Someone asked me last week how business is.  When I told them it was great, they said that is really good because they see us as a leading indicator.  I don’t really see us as a leading indicator and after giving it some thought I think there is a general misunderstanding of what our market is.

As third party recruiters, the overall job market is not our market.  The overall job market still stinks.  Unemployment is way too high and the long-term unemployment numbers are terrible.  Over the past couple of years companies have done a great job of reducing costs and getting much more efficient.  That’s great for profits, but not for the overall job market.  It is great for the DTF (Difficult To Fill) Job Market.  There are plenty of key needs for profitable companies to fill that are challenging because the candidate pool in that skill set is not large enough to make it easy.

The DTF Job Market is the market for Third Party or Agency Recruiters.  As a subset of the Overall Job Market, I don’t think it necessarily indicates where the economy is going, but it is pretty good now and should get much better if the Overall Job Market improves.

Todd Kmiec

Todd Kmiec and Associates

todd@toddkmiec.com 

http://toddkmiec.wordpress.com/