Canterbury IT and Technology October 2015

It’s great to be in Canterbury at this time of year!

Welcome to our regular quarterly market update. We hope you’re enjoying the welcome return to the warm weather and longer days that Spring brings, and are making the most of the opportunities that the new season provides.

The past 3 months have been a really positive period of growth for the Sourced team including some new faces, new clients and some really great high profile projects.

General Comments

The market has really swung heavily back in favor of permanent recruitment over contract recruitment in the past month, after a 6 month period of confidence in the contracting market.

We have also seen a strong return to recruitment of mid-senior level Software Developers and Software Testers, coming off the back of a period of intensive demand for BA and Project Management skills. Recruitment is as a direct result of increased confidence and strong pipelines of work that necessitate the growing of internal teams. We have also seen a number of clients recruiting in bulk, and a number of Senior/Executive level roles coming to market, which is reasonably rare for this time of year.

We really enjoyed the recent opportunity to partner with the Dunedin City Council on a number of senior roles including CIO as they prepare for some significant transformational change. While we recruit predominantly in the Canterbury region, our reach continues to grow, with Dunedin becoming a real emerging market as their market and economy continue to boom.

The drop off in contract resource demand this last month has been quite definite, coming off a very busy recruitment period in the preceding 6 months. While we had previously seen a very solid demand for contract Business Analysts, Project Managers and Testers, projects also appear to have slowed, with work more focused on longer term objectives and business-

as-usual activity. Whilst our contractor base continues to grow, we are most definitely moving towards a model where the majority have completed assignments with us before and come highly recommended and are able to be deployed as opposed to growing to keep up with a buoyant market.

We are also continuing to recruit an increased number of candidates from offshore, new to Christchurch, or returning home; as those employees now in work locally keep their heads down and focus on projects ahead, having little appetite to change employers at this stage of the year. This may well change, though this has been the norm for the past 5-6 months and heading towards Christmas we don’t expect to see a lot of movement here. February-March time is typically when we will see a level of churn at the local level, so now is a good time to be reflecting on staff retention and engagement initiatives.

Within Sourced Walls

As mentioned above, we have been very fortunate to be able to grow the Sourced team in a short space of time this quarter, bringing two new recruitment consultants into the team. Hamish Calder has come across to join us from Enterprise Recruitment where he had successfully built a portfolio of IT clients, and we have also welcomed Carolyn Esterhuizen who was recently arrived in New Zealand from South Africa. We look forward to being able to introduce Hamish and Carolyn to you as the opportunity presents itself. This brings our total team to 7 now, servicing clients right across the South Island, as always with a predominant focus on the Canterbury region.

You may have seen us at the recent Canterbury Software Summit, an event we are very pleased to be able to sponsor on an annual basis, and possibly the pinnacle of the Canterbury tech sector annual calendar. This year was an outstanding success with around 550 attendees. Once again you would have found our stand in the exhibition space this year and we really enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with clients and candidates alike including many faces from the past!

Back in the Sourced office, we are continuing to enjoy the increasing pace of the rebuild here in central city, and trying out the local eateries and cafes that are popping up with increased frequency. Right opposite the Sourced building, we have been watching the rapid construction of the new Environment Canterbury HQ which will bring back several hundred employees into the central city. They will no doubt enjoy our favorite Indian Restaurant downstairs, Coriander’s, on their arrival!

The latest instalment of the Sourced Report was released earlier this month, you’ll note that we’ve also pulled the reports into the main Sourced website to make it easier to read.

Who’s in demand

Demand has very much focused back towards Software Development and Testing over the past 3 months, after a period of sustained demand in the Professional Services space. Currently, recruitment is predominantly on a permanent basis, with a burst of Senior Management/Executive recruitment, including the recruitment of the new CIO for the House of Travel Holdings Group and Dunedin City Council.

Contracting has quickly gone very quiet, however it has been very buoyant when looking back over the last 6 months. In current conditions, permanent recruitment far outweighs contract requirements.

General round up

As it was at the end of the last quarter, the market continues to hold buoyancy,

while best described as ‘balanced’ with demand leaning heavily towards permanent, and candidates reasonably available provided there is flexibility to consider tho

se from further afield.

As we head towards Christmas we expect contract requirements to fall off further, whilst permanent recruitment tends to remain steady right up until the break with a view to starting new team members in the new year. This is a great example of how quickly things can change around us, as the eagle-eyed of you will note that our most recent Sourced Report discusses a period where contracting has been uncharacteristically strong (data gathered in the period up to early September).

We hope to have the opportunity to catch up with you before the festive season is upon us, and as always if we can help in any way feel free to call, email or visit us in the office for a chat.

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