Market Signals (Week 40)

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 38 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: This week, 7 countries published more job ads on LinkedIn than in Week 13: Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Latvia, Ukraine, Germany, and France.

Index36: 44% of the countries published more job ads in Week 38 than in Week 15, which is a 6% decrease compared to last week. Since last week, 72% of the countries saw an increase in the number of published job ads.

The European Union: In Week 40, the European Union noted a +25.08% increase (975,890 more job ads) compared to the initial Week 17. Since last week, +11.65% more job ads were published.

Winners of the week: This week, one of the best results was noted in Lithuania. The country experienced a +71.81% increase in the number of published job ads on LinkedIn, compared to the initial Week 15. After noting the worst results for many weeks, Southern Europe became a winning region of Week 40. Since last week, 57,712 new job ads were published, which is a +21.84% increase.

Losers of the week: In Week 40, all the regions had positive results. Baltics noted the lowest increase: only 8 new job ads were published on LinkedIn since last week (+0.35%). When it comes to countries, one of the worst results was noted in Austria. 22,248 job ads disappeared from LinkedIn, which is a -27.95% decrease compared to the initial Week 15.

Collected Quotes from CEOs and HR Directors:

The vast majority of executives are with market leaders in their respective industries. By default, the board members are members of local boards; if not, well indicate the exception.

Retail: Due to the nature of our business, we cannot work remotely. We’ve introduced strict safety measures. Everybody is required to wear a mask. There are separate entrances and exits, we’re constantly monitoring the situation on the site. We’re required to react immediately if someone doesn’t adhere to the rules.

Banking: The restrictions affected our business massively. A lot of firms stopped operating or simply disappeared. We’ve also observed a big number of lay-offs.

Construction: Our clients aren’t realizing all the orders, deliveries of materials are limited, and the prices have gone up. Even though the official statistics aren’t too optimistic, all the restrictions and limiting are often a strategic decision, and not a direct consequence of the market situation – it is more profitable to do it this way.

Finance: We are doing terribly – this is the first time we’ve been affected this much.

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 39
Week 38
Week 37
Week 36
Week 35
Week 34
Week 33
Week 32
Week 31
Week 30
Week 29
Week 28
Week 27
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