things shaping up for 2009?

Well, there’s overwhelming consensus that hiring will slow down across the board. Profits are down, therefore budgets are down therefore hiring slows….. logical. Our core markets of banking and high technology are broad enough to enable us to react effectively to this, but we’d be stupid to think that next year will be easy.

How does this affect the way we work?

Well generally in tough economic periods, there are a lot of candidates on the market (redundancies etc), and fewer new jobs being created. The inverse is roughly true in boom times, where there are lots of jobs compared to the number of suitable candidates. This means we as a company have to do 3 main things:

1. We work harder to find new roles to fill, and try to keep tight hold of our existing (hiring) client base.
2. We have to ensure that the ratio between being asked to hire a role and actually filling it is as close as possible to perfection.
3. We need to maintain an accurate and large database of active candidates to ensure we react quickly in the event of being retained by a client. This can even take the form of partnerships with 3rd party researchers or RPO companies.

So we will be affected. We service the banking and technology markets, both of which will be squeezing suppliers (ie us) hard over 2009. That said, our management team have already come through one serious recession – no reason they can’t come out the other side of this one smiling too!!!!

Who said France’s always on strike?

It all started in 1948…

“NANTERRE (AFP) – Le conseil des prud’hommes de Nanterre se penche mercredi sur la requête atypique d’anciens mineurs des houillères du Nord-Pas-de-Calais, qui veulent voir leur préjudice reconnu soixante ans après leur licenciement à la suite d’un mouvement de grève durement réprimé en 1948.”

The following are for this week (17/21nov.) only:

• “Le Sénat a adopté dans la nuit de lundi à mardi le relèvement de 60 à 65 ans de l’âge limite d’activité en vol des pilotes malgré une grève de quatre jours à Air France contre cette disposition, qui a pris fin lundi à minuit”
• “PARIS (Reuters) – Deux syndicats de cheminots, la CFDT et la FGAAC (Autonomes), ont décidé de reporter de mardi minuit à vendredi minuit leur appel à une grève de 24 heures à la SNCF afin de continuer à négocier sur le réforme du fret.”
• “L’UNSA Police et le Syndicat général de la police/Force Ouvrière (SGP/FO) appellent les policiers à manifester mardi à Lyon pour “la défense de leur pouvoir d’achat”, “la sauvegarde des 35 heures” et contre “la réduction des effectifs”, selon leurs principaux mots d’ordre.”
• “A trois jours de la grève dans l’Education de jeudi, les deux premiers syndicats du primaire, le SNUipp-FSU et le SE-Unsa, déplorent le manque de dialogue social du ministre de l’Education Xavier Darcos, et lui reprochent son “attitude”, dans des communiqués distincts lundi.”

As long as it’s not raining…