The last couple of years within the project managment marketplace has seen a real state of flux due to the recession; a reduction of jobs being available in some sectors whilst others seemed largely unaffected; less people seeking out new opportunities and leaving the employment market very stagnant.
Change in the Project Management Job Market
One of the enduring things we saw throughout these last couple of years was the total lockdown on transferable skills. Employing organisations were very very reluctant to consider applications from job seekers who couldn’t demonstrate over 90% of what the job specification was asking for. There were a lot of MUST HAVES in the discussions between Arras and its clients when working through the job requirements and a lot of our project management careers advice over the last 24 months has also been focused on honing in on opportunities that we know a job seeker would be able to demonstrate that they have that 90%+.
More recently, and it is still tentative steps, we’re starting to see a change in attitudes from employing organisations in relation to job seeker skills sets. It could be that finally organisations are waking up to the fact that it isn’t a buyers market – it never was anyway – and that was proven by the lack of fluidity in the market as good talent decided to sit tight and wait and see what happens with the market. In other words, the job specifications had so many MUST HAVES there wasn’t anyone in the marketplace to meet the requirements so posts went unfilled or withdrawn.
Employing organisations are becoming more open to transferable skills in their prospective candidates – even considering training as an option to bringing on new recruits that are showing promise. The alternative of course is increasing the base salary to attract those project management professionals that do have all those MUST HAVES but organisations are still holding back on that – for now anyway!
Image © Matt From London and used with permission.
