Recruitment activity over the past 13 months reflects a strong hiring trend

OVER the past three months, finance, business and management as well as admin, office and support had seen the biggest increase in hiring activity, a report found.

OVER the past three months, finance, business and management as well as admin, office and support had seen the biggest increase in hiring activity, a report found.

Published May 30, 2022

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FOLLOWING the highly elevated levels of recruitment activity during the first quarter of the year, the number of advertised vacancies dropped slightly in April, according to The CareerJunction Employment Insights Report.

Despite this, recruitment activity over the past 13 months still reflected a strong hiring trend, increasing by 32 percent between April last year and April this year.

Over the past three months, finance, business and management as well as admin, office and support had seen the biggest increase in hiring activity.

Although information technology continued to be the top-performing employment sector in South Africa, it was interesting to observe that hiring activity in this area had declined by 3 percent in the last three months.

This decline could be partly attributed to increased emigration as travel restrictions were relaxed as well as the growing trend of “digital nomads” in the IT space.

Looking at recruitment per location, the report said more than 50 percent of vacancies were based in Gauteng. Just more than 30 percent of job offers were located in the Western Cape (22 percent) and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) with 10 percent.

Although Gauteng’s demand for sales candidates outstripped demand levels in the Western Cape and KZN, hiring activity for sales candidates in KZN had increased most significantly over the past two years. Demand for warehousing and logistics candidates has grown by about 20 percent in Gauteng and the Western Cape between February to April 2020 and February to April this year.

On the other hand, KZN has only seen a minor increase in labour demand for this sector over the past two years. Marketing professionals were experiencing improved employment prospects in Gauteng, Western Cape and KZN compared to two years ago.

The authors of the report said retaining employees could be difficult to achieve.

“In South Africa, on average, candidates stay about two years and 10 months in the same job before moving on. Employees who have been in the same job for more than three years are considered above average when it comes to job tenure.”

Locally, roles with a low tenure (less than two years in the same job) were teacher assistance (education), marketing assistance (marketing), telesales (sales) and waiter/bartender (restaurant and hospitality).

On the other hand, there was a higher tenure on average (more than 3.5 years in the same job) in purchasing and procurement (finance), call centre supervisor admin, office and support), executive management/director (business and management) as well as senior management (senior management).

CareerJunction said that overall, the latest data suggested that employees in management, professional and related occupations tend to stay longer in their jobs while those in sales and the hospitality sectors tend to move on to new jobs more quickly.

Across all generations, the average job tenure in South Africa was two years and 10 months.

Baby Boomers (58-77-year-olds) tend to stay the longest, with an average tenure of seven years and one month. Gen X (aged 43-57) employees, on average, stay in a job for five years. Millennials (Gen Y aged 28-42) stay roughly half this amount of time, with an average job tenure of two years and six months. While Gen Zs (aged 27 and younger) had the lowest job tenure with just one year and four months. This was probably due to their only having recently entered the employment market.

“It is clear from the data that older generations tend to stay longer in their job roles while younger generations, particularly Gen Y, seem to job-hop in pursuit of new career opportunities. Gen Y, who currently account for the largest portion of the South Africa workforce, are more likely to move from one opportunity to the next if they don’t feel empowered to achieve the levels of career success they’re chasing at their current organisation,” reads the report.

To remedy this situation, the platform said that the research suggested that employees who were appreciated and valued, as well as provided with more responsibility and competitive salaries, tended to stay longer in their positions.

Locally, job search activity increased significantly between January and August 2021, indicating the rise of the “Great Resignation” trend in South Africa.

The platform said that research suggested that reasons for the trend may be partly attributed to employees feeling overworked and experiencing “burnout” because of longer working hours, fewer opportunities to take leave and unsatisfying workplace culture.

It said that even though there was a shortage of jobs in the country, and one would expect individuals to hang on to their current jobs, many employees were quitting in the pursuit of better work-life balance – some were even changing their careers dramatically.

Following the lifting of the lockdown restrictions imposed during the pandemic, more individuals had been actively looking for new career opportunities. The fact that South Africa was showing signs of a slow economic recovery may be boosting employees’ confidence in finding new and better jobs.

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