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 Dona
Battat, Digby Morgan’s director responsible
for leading the company’s City division, takes
a look at the latest happenings in the Square Mile.
”There’s certainly no evidence of any
slowdown in the recruitment of talented HR professionals
in the City. In fact, we’re witnessing a record
demand both in terms of the numbers of roles and in
relation to the specific experience required for those
roles. Consequently, the war for talent continues
in the City.
As this demand for true talent in the City intensifies,
2006 has witnessed a huge leap in the demand for executive
search work across many disciplines within HR. This
remains the most pertinent for the very senior roles
– up to and including roles for which the base
salaries are around the £175-200K from the financial
services, legal and banking sectors. However, we’re
also seeing a demand for search for the more mid level
roles in certain specialist areas - such as front
office recruitment, generalists and HR business partners
– though search is not always the approach that
we will best advocate to our clients.
”Even with search activity, however, the market
remains extremely tight for strong HR professionals
across the board. Companies are finding that they
are often having to look outside of their traditional
‘comfort zone’ for the best candidates
– delving into new sectors or being more flexible
on the candidate specification. But, of course, given
the fact that there’s a boom in demand for business
partners with a wider commercial background, companies
being forced to look outside of those comfort zones,
could well end up satisfying several requirements
simultaneously.
”So, in which particular areas are we seeing
the greatest demand and, consequently, the toughest
competition for the best talent? Well, as expected,
key ‘in demand’ specialists include business
partners, recruiters (including search recruiters),
experienced graduate recruiters and mid level compensation
& benefits experts. Other niche areas where there
remains a high demand are for shared services and
employee relations experts.
”One area currently in slightly less demand
is that of learning and development. However, this
is pretty typical at this time of year as L&D
programmes for the current year are very much underway
so extra resource is not usually required until the
beginning of the following year.
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