How's the market?

Quarter 1 2010

June through to September had shown that Australia was stepping out from the negativity of the downturn to a more positive economic outlook and data released in Quarter 4 would support this, with job advertisements increasing by more than 12% over the last 3 months. Accompanied by the fact that unemployment rates are stabilising, it would appear that Australia is through the worst of this world crisis. However, we must consider the greater picture and realise that job advertisements are still more than 30% down on November 2008 as well as that the strength of the Australian dollar is likely to impact our export manufacturing businesses if it continues to hold its current position.

Specific to the local Finance & Accounting market we have certainly seen signs of improving health across a wide range of sectors. Financial Services, Retail and FMCG have led the way with the volume of demand increasing across a number of large businesses in these sectors. Manufacturing, Property and Transport have also shown greater confidence in their individual markets and taken the opportunity to bring extra talent on board.

In an increasing number of cases we have seen businesses compete to retain staff who since resigning, have received counter-offers comprising of salary increases, extra responsibilities and/or new titles. In an economy that is generally perceived as having an abundant pool of candidates this perhaps shows that Finance and Accounting is already returning to the talent-shy market conditions previous to the GFC.

Certainly we would recognise deficiencies at specific levels within our network, having regularly been asked to recruit a number of Management Accountant/Commercial Analyst roles between $100K-$120k package and Commercial Manager/Business Partner roles at the $150K-$170k level. We are now mindful in managing client expectations regarding the limited availability of high calibre candidates at those levels.

2010 promises to provide a more stable economy with, in turn, returning confidence in job security and future employment opportunities. Couple this with data in a recent survey that 5 in every 10 employees intend to use this more secure environment to consider new opportunities and leave their current employer within the next 6 months and the Australian Finance & Accounting market could well see a return to the ‘war for talent’ before anticipated.

Venator does not expect this to return as quickly as Quarter 1 of 2010 but would agree that employer optimism and recruitment forecasts are increasing and this will result in a greater number of opportunities for the right candidates, if still at a slower pace than prior to the GFC.

Acknowledgements to SEEK and ANZ Media Release (December 2009)