Types of roles you're seeing / filling
In the past few quarters, clients undergoing restructuring, reorganization, and workforce planning/retirement retained my firm. We placed several vice presidents running supply chain, procurement, and operations in an effort to compress the timeline to solving current market challenges and better customer experience. Common Agenda's association practice was retained on an SVP of Technology to transform our client's digital presence.
Types of companies hiring
At Common Agenda, we primarily serve at the intersection of technology and technology associations (our clients classified as non-profits). Our success has been with companies who enable the optical, telecom, and networking market. We also serve non-profit associations whose member base is typically the technical engineering community. Our clients and the market we serve are hiring all types of roles, in engineering, R&D, operations, finance, human resources, marketing and sales. Due to the immense demand for faster, cheaper, better technology we have seen the need for specific skillsets and customer relationships increase rather than slow down.
What candidates are telling you about their job search experience?
At the Director and Vice President levels, many of the candidates we are engaged with are finding positions through a headhunter or through someone in their network. From the more recent searches we have completed, candidates are getting multiple offers or counter offers from their current employer. Our candidates in sales are complaining about the supply chain still slowing down product shipments affecting commissions. Our candidates in leadership roles are complaining about the turnover in their teams. There was a lot of movement lately and the market is still candidate driven for desired skillsets. The people depending on LinkedIn and job boards frequently call us out of frustration.
How are things trending compared to last month/quarter?
There is an undeniable uncertainty in the market mirroring the daily news. We've all seen/heard of the bigger companies doing waves of layoffs by the thousands in the past few months. Our customers are typically ~$5B companies, so we are not seeing mass layoffs but we have seen slowing or freezes in hiring in some areas.
Any common mistakes people are making?
You can't take back a first impression….just because of a strong candidate driven market for the last couple of years should not wipe away standard skills in your interviewing. Your best shot at making a first impression is to make it more about the person interviewing you than about you. Yes, this job may further your career, but in general going into an interview with a servant leader attitude and examples wins the day.
Any predictions?
Despite several indicators to the opposite, the team at Common Agenda feels cautiously optimistic about the year ahead.
