A quarterly global survey of hiring and firing trends covering more than 6,000 organisations in 30 countries has found job prospects for professionals and managers continuing to improve.
The ‘Global Snapshot’ from the international recruitment firm, Antal, asked 6,151 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months.
Current hiring across the globe was up from 50% of respondents in the autumn to 53% now. And the percentage of organisations intending to hire in the coming quarter was up from 48% to 55%. On the downside the percentage of organisations intending to shed staff had also risen slightly from 25% in the autumn to 28% now. However the general consensus was that the figure would drop to 22% over the coming quarter.
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“Although a few countries are still seeing a decline in the employment market, the global picture has definitely improved once again,” says Antal’s CEO, Tony Goodwin. “As we said in September, we are most certainly not ‘out of the woods’ as yet and there may be more unpleasant economic surprises to come but it does seem as if organisations of all sizes are approaching 2010 with more confidence than would have seemed possible in the very dark days of January 2009.
“As a result we are already seeing the first clear signs of organisations thinking in terms of the ‘war for talent’ once more with more robust businesses making early moves to snap up the best people in their markets before general recovery becomes too apparent.”
