10 Years On: Getting back to work
IN 2008 the global financial crisis had a huge impact on businesses here in Guernsey and there began a period of great uncertainty where we saw freezes on recruitment in many areas, redundancies and a lack of job security.
Thankfully businesses started recruiting again quite quickly, and it soon became business as usual, with recruitment today busier than ever. Employers have become a great deal more focused on looking for employees with relevant professional qualifications as well as industry specific knowledge and experience, whilst supporting continual professional development. The regulator also has high expectations for post holders to have appropriate experience and qualifications, and as an agency, we undertake comprehensive due diligence checks on all candidates who register with us to ensure all candidates comply with these stringent industry standards. We stress more than ever that in an increasingly competitive job market, there is a need for good academic qualifications, such as GCSEs and AS/A-level grades, and university graduates remain the employee of choice for many finance sector trainee roles.
In order to attract the right candidates, we’ve seen a trend in businesses being prepared to not only support CPD and offer career development, but to consider more flexible working such as starting and finishing early or reduced hours for those in more middle or back office roles. Technology has had a part to play with this as well, with developments such as the ‘cloud’, mobile devices and being able to access the workplace from home playing their part in enabling a more flexible approach to the working day.
For us too at Situations, developments in technology have made significant changes to our business. We now rely heavily on our website, where we list all our current vacancies, advertise roles and our own services via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, and keep in touch with candidates via email and texting software. Many visitors to our website enjoy using our Salary Calculator, and we launched Situations Executive this year for senior candidates not wishing to formally register but still keep an eye out for suitable vacancies. As a value-add for our clients, we also launched our Online Guernsey Salary Guide for clients to benchmark their salaries against current industry trends.
We are certainly looking forward to seeing what changes and developments the next 10 years bring to both our business and the island as a whole.
