2010 presented us with  some hope for economic upturn after a recession that has hurtled the South Africa economy into a sad state of affairs, and had a profound impact on the job market and recruitment industry. A surge of talent in the market, with minimal available employment positions has left many feeling despondent about the future job opportunities. ProfessionL, a network allowing employer brands and recruitment agencies to create online career communities, asked some of their South African clients to share their 2011 forecasts for the economy and job market in South Africa.

Tough times will continue to have an impact on employment

“Commodity prices are rising and will continue to do so as the US Federal Reserve continues pumping money (into the system). Industries directly linked to commodity prices (e.g. gold production) could expect some growth as marginal produces become more economical. However, input prices may also rise, cancelling out the benefit of higher sales revenue,” said Barry Kayton of Cognician.

“Other areas that may see growth are companies which deal with renovation, rehabilitation, and improvements as consumers chose to repair, extend and fix rather than replace with new products.”

“We can also expect consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, chocolates, etc to increase as people spend money on entertainment to help cope with economic distress. Higher spending in these areas potentially means expansion in these businesses, although with much economic volatility, it’s difficult to make predictions,” concludes Kayton.

Social media as a recruitment medium will continue to grow

Samantha-Leigh Olivier of Nu Beginnings a specialist IT Recruitment Agency, commented: “Social media has definitely changed the way people do business, recruit and market. It may not have assisted in recruiting better talent yet, but people are becoming increasingly familiar with the concept of using social media for work purposes, and I feel that this will be a domineering search tool in 2011.”

Lindsay Gibson from Gradzone says, “Graduate recruitment is an interesting market segment – we are finding a large percentage of candidates apply for positions via traditional channels, however often these people aren’t the best candidates for the job – the best candidates don’t look for jobs the traditional way. They aren’t traditional thinkers or socialisers, which is partly why we feel they are the top achievers – they approach life differently. In an information economy, they sift through information faster and communicate their wants better to prospective employers directly or via people they know, and by networking. Social media, especially in the youth market, is also playing a large role in spreading information.”

“As we are an online job board, which has experienced tremendous growth during 2010, we foresee further expansion in 2011. We find that our job board and related social media tools are effective vehicles and tools when they carry the correct relevant information, and when they do, the response is overwhelming. There is a vast amount of young people looking for opportunities online – they just need to be connected to the right vehicles with the right key word,” adds Gibson

Filtering the responses to find right-matches will be a growing problem

Kayton also states, “Given the surplus of people looking for work, employees are faced with a filtering problem. How do you select from a much larger number of candidates? It’s too time consuming to apply the kind of processes you would use if you were choosing among a small handful of applications. Recommendations from trusted sources play a much larger role in this environment.”

Employers will use a mix of internal and external recruiters

Gibson continues, “We foresee clients using a mix of both their internal resources as well as agencies in 2011. Many clients may try to do as much as possible internally because of budgetary constraints (especially on the back of poor results in 2009 and 2010), but we find that they soon realise they can’t do everything, and that agencies such as ourselves still have a valuable role to play.”

“As a recruitment agency, our upper hand in the recruitment process will also be that we are the “nice guy” to both the employer and the candidate. We are the one that both parties can ask anything to. The candidate doesn’t have to fear, for example, not getting the job because they asked something ideally you should only ask later in the process. Technology, if understood, kept up to date with, and adapted to, will only enhance the way we find candidates and of course, hopefully save consultants lots of time.”

Employers will focus harder on their employee value proposition and building a talent pool

Peter Flynn of Professional says “with an increased focus on productivity, top performers in skilled job functions will be more sought after. In see employers will be focussing harder on attracting these scarce people in 2011. I see employers building their own databases of talent over time in order to assist internal recruiters to play a bigger role in the recruitment process and save on fees. I see external recruiters being hired in to use both the employer’s own talent pool database as well as third party databases and sources to find talent. This may mean a growth in recruitment process outsourcing over traditional recruitment agency relationships.”