Market Signals (Week 27)

The art of interpreting signals (precursors of trends) is – and always has been – important in navigating financial markets and economies. If you are an experienced manager or executive who wants to manage their career and/or job search processes wisely, look at the signals of the job market which are inseparably embedded in the VUCA landscape of today’s world.

We usually keep the collected data to ourselves. But these are not usual times, so we decided to share our insights at the end of each week. If the country / context is important, we’ll add them. Otherwise, we’ll keep it general for confidentiality.

This is not a full version of this week’s report. View the complete presentation here:

We’ve continued reaching out to CEOs, HR Directors, investors, board members and candidates that we know personally, to take the temperature. Below you’ll find their shortened quotes in no particular order.

However, we’ll start with a KPI that gives a quite good feel of the overall trend on the job market:

Number of published job ads on LinkedIn

Note: some job ads might have been taken off LinkedIn, not because the recruitment process was put on hold or canceled, but because they are costly, especially if you have dozens of them. A company might have wanted to simply cut costs and move to more cost effective alternatives. Some local job portals are offering substantial discounts.
Initial list of 18 countriesSorted
Extended list to 36 countriesSorted
Note: the numbers are collected at the beginning of each week, on Monday afternoon. In the full version of the report you can find separate data for regions such as: Visegrad, Baltics, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Iberia, SEE, BENELUX, DACH, Western Europe and EU.

Worth mentioning

First an overview of the indices:

Index18: Only 2 countries published more job ads in Week 27 than in Week 13: Poland & Ukraine.

Index36: 50% of countries have seen an increase since last week, which is a +5.55% change in comparison to Week 26 and +11.01% in comparison to Week 25.

The European Union: Between Week 15 and 27, the EU countries altogether have seen an increase in the number of jobs ads, which shows that for the past 4 weeks, declines and inclines have been alternating weekly (-15.50% in Week 24, +4.13% in Week 25, -1.00% in Week 26 and +9.89% in Week 27).

Losers of the week: For the second week in a row, Southeastern Europe experienced the biggest decrease in the number of published job ads on LinkedIn out of all the regions. The reason – Italy and Spain noted the biggest negative difference between Week 15 and Week 27 (-39.89% and -31.41% respectively).

Winners of the week: After having taken the last place in Week 26, Germany placed first in Week 27. Almost half a million new job ads were published on LinkedIn in just one week! Thanks to that, DACH & Western Europe were the two regions that benefited the most. Another thing – Bosnia & Herzegovina published 75 more job ads in Week 27 than in Week 15. In this country’s case, this is a change of +93.94% :)

Collected Quotes from CEOs and HR Directors:

Industry: I can definitely see a lot of companies choosing this time for big organizational transformations for several reasons – cutting costs or new business orientations. This could be a good opportunity on the job market, as new roles or talented people looking for changes could appear.

Services: I haven’t seen any interesting job offers recently. What I can see on the other hand, are requirements from the employer’s side, which very often don’t align with true needs of a particular company.

Building Materials: We haven’t experienced any visible changes so far, but the next year could bring some potential challenges.

Pharma: It’s been a very good time for our company, we’ve seen more sales and clients.

Publishing: As conferences, webinars and e-books are now more popular than ever, the center of business gravity has been moved online. This resulted in a decrease in physical distribution and, in consequence, lower turnover and lay-offs.

Media: Closed theaters and cinemas resulted in more interest in digital solutions. The sales model had to be changed.

Useful observations & tips for candidates from one of our contacts:

Head of Talent Acquisition / International public organization

Before CV-19, sometimes we’d have only 20 applicants for a post. Now, there’s a massive increase. For some roles it’s double the amount of candidates – for HR roles, even more! A recent posting received 50 applicants within 12 hours! I can see that online interviews are more stressful for candidates because of all the technical challenges. Consequently, their performance is different. The overall candidate experience is also different – not worse, just different.

I still see two struggles for now and beyond CV-19: to formulate proper remote working policies, and to design appropriate digital onboarding processes.

About the future: everything will depend on the success of developing a vaccine. However, there are definitely elements that are here to stay: remote work if physical presence is not required (it currently saves me 5 hours per week, 20 hours per month on commuting – why would I voluntarily want to go back?) and online interviews!

Tips for candidates:

  • Cover the basics: our ATS “enforces” as complete applications as possible. Having said that, it still surprises me that approximately 30% of the candidates still don’t get the absolute basics right!
  • Don’t apply to everything. Constant rejection affects your motivation. Keep applying to the job ads where you see a fit and don’t give up!

If you want to discuss your professional situation confidentially or if you are considering hiring Career Angels for support, contact Bichl.Sandra@CareerAngels.eu who will personally match you with the most appropriate consultant. For efficiency, add your CV and availability for a Skype call.

If you want to contribute, email your signals to Sandra (everything will be kept confidential).

Market Signals published thus far:

Week 26
Week 25
Week 24
Week 23
Week 22
Week 21
Week 20
Week 19
Week 18
Week 17
Week 16
Week 15
Week 14
Week 13