STATE OF THE MARKET

News of the unemployment rate moving from 7.5% to 6.8% on the 17th of September was enough to jolt me into blog-writing mode.  We were expecting unemployment to decrease, but a 0.7% downward movement was a big and very welcome surprise.  Expect more good news when Victoria’s release from their long lockdown starts to positively impact the economy.

I shared this graph on LinkedIn a few days ago.  Much has been learned by governments and citizens in the fight against the pandemic, so I’m hopeful that the second and third COVID waves will be quickly contained and we experience the upside scenario in this line graph.

Team MyHorizon has had no redundancies during COVID and we would be one of the very few recruiters in the Sydney to be able to say that.  We have not lost momentum and have made good use of the time the pandemic has afforded us.  We have expanded our service offering to include outplacement and a CV review service, automated processes to reduce administration and a new website and social media strategy is on the way.  Having gathered intel through numerous surveys and conducted our own analysis of what constitutes a highly placeable candidate, we have refined our candidate database.  We are now able to spend more time really getting to know the right candidates for our clients and our searches are faster and much more targeted.  We were already proud of our candidate database and in the years prior to COVID we consistently filled 70% of our assignments with database candidates.  Going forward, we’re expecting more than 80% of our roles will be filled courtesy of our much smaller, but infinitely better candidate database.

A word on keeping candidate files up to date.   In order to know what is important to you in your next role, we need to speak with you.  When you get a call from a MyHorizon consultant, whether you are in the market or not, please do yourself a favour and spend a few minutes on the phone with us.  That call could make a big difference to your life.  In our surveys, you told us one of the biggest frustrations you have with recruiters is they don’t return calls.  We are not them.  We will always return your call.  Can we ask you to return the courtesy?

In the last 6 weeks, we find ourselves busier filling jobs than working on projects.  Unexpectedly, our recovery seems to be oriented towards permanent orders.  It’s normal to expect a contractor-led recovery.  But hey, we’re not complaining.   April through to July there was precious little recruitment activity in our sector, accounting, HR and administration.  Now we are increasingly seeing candidates picking up work.  Client expectations are high though, so there are still many who are struggling to secure work if their skills or experience don’t meet the market, or they are very junior or very senior.

www.seek.com recently hosted a webinar outlining their analysis of the employment market and candidate sentiment.  Key takeaways included:

• Demand for candidates is returning on Seek but varies according to state and sector.
• Healthcare, community services and manufacturing are almost at pre-COVID levels.
• The recovery is being led by small to medium enterprises and Western Australian and Queensland SMEs are leading the recovery.
• Comparing June 2020 with July 2020, more candidates will consider moving to a job or industry less impacted by COVID (up 8%); candidates are more hesitant to work as a contractor (up 5%) and more intend to change jobs once COVID restrictions are eased and the market goes back to normal (up 3% to 32%).

You will be aware of our monthly News Bulletin, published since 2009.  One of the links in the News Bulletin is to the Monthly Leading Indicator of Employment.  The indicator brings together information from a Chinese, a USA and three Australian indices.  If you’re interested, you can read more about the report in this link: Monthly Leading Indicator of Employment  I wanted to share the graph below from the report.  It’s early days, but the recovery has clearly begun and whilst the V-shape in 2020 is slightly different from the V-shape in the GFC, it’s close enough for me to feel very optimistic that the worst is behind us and the market will recover faster than was predicted a few months ago.

‍

Levels of the Leading Indicator of Employment