What’s in store for 2011 – predictions for the hiring market and wider musings

Its predictions time here at the Capital2 office. what are going to be the hot topics for the coming year?? How are the technology and banking recruitment markets going to pan out, and what will be floating our collective boats over the next few months??

In terms of the technology market, we’re seeing a steady increase in hiring activity, certainly no where near the pre 2009 levels but nevertheless the market seems much more positive. We’d expect hiring levels in our “standard” markets of Western Europe to be up on the last 2 years as firms edge back up in terms of headcount. The predicted fall in strength of the Euro could help in this, as it could become less expensive for US firms to hire and pay the best european talent.

On the banking side, we’re predicting another tough year. More technical positions will still be in demand (Basel 3, risk analytics) but a lot of that bandwidth will be taken up by the big consulting firms, so direct hiring by the banks will continue to be somewhat stagnant. Keep in there bankers…. the boom will come back but not just yet!

2011 will also see continued moves to a more mobile, connected society. The tablet / Ipad type device should become much more widespread, and expect the various social networks to become more an more interconnected. Branchout.com could be one to watch, as it is a business network application that sits on top of Facebook and purports to be a “linkedin killer”. We’ll see.

2011 is a year when in France and the US there will be a flurry of possible presidential candidates throwing their hats into the ring for 2012. we’re predicting Palin and Bloomberg to step up to the plate – and Strauss-Kahn in France. Should be an interesting year politically.

There’s a rugby world cup to look forward to as well – can’t see past the southern hemisphere teams for that one however.

So 2011 should be intriguing. The hiring markets are positive although still cagey…. it seems that clients can see past the hard times, but don’t want to rush. The whole year has an air of being a pre-cursor to an upswing… whether this will happen in 2011 or if 2012 will be the kick off, but whatever, interesting times agead!

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 9,400 times in 2010. That’s about 23 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 8 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 84 posts.

The busiest day of the year was April 26th with 86 views. The most popular post that day was Recruitment Market 2009.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were capital2solutions.com, linkedin.com, google.co.in, search.conduit.com, and google.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for basic interview questions, interview hints, basic interview, general interview questions, and basic interview tips.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Recruitment Market 2009 November 2008

2

Basic Interview Questions, Hints and Tips January 2008
14 comments

3

Top Technology Trends for 2010 December 2009

4

Who are Capital2 Solutions? October 2007
1 comment

5

Capital2 bosses speak at HEC Paris February 2009
1 comment