Saturday, October 11, 2008

The Job Market: October, 2008


I can't say that I exactly expected this but last August, I warned that the good times, the easy times in job hunting were going to end for a while based upon the affects of the subprime mortgage collapse and the affects of having a new American President. I did not anticipate rising gas prices or the events of the past few weeks with a credit crunch,

I have been warning that the 4th quarter of this year might be the last time you would be able to easily find work. I stand by that except in the New York area where for quite a few, it may already be too late.

New York is the eye of the storm with thousands of jobs already disappearing (Lehman Brothers plus previous Wall Street layoffs) and are going to disappear (Merrill Lynch where I would expect half of their corporate population will disappear once they are integrated with Bank of America)

Beyond New York, the rest of the country is reading about the perfect storm and gambling that the affects will pass it by. Frankly, there is little strategy for it to do than be prepared for a hurricane while gambling it will pass it by.

That's why one of my clients in professional services can speak of having more than 30 senior level positions to recruit for and that whenever he speaks with people, they are still talking about hiring.

Or just, perhaps, it is the scenario where people are hiring in 2008 while they still have headcount/budget for staff and gambling that they can keep who they hire in 2009.

Online job ads showed 200,000 fewer jobs in September. October numbers will be worse.

After all, what CFO is going to approve staffing in 2009? Who is going to sign off on major expenditures given the credit markets?

Would you?

I was shocked to read that both GE and ATT were turned down in the commercial paper markets and needed to raise money privately (that was the deal you may have read about where Warren Buffet loaned $3 Billion to GE).

So I expect 2009 to be a slower year than 2008. Your job, particularly of you are a management level professional, is to ride out the storm.

Firms will hire people who "do stuff". They will be less willing to hire people to "manage people who do stuff" or "think about how stuff could be done better (except external consultants).

And, as I always say when I make these statements, I have been right far more than I have been wrong in this blog and I hope that this time I am wrong.


Jeff Altman

The Big Game Hunter*
 Concepts in Staffing
 TheBigGameHunter@cisny.com
 
 © 2008 all rights reserved.
 
Jeff Altman, The Big  Game Hunter*, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a retired certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

 

He is the author of “Get Yourself Hired NOW! The Big Game Hunter’s Guide to Head Hunting Your Next Job and Every Job After That” (in ebook and audio formats) and “Get Your Job Search Organized NOW!” (ebook) Both are available at www.GetYourselfHiredNOW.com  Register at the site and you will receive free copies of The International Job Board List and a Guide to Resume Writing.
 
To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter* is working on, to use Jeff’s free job lead search engine, Job Search Universe, to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, or his staffing ezine, “Natural Selection”, or to learn about his VIP program,  go to www.jeffaltman.com.

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© 2008 all rights reserved.

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posted by Unknown at 5:07 AM