April 2014 – Sourced.kiwi is here | Christchurch IT

The Canterbury IT and Technology scene is on a high!

Welcome to Autumn! I know we’re never ready for it, and the end of daylight savings often feels like the final goodbye to summer, but….moving right along!

We really hope you’ve had a great start to the year and if our recent experience is anything to go by there’s been plenty to keep to you all busy. The first quarter of 2014 has followed the trend we would typically expect which was quieter to start as business came back online, last ditch holidays were held and then a quick and urgent ramp up as projects and follow on work from 2013 moved ahead in earnest.

Both contract and permanent opportunities have been on the rise, with a spike in demand for Senior Management/Leadership roles and Mobile Development Technology opportunities. These are tending strongly towards newly created positions and with some very progressive, high profile companies. We’ll expand on this trend this further through the update.

There is a high and continued level of interest from migrants looking for opportunities, specifically in the South Island, and more and more companies engaging with these candidates prior to their arrival in Christchurch.

Images courtesy of christchurchnz.com

General Comments

In the permanent space, while the usual Developers, Testers, BA’s and Product specialists remain in continued demand we have taken on a number of really exciting Senior Management/Executive roles that will appeal to CIO’s, General and Operations Managers. Project work continues to dictate demand, however these projects are expanding in length with both contractors and permanent staff being recruited for projects expected to run into the 1-5 year time frame.

The local candidate market is certainly seeing some signs of activity, which we would expect for this time of year. There have also been a noted number of role restructures and unfortunately some redundancies which have seen some coming into the market less voluntarily, however very fortunately being snapped up quickly.

This is always the time of year we expect a higher than usual level of local candidate activity as people return from holidays, look to the year ahead and reset goals and expectations. From an employer perspective this is a great time to re-engage, refocus and re energise teams as we do find this level of activity falls away as the year moves on.

As mentioned in the last update, a lot of our clients have been surprised to learn that we did not note any significant lift in salaries for 2013, with primary candidate motivations still being around work life balance, flexible work opportunities, professional development and team/culture considerations. This is still very much the case!

Within Sourced’s walls

• For those that missed the last update, a quick reminder about some interesting work we completed in the last quarter of 2013 – click through to the Sourced Report now. To put some actual shape around what we often report as the state of the Canterbury IT scene, we have created the Sourced Report which features the results of a six-monthly survey sent to a database of Christchurch IT employers, employees and job seekers registered with Sourced. While it restates what we continue to talk about, having the data to back us up is proving invaluable for some customers who are using the findings to formally support business decisions where people from outside of Christchurch or New Zealand are involved.
• We are expecting to have some positive new in terms of team growth in the next month, but you will need to wait for the next update to get the scoop!
• We are continuing to keep active in the local community with our latest involvement being key sponsors for Start Up Weekend (http://startupweekend.org/).
• We are also (once again) sponsors for Entre and the 75k Challenge (http://www.entre.canterbury.ac.nz/), putting our money where our mouth is in regards to graduate development. We are extremely passionate about graduate recruitment and we feel Entre is a great vehicle for graduates realising their business and tech talents solving real world problems with innovative business ideas.
• Thanks to the efforts of some very engaged individuals, we are looking at a couple of other clever initiatives to support as well. More on those when the ink is dry though.
• After a longer than expected hiatus, we reinvigorated our Women’s Breakfast/Networking series with our Principal Consultant Rachel Brown representing the New Zealand Gynaecological Cancer Foundation (http://www.nzgcf.org.nz/) giving a really well received talk that aimed to both educate and empower women around women’s health and awareness. We are hoping to run another event this year and would welcome any suggestions for charities/topics you would be keen to see covered.
• We were very excited to be in attendance at the Trimble Navigation new building opening in Birmingham Drive. This has been 3 years in the making since the February earthquake and subsequent fire that destroyed one of Trimble’s key business facilities, and saw the birth of their new R&D centre, and what a fantastic job they’ve done! Trimble have really delivered with cutting edge construction technology, bright and high quality spaces, and a general working environment second to none in the Christchurch tech sector right now.

Who is in demand?

Newsflash, the market has turned and after a longer than hoped pause we have a number of excellent opportunities for CIO, General and Operational Management candidates. These are both project based and general operations management roles across small/medium and enterprise sized businesses. We’ve been watching this space for some time and are really pleased to see opportunities of this calibre coming to Christchurch. Michelle is the key contact for these opportunities, so if you are considering a change in 2014 please make contact with her directly.

We have seen a very sharp increase in the last 1-2 months for Mobile Application Developers, with demand broad across Android, iOS and Windows Mobile Application Development, both native and through emerging frameworks such as Xamarin. We are looking for both contractors and permanent staff in this space so if you are in this space and looking for options, please give us a call.

We are still seeing a critical requirement for .Net Developers with a drop off in Java Development demand. .Net roles are across Windows, Web and Mobile and at all levels.

BA, Systems & Networking, Support and Project Management requirements have remained static. We have seen some new/rare to market options coming through across Training, Communications and Technical Writing, so on the whole we can say that demand for IT skills is very broad, across contract and permanent, and from Graduate to Senior Management.

Canterbury is continuing to prove itself as a career centre for New Zealand in emerging tech. We are having no issue attracting international candidates to the South, though we still find it harder to attract our Auckland and Wellington compatriots.

General Round Up

As we head into the second quarter of 2014 we’re expecting to be recruiting top to bottom, and broad across role types, company sizes and domains. We have a number of really exciting, unique roles coming onstream and are keen to engage with candidates coming into the local market.

Clients are working hard to retain highly engaged, motivated teams and in return this is offering great work environments for new starts.

We’d like to remind you that we are available at any time for advice, updates or focused/specific stats on the shape of the local market. We have a lot of information available in this space!

As always, keep in touch and we look forward to catching up with you over the next few months.