Matthew Chester, who runs the Digby Morgan team that is responsible for the search and selection of entry to mid level HR professionals across all industries, reports on the latest happenings in that area.

Like our colleagues throughout Digby Morgan, we’ve had a bumper year so far with a buoyant market - which is almost as candidate driven as it was in the late 1990s - and this has meant that we’ve had to work hard to find the top talent with the right personality to culture match our clients.

Currently, we’re seeing an especial demand for talented individuals with experience in areas such as compensation and benefits and graduate recruitment. But, what we have discovered is that where clients are often willing to compromise on experience they’re not prepared to concede on personality. They are willing to ‘up skill’ the right candidate with the right character in order that they can fit in with their specific business environment and culture. This means that more people are exploiting new opportunities in different industry sectors so we are focussing on candidates who can bring transferable skills relevant for HR. For instance, candidates with good communications skills, with commercial acumen, planning, organisation and relationship management abilities that can provide good, fresh ideas for a new team.

A growing trend is that we are witnessing more and more people buying into the ‘total reward’ element of a new job. Working in an environment that encourages learning and development and a good quality atmosphere is becoming more important to many candidates than simply the more obvious compensation and benefits. It has also become increasingly imperative to candidates that they work in an ethically minded and active workplace; they want to see demonstrable evidence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and that their employers make and allow time for efforts to contribute to the local community and actively encourage good citizenship.

Looking ahead to 2008, we’re anticipating still further growth and increased opportunity for HR professionals as the role of HR itself continues to grow in acceptance as a key strategic element in the overall commercial success of a business. We’ll continue to expand boundaries by working with clients across industry sectors - whilst remaining specialist to HR and developing our HR specialism at entry to mid-level - and look forward to continuing to help HR functions become still more progressive.

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