Latest project management recruitment research

John Thorpe, Managing Director of Arras People, gave a presentation recently in London about the state of the project management recruitment market.  Some of you might have filled in the Arras People 2009 project management benchmark survey.  Arras’s studies have a reputation for being wide-ranging and comprehensive, so I was interested to listen to the outcome of this latest research.

Thorpe spoke about the impact of the current economic conditions on recruitment and talent attraction and retention.  He explained that recruitment agencies were seeing a 50% reduction in requests to recruit – there are fewer jobs to fill.  He also said that there is increasing pressure on day rates for project management contractors as well as permanent salaries, but this hasn’t been as detrimental to pay as many people thought.  In the main, salaries and day rates still remain good, and employers are realistic in the need to pay decent rates to attract good project mangers.

Rates vary across the public and private sectors.  The Arras research shows that the public sector pays more for project support roles than the private sectors.  The rates are around the same for project management positions.  The private sector pays much better for programme management roles although the sectors even out at around £100k.

Employers are using recruitment agencies more wisely – they are no longer approaching on spec just to see who might be out there.  Instead, agencies are seeing clients arrive with an approved business case and a clear person specification, all of which means the time it takes to get someone in post is much shorter than it used to be.  Good candidates aren’t hanging on waiting for companies to finalise the head count any more, which has to be positive news for project managers who are currently out of work.

If you are job hunting you might think that it’s a hirer’s market and that you will be up against hundreds of other great project people.  That actually isn’t the situation – companies are holding on to good members of staff and people in roles are reluctant to move in case their new role turns out not to be as stable as their old one.  There may be more people job hunting, but if you are a good, quality recruit, you will likely be in demand.

Thorpe pointed out that there is still an ‘old school’ approach to business management, with the trend in the shift of personal values (for example, work/life balance) contributing to the talent shortage.  He said that many executives have failed to see that project managers are the new breed of business managers:  in the ‘old days’ companies had general or operations managers.  Nowadays companies are project-centric and these roles are filled by project managers, who, in their own way, keep the business running.  In a service based economy, he explained, we have to differentiate on ability, not cost base.

Running parallel to the main Arras survey was the recent ‘Green Shoots’ research, and again you might have filled in that quick survey, especially if you saw the links on the Twitter #pmot group.  The results of that were interesting too:  just over 40% of respondents said we are still in a downturn.  As these results were international – the main survey was UK correspondents – it was notable that the UK had a higher belief that the downturn was continuing than elsewhere, perhaps signifying that the gloom is lifting around the world.  In fact, UK respondents to the survey were more negative than the overall global results in every category.  Breaking that down even further, contractors were the most negative of all, with nearly 20% saying that the position was significantly worse than in January this year.  So if you are a UK contractor, maybe it’s time to start looking at permanent employment, international relocation, or just having a more positive outlook on life!

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