Recruitment in management consulting - first sight of annual Top-Consultant.com survey data
With half of management consultancy recruiters not having scaled back their hiring targets for 2009 and more than one third of recruitment campaigns being held back, survey finding from management consultancy’s premier jobsite Top-Consultant.com suggest that recruitment in the industry will concentrate in the second half of the year.
These are the preliminary findings from Top-Consultant.com’s latest annual recruitment channel report, which is in its eighth year and the current issue combines responses from 142 management consultancy recruiters and 877 consulting candidates. The full report will soon be made available from Top-Consultant.com but first sight of the data makes interesting reading.
According to the results there was an equal split between recruiters who had scaled back their hiring target for 2009 as a result of the economic uncertainty and those who hadn’t.
Roughly one third of recruiters said their target for 2009 is to make slightly fewer hires than in 2008. About 20% plan to make the same number of hires as last year, while a little over 20% plan to make considerably fewer hires. (Figure 1)
However, a significant number plan to make more hires in 2009 – 10% need to hire considerably more and 15% said they will hire slightly more consultants than last year.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the economic uncertainty has caused 34% of recruiters to delay their major recruitment campaigns for 2009, as consultant firms try to read the direction of the market. Top-Consultant.com thinks this will result in a pent up demand, given
that hiring targets are not slashed radically, which will materialize in the second half of the year.
Recruiters will also have to make do with reduced budgets, with 38% reporting reduced budgets in light of changed market sentiments.
About one in ten (12%) recruiters reported that recruitment has been put on hold as a result of market uncertainty.
Pockets of recruitment activity
Recruiters singled out the Public sector as a pocket of recruitment activity over the year. The sector was followed by cluster of three sectors with almost identical results: Energy & Utilities, Purchasing & Supply Chain and Healthcare & Pharma.
IT/Software Development consultants will be the most sought after during the year, followed by Business Process Improvement consultants and then Programmer / Project managers. With equal responses are the following three functional areas: Outsourcing, Strategy and Technology.
Recruiters report that most often they will turn to experienced candidates from other consulting firms, suggesting that poaching will be the most popular way to meet hiring targets. Industry and the Public sector are the second and third choice for sourcing experienced hires. MBA and university finalists don’t seem to be high to the priority lists of recruiters in 2009.
The full report, which will become available in the coming weeks, contains comprehensive data on recruitment trends in the industry and in-depth analysis of candidate job search behavior.
