As the financial year is now behind us – it is time to reflect on what was really happening in 2015/16 vacancy -wise …
Job orders increased 25% year on year (2014/5 versus 2015/6) for Oakleaf Partnership– nearly 2,700 new vacancies were registered in the year.
Of this we saw a 14% increase in new job orders within our most mature business, the Financial Services/ Professional Services Division, and 19% across commerce and industry. In it’s 2nd full year of focus, the Payroll division registered more than 200 vacancies, some 66% up on the previous year.
Across the business, permanent vacancies represented some 52% of the total and temp vacancies 20%; fixed term contracts – still a very critical means of hiring staff represented the balance of 20%. As would be expected roles sub £50k salary 47% of total vacancies; however more than 10% of total vacancies were for roles with salary levels over £100k.
Comparing the quarter on quarter movement, there were significant job vacancy increases for both contract and temp positions, increasing a significant 40#% and 53% respectively Quarter 4 versus Quarter 3. The total number of permanent vacancies were slightly down, though assignments within the £50-£100k bracket increased 7%.
The general sense through the year was that very large corporates, and particularly the large investment and retail banks were not hiring in the volumes compared to the previous year. However UK plc and the vast number of businesses in the SME sector are still hiring and there is still a level of confidence across those HR teams to hire and develop the HR offering in businesses. All our specialist markets – Human Capital Services, Payroll and Reward continue to grow and represent more than 26% of our vacancies, showing that OP has truly developed into a broad based recruiter across all aspects of HR and associated people services.