Companies Are Hiring Again – And They Need Us

I did a quick web search this morning for the phrase “companies are hiring again”, and here’s a snapshot of what came up:

These results are all fairly recently written – within the last few months. According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is planning to hire 1,000 to 2,000 people in 2010. Even one of our favorite recruiting tools, LinkedIn, added 184 people to its workforce last year. And they’re not just hiring… they’re hiring fast. One man who had offers from five companies, including LinkedIn, stated that he “interviewed on a Friday and had an offer by Tuesday.”

Technology companies aren’t the only ones starting to see the light at the end of the recession tunnel. Legal search professionals are also seeing a rise in hiring from their clients. And health care is also a hot industry in which to work right now. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average rise in health care employment over the past year has been around 20,000 new jobs per month. The Robert Half Professional Employment Report which was just released earlier this month describes the hiring environment as one of ‘cautious optimism’ – and they state that companies are struggling with finding, recruiting, and hiring highly skilled professionals. Even CNN Money shows a glimmer of hope. In their March issue they state, “The Labor Department said the economy gained 162,000 jobs in the month, compared to a revised reading of a 14,000 job loss in February. That makes March only the third month of gains since the recession began.”

So what does this have to do with you? I wrote an article last year on my thoughts regarding the recession and the effects it would have on recruiting. Corporate recruiting teams have thinned out since things started getting bad, leaving small numbers of people (if anyone at all) to handle any hiring needs that have come up during the recession. I predicted that once companies started hiring again, there would be a significant increase in the need to partner with external search professionals to fill those needs since the corporate teams would be unable to handle any volume of hiring due to layoffs. The time is just about upon us to where we’ll be seeing this happen.

We’re not out of the woods yet, but those of you who weathered the storm of the last 18-24 months will have some great opportunities in the coming months as your existing and new clients begin looking to add to their head-count once again. Their internal teams are either non-existent or so small that they will need help. Now is a great time to be a search consultant – clients need your help and guidance more than ever.

Is this already happening for your industry? Share your experience in the comments below!