When you hit rock bottom, the only way is up.
And that seems to be the case for the job market based on Indeed.com’s Hiring Lab data around Singapore job postings.
By the end of the month, Singapore job postings on Indeed were up 19.2% from their level on February 1 last year, after adjusting for seasonal trends.
Are we out of the woods?
But before you take out that bottle of champagne and throw your mask in the air, hiring is still inconsistent across occupations.
That should not surprise anyone since we are still dealing with COVID19.
Compared to their pre-COVID baseline, postings in hospitality are still down 22%
This is perhaps the least surprised with the Singapore government extending wage subsidy for tourism, aviation sectors in the recent 2021 budget.
Job postings in childcare-related occupation are still down 15%. Given more parents are working from home, they can skip the childcare fees and care for their own kids.
On the opposite spectrum, job postings in the scientific research & development, pharmacy and nursing occupation have grown massively, up 220%, 165% and 127% respectively.
Recruiters hiring these respective roles may want to align their hiring strategies accordingly.
If you are looking to fill roles in these best-performing groups, it is time to review your recruiting funnel and see how you can improve the candidate experience and speed up your time-to-fill since demand clearly outstrips supply.
For those where hiring is weaker, there might be talents in the market that are previously not available. This is especially so in the Marketing occupation where the skill sets are often transferable across industries.
Even if you may not be hiring for these roles now, it would be good to start the wheel rolling and get your ears on the ground.
And it is pointless to bring candidates into the interview only for them to reject your offer.
Beside employer branding, salary and benefits review may be worth looking into to help your company better position your offer to jobseekers.
#WFH
After a long year of working from home exercise, companies are getting the hang of it.
COVID19 made that possible within a year, something that MOM was struggling with over a decade.
Compared to the total number of postings, it accounts for 5.8% of all job postings.
Although that means 2.9 times higher than in Jan and Feb 2020, most employers appear to be cautious about putting that upfront and inevitably set an expectation that may be hard to change.
Having said that, employers who are open to remote employees may want to make that obvious so it helps to target a niche pool of talent that only consider remote work opportunities.
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