Nicola Grimshaw, Digby Morgan’s director responsible for leading the commerce division, gives Human Resourcefulness an update on the state of the market in her sector.

The first three months of 2008 have again proven to be a busy period for the commerce team at Digby Morgan and we have seen business grow by more than 35% compared to the same quarter of 2007. This has been well demonstrated by both an increase in the number of senior appointments on which we have been briefed together with an increased level of advertising in both People Management and The Sunday Times. Additionally, we are seeing a greater number of clients choosing the executive search route to source senior talent.

There are several specific areas of intense activity worth noting. For instance, we are working on several large projects to help introduce talent pipelines to a number of major corporations - many of which are in the retail financial services sector – that are going through a process of significant HR transformation and corporate change.

The demand for commercially minded and pragmatic HR business partners - as well as a host of other HR professionals - looking to move into senior positions within centres of excellence remains strong. Furthermore, we are working with a number of government and ‘not for profit’ organisations seeking to build their HR teams - often with talent from outside the public sector.

We continue to see that clients are seeking the benefits of retained campaigns to source new professionals and, with the advertising market being quite fragmented, clients are well advised to focus on two or three key advertising channels to support their recruitment campaign rather than spreading the advertising pound too thinly and across too broad a spectrum.

As one would expect, especially in such a candidate-driven market, candidates are becoming increasingly more savvy and are often quite choosy with whom they share their details. Despite the wealth of opportunities that can be found on the Internet, we’re seeing that the top talent wants to develop strong relationships with their recruitment consultant, working with them for career advice and ensuring they are best represented in the market.

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