HR, Legal & Procurement confidence returns
HR
HR professionals have been pivotal in the recovery of the Financial Services and Banking sector to date. Of course, given the tightened focus on remuneration, we have also noticed a sharp increase in the number of reward and change management roles. Although a touch hesitant when considering roles within the banking sector, candidates are still attracted by opportunities with some of the bigger industry players. Other sectors witnessing a measure of success last year included manufacturing and energy.
2010 has saw a renewed confidence within the HR jobseeker market. In 2009, the permanent sector experienced very little movement, if any. In 2010, candidates who are unhappy in their current roles are now much more willing to throw themselves onto the job market in the hope of securing new employment opportunities.
This change in attitude created a more buoyant permanent market in 2010. All the same, with many companies still reluctant to commit to permanent contracts, the majority of opportunities in HR last year were either on a temporary or fixed term contact basis.
Legal
Legal firms are slowly starting to recruit again at all levels in certain disciplines, with the private practice market getting busier and transactional work continuing to dominate.
Despite Financial Services remaining busy, (with specific retail Financial Services, Legal and Regulatory positions being the mainstay), candidates for these areas remain in short supply.
Although Industry and Commerce has been slower to start recruiting, the energy sectors (Oil & Gas and renewable) remain busy.
October saw the most activity in Private Practice, with Financial Services coming a close second.
In fact, most of the opportunities have been in Practice, Energy and Financial Services and these are likely to be the key sectors to watch for the rest of the year.
Procurement & Supply Chain
The key performing sectors are Energy, Oil & Gas, Manufacturing and Financial Services, with June experiencing an agreeably growing demand for Purchasing vacancies within the Manufacturing sector. Nonetheless, even with the need for Financial Services Procurement professionals at a consistent high, there is still a shortage of high quality candidates on the market place.
Recently, there seems to have been a dip in the demand for interim procurement professionals and the length of recruitment process looks like getting stretched.
The demand for Procurement talent increased as the year progressed and we suspect this will be the case going forward. We also expect to see an increased demand for interim procurement professionals across the public sector as they move towards cost reduction.
