Professional Support Market Insight

ONE EIGHTY RECRUITMENT • April 22, 2020

Professional Support Market Insight

Market insight from Susannah Shackel - Team Leader Professional Support.

Professional Support, like all specialisations and industries at present, has taken a dramatic hit with overnight nearly all of our live roles being put on hold. Talking to my clients about the live roles that we were working on before lockdown the message was the same, all roles will become available again but when and what shape is unknown - a lot will be based around when we can get back to some sense of 'Business as Usual', new budgets and the amount of work that is out there.

After researching what happened with recruitment in previous recessions (1989 and the GFC) the pattern was the same - permanent recruitment fell off fast and took much longer to pick back up and while there was initially a decrease in temp recruitment, the latter picked up a lot faster with businesses feeling taking on temporary staff gave them more flexibility and was a lower risk of an on-going overhead while the economy rebuilds. In simple terms - Temp = options!

Other Client Insights:

Most private clients are working at 80% while Government remains at 100%
All construction clients are spending a lot of time working out their health and safety protocol for when they return to work at level three. These are comprehensive and some clients have requested extra health and safety support
Clients have said how well their teams have adapted to working from home and a lot of clients are looking at redoing their ‘working from home policies’ to allow more flexibility when life returns to 'Business as Usual'.
Clients have also mentioned the expensive overheads that come with working in an office - something that small businesses may consider changing
Government clients are very keen to get recruiting again and we have had new roles in this week

Candidate Insights:

As we near the end of four weeks of Level 4 lock down, candidates seem to be much more positive and optimistic than when the lock down was initially announced. This can potentially be attributed to the fact that candidates have accepted the current situation and have put contingencies in place moving forward
Speaking to candidates predominantly in the Professional Support space, there doesn’t seem to be too many redundancies and candidates are still keen to hear about other potential opportunities
Candidates are however now more open to the type of roles they are willing to be put forward for i.e. temp, contracting or permanent as they realise that the job market will have changed and they cannot necessarily be too selective on this front

As I am in a unique situation where I am talking to a lot of different clients across different sectors please let me know if there is any other insights you would like to hear about.

Keep safe, keep well and keep in touch.

Susannah Shackel

Team Leader - Professional Support

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