Sourced Quarterly Market Update – Spring 2017

Welcome to our quarterly market update. Hopefully the warm weather and longer evenings are providing you with more opportunities to get out and about and welcome the incoming summer. An eclectic bunch here at Sourced, we’re finding the return of daylight savings is providing ample chance to pursue a range of personal pursuits from cycling to music, sports to beekeeping (see image right!). Within Sourced walls, October is always that time of year when we look backwards, look forwards and realise the year really has sped by and we’re now in the final ramp up to Christmas. While it’s far too early (isn’t it?) to be talking Christmas, we’re busy in the last push before ‘the’ holidays in December.

It’s been a really busy last 3 months, with lots of activity, events, general community involvement and team growth all in the mix. We are continuing to find that our contributions to the Canterbury tech sector are growing well beyond traditional recruitment, and we’ve continued to build some really valuable partnerships and alliances over this past quarter. At Sourced, we have always firmly believed that we have an obligation to be great corporate citizens, active community members, and a source of up-to-the-minute information for anybody seeking it. We are always looking for new and different ways to participate, contribute and to give back.

General Comments

As we look back over the past 3 months, we have seen a continued demand for contractors, a demand area that has now held steady since mid-year. Permanent recruitment has continued down the BAU path, however, conversely, we are recruiting full new teams in smaller numbers for new technologies/projects kicking off. This recruitment has been large volume within a small number of client sites, with the remainder of our permanent recruitment focus being BAU recruitment for growth in ones and twos, and replacements.

Larger projects in the market are few, however we do see this changing in the new year, with a number of businesses currently in the planning and preparation stages of ERP and large system replacement projects. We expect these to ramp up in earnest in the very late stages of Q1 2018 and beyond, with no real expectation of movement prior to that.

We expect big projects to ramp up in earnest in the very late stages of Q1 2018 and beyond, with no real expectation of movement prior to that. 

We are continuing to draw heavily on international and ex pat candidate markets, with active movement within the Canterbury region still right down. Those choosing to move within the Christchurch market have tended to be moving for hands on/mid-senior level roles, or roles for which they have been specifically headhunted by clients for their skills and capability, and are otherwise those affected by planned or actual restructures. Employers are clearly doing a great job in their engagement and retention efforts and we are seeing a very satisfied local employee base on the whole.

Within Sourced Walls

The last 3 months have been a really interesting time for the Sourced team, with team movement and growth. On an extremely sad note, we farewelled our very first Sourced employee, Hannah Iranon. Hannah joined us in the first year of the Sourced business, presenting as a bright and ambitious Coffee Culture Cafe Manager with aspirations of a career in recruitment. Hannah went on to hold a number of roles in the business from Senior Recruitment Consultant to Operations Manager and literally worked alongside Jason and Michelle, forming the building blocks of the Sourced that we operate today. Hannah has headed off to the USA with her husband and has managed to secure an awesome role with a local recruitment company similar to Sourced in her new hometown of Spokane. We know she’s going be a star.

We have welcomed Jessica Massey to the recruitment team, joining us here in Christchurch and a lot of you will already have had the pleasure of dealing with Jess. From a strong recruitment, technology and account management background, Jess has fitted into the team quickly and we look forward to introducing her to you over the coming months.

In September, we were once again represented as key sponsors and Trade Show participants at the Canterbury Tech Summit. This year again was an attendance sell out, with over 650 in attendance. It was a really worthwhile day; Canterbury Tech Summit is always ‘the’ event in the Canterbury national tech calendar (in our opinion), and feedback was very positive around the quality of speakers, venue, organisation, and collaboration and networking opportunities. As is our practice in inviting community groups onto our Tech Summit stand, we this year invited Code Club to share our stand and really enjoyed spending the day with Michael and Bryn and promoting the awesome work they do in getting coding and tech skills into primary schools across the country.

Who’s In Demand

Demand continues in the contracting space, in particular for Business Analysts and Project Managers, with the majority of projects being short to mid-term, filling gaps in internal capability, getting projects across the line, and laying the initial foundations for future projects. This is very much in line with Q3 activity and we expect will start to quieten off as we move closer to the end of year. Contracting as a whole is about where we’d expect it for this time of year, though it has held consistency for some time now, not effected by the usual peaks and troughs we see in this market. We expect to see a strong pick up again in Feb-March of 2018 as businesses come back online in earnest.

On the permanent front, again this is best described as business as usual. Permanent retention remains high, and hiring that is underway appears to be in small numbers, for specialist roles and roles that have had real planning wrapped around them as opposed to pure organic growth. That said, we have a small number of clients that are growing significantly, and this is exclusively due to new products/technology sets and teams being built around this. Modern web technologies (Angular, React, JavaScript) and Embedded Engineering requirements are keeping us extremely busy, as is Infrastructure and Systems, an area that has generally been quieter throughout the year. Average appointing salaries have been sitting in the $80-100k range, with mid-senior level ‘on the tools’ candidates being most in demand. This is up on last year, where an average salary recruit at this time of year was sitting around $65-$80k.

General Round-Up

The market continues to move along at pace both in contract and permanent recruitment. Staff retention is high, growth is well planned and scoped, projects are gathering momentum, with 2018 looking to continue on in earnest. We look forward to seeing how the rest of the year plays out, and will come to you with a final quarter/year wrap up in late December. We hope you enjoy the warmer weather coming, and look forward to seeing you in due course over the next few months.