Welcome to our end-of-Q3 update and a review of how 2022 has been shaping up. We hope you're enjoying spring as the days get longer and sun spends more time out and about, and we look forward to giving you a peek into what's happening out there in the world of tech recruitment.
General Comments
State of the Market
As you all know, this year started with a bang. We saw an unprecedented level of movement in the local market, with candidates coming out of a 2-year COVID hiatus to make the most of an increasing number of new roles available.
This, in turn, created more opportunities and saw salaries lift, from moderately to significantly in particular areas of demand. This was certainly in the context of salaries having been flat for at least the past 3 years. However, this still caused a lot of disruption and rightsizing for employers doing their best to hang on to their best talent.
With a significant number of candidates changing jobs in the six months between October 2021 and March 2022, we are now very much on the tail end of attrition and we expect staff turnover to be very low for at the next 6 months to a year. However, demand from employers remains.
Project work has continued to shape up and kick off, driving ongoing buoyancy in both the contracting and permanent job markets and the challenge now becomes looking at alternative/offshore talent pools to ensure the tech market can continue to grow.
It's been a really interesting watch. While there was a very brief sense of a softening of the manic six months mentioned above, we are again ramping up. Employers are continuing to recruit at pace, it's just timeframes that are beginning to push out and resources remain scarce.
International Candidates
We are watching with interest the opening of the Accredited Employer Scheme and new visas becoming available to highly skilled tech talent. We have had good recent success with appointing offshore candidates new to New Zealand, too. While we are seeing some reluctance from employers to utilise international talent pools, taking a 'wait and see' approach as this scheme beds in, more and more are becoming realistic that this may well be their quickest route to filling high-skill roles.
We are seeing a significant upswing in candidates relocating to New Zealand, many now taking the plunge with visitor visas and short-term work visas such as working holiday visa as a foot in the door before applying for longer term work visas and residency.
We have also observed very few relocating into the Canterbury region from within NZ, which previously had offered a great channel of talent into the city. While there is a small trickle, we can now see more and more offshore candidates coming through and they are certainly remaining a focus.
Succeeding in the Current Market
Many of our clients have had to really adjust the way they hire, moving to more flexible remote working arrangements to secure talent. There are a significant number of candidates who will no longer accept roles that are 100% office based, and the market has had to respond accordingly for the best.
Most have now also engaged a recruitment agency partner to ensure they are first to new talent coming to market and that their brands are presented as favourably as possible. Online advertising is yielding little result in general when looking at candidates applying for specific roles at specific times, but remains a vital tool from an agency perspective, banking these candidates for more suitable roles in the future.
So, where is the market heading? Are we back to a state of Pre-COVID normal? Yes and no. The heat is off slightly, and while clients continue to grow we hope to see more international candidates coming into the market to help grow and develop the local talent pool and offer a great solution to an age-old problem of talent scarcity in the local tech market.
Hot Jobs
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Within Sourced Walls
It's been a really busy last 3 months, with demands coming from all sides for contract and permanent staff. The team has remained stable and engaged, although certainly in need of a quick breather.
To celebrate what has been an unprecedented year, we are heading off to Queenstown for a team building day in early November – what better place to stop in for ice cream!
With the COVID traffic light system now being dropped it has been great to invite visitors back into the office and be able to visit more and more of our clients. This makes such a difference when recruiting, and we're certainly appreciating getting back to normal in this sense.
Who's in Demand?
Demand is high right across the spectrum, with roles in the Infrastructure and Service Desk spaces remaining busy, which was also a key theme of Q2. Contracting roles have been very quiet with the majority of recruitment across the board being for permanent employees.
Development, Test and Professional Services (BA) opportunities have continued to grow, with again the majority being newly created positions. As we mentioned in our last report, we feel like we are doing less and less turnover recruitment now with the bulk being new positions. While there was a very brief September slowdown, things have kicked off again at pace and we expect to see this right through into the new year.
In the Professional Services space, demand remains strong for permanent BAs, who have enjoyed significant salary increases this year of up to $25k. We have seen a slight run-on Project Management and Change Management roles, however, only on a short-term contract basis. While Change roles have continued to grow across the year, they have only been in a small number of places and are certainly still a fledgling practice. In the Test space, intermediate Manual Testers are now the most in-demand, with a real slowdown in Test Strategy and Automation work.
Within Development, demand remains very steady in the .Net space and also for JavaScript/PHP/Python skills, predominantly permanent. This has been the case for most of this year.
In the contracting space, it has largely been made up of the usual BA roles, mixed with a range of Helpdesk, Project Management, and Systems Engineering.
General Round-Up
To date in 2022, we have seen permanent recruitment activity and staff turnover at an all-time high. Multi-offer scenarios have been the norm, but this is softening. Negotiation around pay and work conditions has been in favour of the candidate, and this has really driven candidate activity.
For the first time since 2019, candidates have moved around in significant numbers but with a majority of that now complete, how do we continue to grow as a tech community? This will be the one to watch.
In Case You Missed It
To date in 2022, we have seen permanent recruitment activity and staff turnover at an all-time high. Multi-offer scenarios have been the norm but this is softening. This is very much what we saw in Q2. Candidates appear to have done the majority of their moving for the year, and we are now.
Employers are continuing to recruit at pace, but resources remain scarce.
