Whilst consumers are not overly optimistic at the moment, business confidence is strong and in our experience over the past quarter, businesses are investing in the recruitment of staff. Infrastructure projects will continue to push money through their supply chains in the longer term, the AUD is sitting at a reasonably comfortable level for exporters and a range of Aussie companies continue to develop successful and innovative products which stack up well internationally. All this is great news for engineering and technical talent although we are not seeing bidding wars for talent and salaries are generally stable.

Following are more specific observations of some of the key engineering and technical markets in which we operate. Continue reading →

Both the past quarter and past year have been our strongest in engineering & technical recruitment for a long time. We’ve received a lot of incoming enquiry from clients looking to boost the talent within their teams. As always in technical recruitment, the roles are highly specialised and almost no two roles have the same requirements.  

Following are some more specific observations of some of the key engineering and technical markets in which we operate.   Continue reading →

The past quarter has generally been a strong one for us. We’ve experienced lots of demand for staff from new and existing clients and we are currently involved in the embryonic stages of some exciting projects which will provide opportunities for engineering & technical professionals. Having said that, we’ve noticed a slight dip in demand in the past few weeks. Clients have recently been slow to make hiring decisions – we suspect (hope) some of this is related to the Easter break. 

Following are more specific observations of some of the key engineering and technical markets in which we operate. 

Continue reading →

Author Stephen Noble

I’ve always felt that our company has been a reasonable bellwether of the health of manufacturing – I run a recruitment company called Australia Wide Personnel which has been a substantial supplier of both professional technical and blue collar labour hire staff to the manufacturing sector both Melbourne & Sydney, since 1979. If manufacturers have confidence and orders, they’re usually recruiting staff.

As we move close to Christmas, these are my observations about manufacturing over the past 12 months:

• We have had the strongest demand for recruitment from manufacturers since the GFC.
• All is not all lost with automotive – specialised automotive manufacturers, recreational vehicles and aftermarket suppliers have had strong requirements for staff.
• We have been involved with staffing of a number of greenfield / brownfield sites over the past year and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen this type of investment being poured back into manufacturing.
• We have seen a number of clients “re-shoring” their manufacturing operations back to Australia, after earlier offshoring. The payoff is reduced lead times and better quality.
• The consistently low Australian dollar is assisting a range of our clients. Food & beverage and building materials related manufacturing is performing particularly well.

We are pretty confident that this strength in manufacturing will continue into 2017.

Have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.