Job Market Pulse Update

Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Daring to Succeed podcast.

My name is Julianna Yau Yorgan and I’m a workplace strategist who helps introverts reach their career goals with personalized strategies that work with their introversion, not against it.

Today, I’m going to talk about what I’m seeing in the job market right now, both from my personal observations and from industry surveys that have recently been released.

I’ll also share how you can leverage these insights for your career right now—whether you’re actively looking for a new job or planning ahead for your next one.

Now that we’re halfway into the year, it looks like the announcements about mass layoffs have slowed.

While some companies may still be working through staff reductions, most of them have already finished their layoffs (especially those with fiscal years ending in December or the first quarter of the year).

What this means is the flood of talent into the job market has slowed down too, which will help stabilize the competition for open roles that need to be filled.

So if you’ve been looking for a job for a while, you should start to see a bit more opportunity in callbacks for interviews and a little less competition for the job offer.

If you’re in a company or industry that has seen a lot of layoffs, this probably means you’re not going to be impacted…but of course I can’t say for sure without knowing your situation.

Hopefully you can breathe a little easier over the summer, and maybe start to work on your development again if you’ve put that on hold.

In terms of what’s to come, a survey by Employ, Inc, reports that 60-75% of business of all sizes are planning to hire somewhat or significantly more in the next 12 months.

Enterprise companies with two thousand or more employees were the most cautious about hiring, mainly due to economic uncertainty.

In comparison, small business with up to 250 employees and mid-sized businesses with 250 to 2000 employees were hiring most aggressively as they take the current market conditions as an opportunity to grow and expand.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve also seen smaller companies work with recruitment agencies to staff up on their Talent Acquisition teams. This corroborates with the survey data, and suggests that those teams are now ready to start hiring for other parts of the company.

The survey also reported that most companies also see anywhere from 4 to 50 applicants per role and select 30 to 60% to interview.

So for you job seekers out there, I recommend targeting smaller companies that are looking to expand, and making sure you use a tailored resume and leverage your network to stand out in the pool of applicants.

This also means if you’re not getting much response for interviews, you may need to revisit the jobs you’re targeting or the effectiveness of your resume and network.

In the last two quarters, I’ve also seen a lot of complaints about the time it took companies to get back to applicants. The Employ survey found that nearly 80% of small and mid-sized businesses fill positions in 30 days, compared to 60% for enterprise companies.

From my experience, this makes sense because the smaller companies are most likely to feel the pinch when they need to backfill a role or bring on more staff.

This means if you’re applying to smaller companies, it’s crucial to apply as soon as you can.

The report also found that larger companies to take up to or more than 60 days to fill a position. From my experience, this is usually due to company processes and the number of people involved in filling the positions—especially more senior or specialized roles.

This is good news for anyone currently in a larger company and working towards your next role.

From my experience, it could take 3-6 weeks for a position to be approved in the first place, especially when the global economy and company budget is uncertain.

Combined with the amount of time it takes to fill a position after it’s been approved, this gives you 3 to 4 months to internally market yourself.

The key here is to actively keep in touch with your target teams so you can start putting the bug in their ear, preparing your resume getting ready for the interview as early as possible.

On the candidate side, the key motivators for finding a new job right now are:

– burnout,

– stress about the economy,

– concerns about being laid off, and

– concerns about your employer’s financial future.

Although they may seem like separate factors to some people, these are all symptoms of economic pressures.

Larger companies are concerned about the economic impacts to their bottom line, and respond by cutting budgets and staff.

This ends up impacting the economy more, since people are less likely to spend when they are worried about being laid off…and round and round we go.

As I mentioned earlier, the mass layoff announcements are subsiding, so hopefully things start to stabilize soon.

But this also impacts staff being burnt-out because every time there are staff reductions and hiring freezes, existing staff are expected to do more with less…and are fearful about losing their jobs if they don’t contribute enough.

With the market slowly shifting, this is a great time to revisit your priorities and consider being more strategic with the extra work you take on in your job.

In episode 25 of this season’s podcast, I talk about self-advocacy as an introverted leader.

These strategies of setting boundaries and being strategic about what you volunteer for can help you spend your time on high-value tasks, which will benefit your career progression long-term—even if you’re not in a leadership position right now.

So as we start to move into the summer months, I’m hopeful that the job market is shifting away from one that only benefits employers.

And if you’ve been stuck in your job search for some time, I invite you to grab your free copy of my Job Search Action Plan.

This Action Plan walks you through the exact steps I use with my clients to create their personalized job search strategies.

And will help you focus on spending your time on the right things, rather than more time on the wrong things.

You can find the link in the show notes.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’ll see you next time!