Reflections 2011: What It Means for Your Business 

Happy Holidays!

Like many of you, we use some of the quieter days over the holidays to reflect on the year past and to make plans for the year ahead.

As we did so this year we noticed three significant trends that may be relevant to you, both in how you run your business, and how you manage your career. They are as follows:

1. Greater time to hire:

Despite pressing needs to fill important roles, this year marked a high in the length of time client's took to move from interview to hire.  This timeline has been economically driven in the past with clients extending offers during the interview in the dot-com days to hires being delayed by months during the economic morass of 2009. This year however, the delays were driven by a simple unwillingness to compromise.  As more companies recognized the critical importance of hiring 'right', many clients took longer doing due diligence to make sure they made the right choice.

2. Increased offer declines:

We have NEVER had more offers declined than we did in 2011.  Despite economic uncertainty top talent continues to be in demand and being in demand means having the power to say 'no'.  Like our clients taking more time to make the right hire, top candidates were more demanding than ever in making sure the move they were making was right for them.  Rarely was the discussion about salary, more often about growth and career potential. For the companies that didn't have well articulated answers, it was easier for the candidate to decline than to make a risky move.

3. Robust recruitment activity:

Our business grew this past year by 40%.  To those of you who look at recruiters as a leading economic indicator, this is a good sign and it's not unique to us.  Overall recruitment activity has been strong across our industry and I have to admit to being somewhat surprised.  The European fiscal crisis has not been resolved and the US faces more fiscal challenges.  Inflation is a risk in developing nations and recovery in other advanced nations is very fragile and Canada is prone to the ebbs and flows of the global economy.  However, every month we are pleasantly surprised by the strength of our business. 

So what do these trends mean for you - now and in 2012? 

Be smart in your choices.

We clearly live in a risk filled environment and it has never been more critical to make the 'right' choices.  If you're considering a new hire (or joining a new company), the IQ PARTNERS philosophy is "Maybe means  No."  If you can't enthusiastically say 'YES' to your decision then you probably shouldn't make the hire (or move).

Keep driving forward.

Like you we're anxious about the general lack of economic visibility and its potential effect on our business in the year ahead. But anxiety never helps anyone and we aren't prepared to slow down. We believe that we need to move forward even in cloudy, uncertain times.  It's a bit like driving through a storm.  You need to get to your destination and you may need to turn on your wipers but you keep driving forward.

At IQ PARTNERS we have big plans for 2012.  Our business is growing because of the high calibre of our team.  We're a long way from perfect  but we have never had a stronger or more professional team of recruiters and we're getting better every day!  Please let us know if we can be of assistance to you in 2012.

On behalf of us at IQ PARTNERS we wish you a happy holiday season. See you next year!

Warm regards,    

Bruce Powell 

Managing Partner