If you work in a call centre or a car factory then you are probably happy to still have your job (having seen at least some of your former colleagues depart) and rather nervous about how long that state of affairs will last.
If you are a temporary or contract employee of a financial services company then you probably aren’t as worried as you should be – even if you’ve already finished off all the fingernails on one hand. If you are on the second tier, as a chief operations officer or chief information officer, then you might want to think twice about quitting your job in the next year or two.
But if you are a structural engineer with building and construction experience then you should resign on the spot. Potential employers will be lining up around the block within minutes, each offering you more money than the last.
Judging by the experience of recruitment companies the job market in South Africa is in a peculiar state, with large companies unable to decide whether 2009 will be disastrous or just mildly unpleasant. Some industries have seen limited retrenchments, almost always at the level of lowest skill and income.
Some companies are being cautious about filling posts left vacant by natural attrition, such as through retirement, but are still willing to commit to the right candidate. Others appear not to have heard the news about the looming global recession and are desperate to have more hands on deck.
”The local call centres are either losing people or putting their recruitment on hold. The international call centres offshore from Europe or the United States are expanding their operations here to cut the costs out of the centres they have in their home countries,” says Hein Weyers, marketing manager at staffing agency Emmanuels, which does more than half its business in the call centre industry. ”It is still contracting overall; the foreign needs aren’t entirely offsetting the local decline.”
In the information technology field, on the other hand, the changes in employment patterns seem much more closely linked to the business of the employer. ”In certain sectors we have seen a definite reduction in the number of job postings,” says Ernie Hipner, the general manager of Careerweb.co.za, a specialist recruitment site for information technology professionals. ”In financial services we’ve seen a slowdown, but from companies in the engineering field we still see huge demand.”
The experience in Cape Town, home to an inordinately large number of financial services jobs, brings more nuance to the assessment. ”The health sector is fine and the investment side isn’t too bad, but the life sector is not so good and, well, offshore investments are suffering,” says Bridgena Barnard, whose personnel group operates mainly in Cape Town, about her financial services clients.
Barnard says there is a notable slowdown in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, where many expansion projects seem to have been put on hold until the data for the Christmas shopping season is in. In that sector, she says, an early interest rate cut might spur sufficient business – from reprieved consumers – to boost confidence sufficiently that borderline projects may be restarted.
Some changes in employment patterns – and the need for jobs only in certain sectors – are reflected in the CareerJunction Index, a monthly report compiled by the website of the same name and based on the volume of job applicants versus available positions it records. In October, the latest data set available, job adverts in engineering, information technology and the construction sector attracted few applicants. In the petrochemical industry – or FMCG and retail – companies would have less than 10 candidates to pick from for each post. That is opposed to government positions and education posts, where more than 40 applications were received for every job posted.
At the extreme top end of the market, where salaries are counted by the millions, things are always a little different. ”We know from our global partnership that in areas such as financial services a lot of people who were employed six weeks ago now aren’t employed and that is not a reflection on their abilities,” says Allen Shardelow, a local partner of executive search company Heidrick & Struggles. ”What we’re finding in South Africa is that it’s definitely not business as usual, but at the level where companies need superb leadership we still have a fairly confident outlook.”
According to Shardelow, a new, more cautious attitude is evident even though no company is stopping short of hiring a replacement chief executive. ”In FMCG and retail, in the consumer goods industry generally, we saw a slowdown before the financial meltdown because consumer spending was down with the interest rate hikes. What we’re seeing now is that people are taking longer to make decisions and are being more careful about the candidates that they hire. The volume [of jobs filled] isn’t down, but the speed shows less urgency.” What recruiters have not yet experienced – but feel might be on the horizon – is a return of South African immigrants who suddenly find the northern climes a little frigid for their tastes.
”What used to happen is that people would call us in November to say they are coming home for the holidays and they’d like to talk about market opportunities,” says Shardelow. ”They’d stop over in Johannesburg, have a few meetings, go to Plet[tenberg Bay] and then back to Toronto. In the past 18 months we’ve seen a trickle of people phoning up to say ,’I’ve made the decision to move back to South Africa and I’m arriving next month, let’s talk.’ That trickle may become a stream as the depths of the recession in the north become clear.”
But Shardelow cautions that South African-born global executives are likely to have enough money squirreled away to delay such a decision and will likely follow the money offshore again in three to five years when global economic conditions improve.
Careerweb’s Hipner also reports a trickle of contractors and temporary workers in the technology space returning, especially from the United Kingdom, but doesn’t foresee the tide turning. ”There is still huge demand for IT professionals in Dubai and Australia and it looks like they won’t be any worse hit than South Africa,” he says. ”People will still have a choice of where to go.”