Well we are three weeks into the New Year and the job market is demonstrating some new strengths. New job orders are up about 20% compared to the first few weeks of 2012. But I offer this with the disclaimer that this is too short a time period to confidently declare a new trend.
Real strength continues to emerge in I.T. technical staffing. Competition for the top talent is developing into a war in a few technical pockets. In the I.T. staffing sector we at Berman Larson Kane have been witness to a steady stream of counter-offers, salary increases and work from home perks. Candidates in this segment are collecting multiple offers with a steady increasing volume of interviews. This is good for job-seeker and us here at Berman Larson Kane (www.jobsbl.com). We are very optimistic that this will only get better for the immediate future.
The Human Resource staffing specialty remains flat. Selective openings have been emerging but nothing that represents
a shortage of HR talent. The one exception is a search we are doing in the energy segment for a compensation analyst but this challenge is more geographic than shortage of skilled talent.
Although on a national scale contract and temporary staffing is increasing in the high single digits, we here at BLK have seen a flat to
small decrease in this segment with the exception being I.T.
The software sales space continues to be short on talent sales professionals and we predict this will continue well into the future.
Looking forward six months a large percentage of our clients both midsize and small are planning to add to staff during 2013. So we are optimistic that unemployment will continue to decrease as job creation moves into higher positive numbers.
As always we thank our loyal clients for their support as we look to add to our own recruiting staff over the next few quarters.