Where is the Recruitment Action?
As an analyst, I often find headhunters have some of the best information about what is going on in the market and so last week, I spoke with Robert Benveniste of Cititec Talent to get his insights.
He told me that since the commencement of the Russia-Ukraine war, he has seen a huge market demand for power and gas expertise. He also pointed to the demand for Endur skills. “There is a massive replacement project going on in London where ION’s Endur is replacing another system,” he told me. “There simply are not enough people with Endur knowledge and skills to supply the current demand.” This includes new buy-side and commodity trading clients signing up over the last 6-12 months. He also sees demand and shortages for people with ION Aspect skills while pointing towards Orchestrade as a “popular choice” in energy and precious metals that will potentially drive a skills shortage behind it.
Interestingly, Robert said that ION has partnered with specialist consulting firms to give them extra bandwidth on several implementations happening concurrently. While, cMotion, popular in the LNG space, is also driving hiring demand. He already sees staffing issues arising around cMotion implementations. In fact, “there are not enough good people available across any of these platforms,” he told me.
Robert sees increased demand in data and cloud stating, “lots of companies have been investing in cloud over the last 3-4 years.” Many companies are also trying to get more from their data, driving demand for skills like data scientists, data engineers, and so on. Another area is credit risk, which Robert says was a big deal around the COVID-19 lockdown time. However, when it comes to risk, many firms now seek Python programming and more analytical or quantitative backgrounds, which wasn’t previously the case. A combination of both skill sets is ideal, but he suggests this is a rarity in the market now.
Overall, Robert says that permanent hiring currently has the edge over contract, but there is flexibility when trying to find the right person. However, he noted that senior hires are more likely to be permanent.
Certainly, some of the data he shared with us on hiring resonates with trends we see in the market, particularly regarding ION Aspect’s recent success, areas like data management and risk, and cloud skills. Although we haven’t necessarily heard of too many larger deals with Endur, those deals are often very large and long-term, and there is a large user community that also requires support, likely looking for certain skills. And let’s face it, Endur skills may now be leaving the market as people move towards retirement. So, to us, this all makes much sense.
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