Increased need for Contract Staff

There is no question that the recruitment sector has seen a very slow start to 2008 in the hiring of contract staff, but the industry experienced similar fortunes in the first quarter of 2007, with things improving steadily in Q2 and Q3 in the number of people hiring contract staff.

Recruitment Zone Managing Director, Andy Barton, says "We're already seeing an increase in demand for contract staff whilst permanent vacancies have definitely slowed. We expect an increase in demand for qualified accountants with a corporate finance background in 2008. Unfortunately there is no question that the ‘credit crunch' is starting to take its toll. We are seeing far more caution from the banks in the hiring of new permanent staff. It would appear that they are only recruiting to match attrition in the current market. Demand is there but it is slow. This however has resulted in an increase in demand for short term contract staff in particular in areas of testing and change management."

Financial services customers are continuing to undertake a lot of integration/migration projects to either incorporate new business areas or to streamline current ways of working.   Change Management skills are still one of the largest areas of demand in contract staff and there is also an increase in demand for process improvement skills from contract staff.  Demand remains high for qualified accountancy skills in contract staff but this is no different to the norm and is purely due to skill shortages rather than "pure" demand.

The contract staff hiring market appears a little tighter than this time last year.  The time of year combined with slight financial markets uncertainty appears to have made the budget sign-off process slightly lengthier when hiring contract staff.  Companies have money to spend and budgets do not appear to have been cut, it is just taking them longer to justify the need of hiring contract staff and get authorizations in order to spend it and kick new projects off.

"I am sure that not all companies will be infallible and that redundancies will be apparent throughout the year.  This in turn may well open up contract staff on to the marketplace who previously were staying where they were in uncertain times, either way the banks will have to be smarter when it comes to generating profit.  This will not be as easy through sales of retail network products like loans and credit cards so no doubt we see more of an increase in business process re-engineering and the implementation of more efficient ways of working as far as operation and back office programmes of work are concerned". 

This is reflected in the increased projections for "fee generating" contract staff roles e.g. Corporate Relationship Managers, Business Banking Managers, Financial Planning roles and Branch Network based roles as well as increased demand for process improvement contract staff.
 

View other news from May 2008