End of Quarter/Year wrap up.The end of year is nigh. Although we haven’t yet started the countdown to Christmas we’re all acutely aware that the year is wrapping up at a rapid pace, and the remaining days are filling up quickly. The last few months have been, to be honest, a bit of a blur in the Sourced office, but one very important stand out has been our recent success at the annual Seek SARA Awards.For you who have been with us since the beginning, you’ll remember that we have been twice runner’s up, so it was with a huge amount of pride, relief and excitement that we were this year recognised as winners of the new format Seek SARA ‘Most Innovative Use of Insights’ award. Specifically recognising Jason’s work on the FluxNZ initiative (www.fluxnz.com), and the Sourced Report (http://sourcedreport.co.nz/), this award means a huge amount as it highlights the effort and committment Sourced pay to keeping our market up to date with participation, activity, movement and trends in the local IT sector.FluxNZ and the Sourced Report are your key tools to understanding who’s who, developing what, moving where, seeking how much, and moving why. All available free to you. We hope you’re making the most of these essential resources. Watch for an updated Flux poster this week, showing the changes and additions since our launch earlier this year.Our second major news, is the long awaited move into our brand new premises at 222 St Asaph Street (upstairs from the new Coriander’s flagship restaurant). Purpose built to accommodate our team and growing visitor volumes, we’re thoroughly enjoying the new location, although having to watch our waistlines at the same time (best Indian food in Christchurch is downstairs, in our humblest of opinions)!The Sourced offices can be found in the top left of this picture – access is via the carpark found on Welles St.The last 3-6 months have otherwise been a busy time for the team, with a constant flow of permanent recruitment requirements, an uplift in contracting opportunities, and a definite trend of movement within the local market from candidates both moving to new permanent and contracting roles. We are expecting a quiet start to the new year as clients and candidates take a well earned break, with the bulk of activity kicking into gear by early February.General CommentsWhen we look over the past 3 months, a really interesting trend has emerged, with a huge 86% of permanent placements a result of individuals moving roles within the city. 8% were candidates returning home to Christchurch from oversea’s and 6% coming to Christchurch from overseas, specifically for work. These candidates were moving for a mixture of reasons, however when we compare this to the same time last year, when 41% of candidates placed in permanent work had not lived or worked in Christchurch previously, it’s a really interesting trend to be observing. It certainly confirms our finding in the lastest sourced report (https://sourced.nz/news/14/canterbury-tech-sector-august-2014-infographic/) noting that 72% of IT Professionals planned to start actively looking for a new role over the next 12 months. It’s certainly not a trend we’re encouraging given the ongoing shortage of talent in the region, and our focus remains firmly on talent growth from graduate pools and even earlier stages (http://www.codeclub.org.nz/), offshore recruitment, and encouraging professional development and promotion opportunities within organisations ensuring high levels of employee satisfaction and retention.From a client activity perspective, recruitment has been steady and focused, with a mixture of recruitment for projects coming onstream, new teams being created, and employee turnover. A very measured approach has been taken with clients taking the time to ensure business requirements are well understood, technical and cultural fit aspects well assessed, and long term candidate motivations well understood to ensure a sustainable solution. Recruitment has leaned towards permanent, however contracting opportunities have been very steady with key demands in the Development, BA and Infrastructure spaces.In the permanent space, we have been recruiting right across the board with the usual developers and testers (automation) in higher demand. Demand for BA’s and PM’s has been average with key opportunities on projects and within growing teams. Systems Administration & Networking roles have been busier than usual, all being recruited to replace departing team members, either moving on to other opportunities, or other centres. Longer term sustained growth, and replacing outgoing team members have been the key drivers for recruitment, and again a steady approach has been applied to recruitment.We have seen some restructuring across a number of organisations, however largely they have retained the majority of team members, and external movement has been more reflective of team members taking the opportunity to consider their options and look to new challenges for the new year. Candidates who have been affected by disestablishment have been picked up very quickly and have progressed on to other great roles, which is a great reflection of the overall buoyancy of the local market.Within Sourced Walls As mentioned above, we have just in the last month moved into our new office space at Level 1, 222 St Asaph Street. This is our second and hopefully final move for the Sourced business and has been well over a year in the making. With purpose designed boardroom, meeting rooms and a larger space to accomodate the team, it’s a fantastic move and we’re really pleased to seeing the ongoing developments within the CBD from our new space.The Sourced team remain stable with Hannah settling in well to her operations role and Chris Woods coming up to speed as our newest Recruitment Consultant. It’s been a busy year and we know the whole team are looking forward to the upcoming break and a chance to recharge the batteries.From an external facing perspective, Jason and Ben Reid from Memia are looking forward to the continuing evolution of FluxNZ in 2015, and the Seek SARA Award has been a huge payback for the effort that has gone into this initiative this year.Otherwise, it really has been a very stable and productive time and we expect this to remain constant over the final weeks in the lead up to Christmas. Image: Chris, Rachel, Michelle and Jason posing with silly grins at the Seek Awards General round upAs we speed towards Christmas, we expect to see a rapid wind down of new opportunities to market, and a focus on finishing up exisiting recruitment projects and planning for the new year.We remind clients that there is a really great opportunity in the late December/early January time frame to be advertising ahead of any requirements for the first quarter of 2015, as this is a time where typically candidates are quite active and recruitment activity quite low. If you’re keen to get ahead of the game, this is the time to do it.We are really enjoying the opportunity to work in a market that is currently very buoyant, stable and well organised. Solid decision making processes are in place for hiring decisions, and we’re seeing some great candidates move off into really exciting new roles.We expect 2015 to be another busy year, and are looking forward to connecting with you all when we return in January.The Sourced office will be closed from December 24th – early January.As always, keep in touch and we look forward to catching up with you, rested, relaxed and revitalised in January.
