A quarterly survey of hiring and firing trends in over 30 key countries has found job prospects for professionals and managers in Turkey better than the global average. The percentage of organisations here expecting to shed staff in the next three months is also lower than the worldwide average, suggesting that the jobs market is at least beginning to level out.
The ‘Global Snapshot’ from the international recruitment firm, Antal, asked 4217 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months. Current hiring across the globe was down from 54% of respondents at the beginning of the year to 47% now. However the percentage of organisations intending to hire in the coming quarter had actually risen from 43% to 44%.
In Turkey 45% of businesses were currently recruiting and 42% expected to recruit in the coming quarter. 40% were in the process of reducing headcount, but only28% expected to do so over the next three months.
Elsewhere in the region the employment situation varied dramatically. In Bulgaria, for example, 41% of organisations questioned were hiring staff and only 30% reducing headcount.
“With the IMF predicting that the Turkish economy will shrink by over 5% this year it’s perhaps no surprise that hiring levels for professionals and managers have dropped from a very high 60% in our last report to 45% this time,” says Mine Batiyel, who runs Antal’s operations in Turkey. “The number of organisations shedding staff has also risen from 12% to 40% although this looks set to tail off as the year progresses.”
“Whilst the percentage of organisations hiring in the 32 countries surveyed has gone down, it has not plummeted in the way that the economic statistics, many pundits and the ever-cheerful IMF might have led us to believe,” says Antal’s global CEO, Tony Goodwin. “At the same time the percentage of organisations expecting to hire managers or professionals in the coming quarter has actually risen, albeit by a very modest 1%. And the number of businesses expecting to shed middle to senior level staff has remained almost exactly the same. The period of panic and unilluminated gloom does finally seem to be behind us. Recovery may still be a good way off, but it could be that we are now better prepared to pave the way to it than we have been for quite some time.”
Ms. Mine BATIYEL
General Manager
Antal International Turkey – 2008 Office of the Year
120 Offices, 28 Countries, 1 Vision
Tel: + 9 0212 244 08 41, Fax: + 9 0212 244 84 05, GSM: + 9 0532 635 58 35
Email: MBatiyel@antal.com
Website: http://istanbul.antal.com
Address: Miralay Sefikbey Sokak No: 9 Floor: 5 Gumussuyu 34437 ISTANBUL
