*

Market Update

Published by

I personally returned to work from furlough at the beginning of August and since then my own desk has seen a trickling of jobs come through at mustard MD. The rest of the team have also been generating work but the job market is of course not what it once was pre-Covid. There are however jobs out there, people are getting hired and we are starting to see a little bit of momentum building in the sector. August is always a slow month in recruitment, with people taking annual leave and decisions getting pushed back, we will wait to see what September brings, however with children returning to school, companies ramping up their return to office strategy, this is creating a positive outlook of what is to come.

In relation to working from home or the office, the great debate….. the over whelming comments I have heard are that yes, some level of flexibility to work from home is desirable however with creativity and design being so collaborative in nature, companies are desperate to get their staff back in to the workplace, certainly in the cutting edge SME design industry where so much great work is done in the UK.

We have seen many of those in the creative and design companies making redundancies as agencies lose clients and projects, along with in house marketing and talent teams cutting back where larger corporates are redefining their strategy. And no doubt there will be more redundancies to come however there are some pockets of positivity out there.

Social media continues it’s rise to dominance as one of the leading marketing channels . With the rise of Tik Tok and Instagram, large brands are using social platforms more than ever to target customers and shifting hiring budget accordingly, traditional marketing methods are no longer the driving force they once were. 

The drive to all things digital continues and these areas are continuing to hire at a pace, but competition is fierce for the “right” talent. The range of roles in this sector is huge obviously so ask yourself, is your skill set mouldable to these new roles be it UX/UI, Data, SEO, Social campaigns etc. Now might be the time to re-invent your career, it won’t be easy but we are seeing people make these moves, you might need to go down or sideways to go up, but certainly take the blinkers off, think laterally about what you are good at and you might find a new niche.

On the design side of things, where could we all go when we were cooped up in our homes? Well if you couldn’t get a delivery slot, the supermarket. FMCG has and is still going strong. We are seeing the packaging design industry continue to hire for designers and client services staff. FMCG design agencies have managed to weather the storm and are slowly picking back up again, in fact those agencies that can count a supermarket chain on their roster have been kept very busy re-designing and bringing to market the increased level of own-brand products that we were all consuming through lockdown. As the market now opens up FMCG is still thriving with people still spending more on eating at home. With increase product competition we should start to see increased marketing spend and not just packaging re-design. This should filter work through more agencies who support this sector.

Despite there being some success during lockdown, the market is still oversaturated with brilliant jobseekers who would’ve found work in a heartbeat during normal times. Please, please, please don’t give up! Speak to recruiters like myself as I’m constantly speaking to all sorts of clients and candidates to gauge the market. I may not be the one that manages to place you somewhere, but I am able to give you valuable insight into the job market and to help you on your job search.



This blog was provided by Jenny Hughes, Recruitment Consultant - mustard MD. To get in touch with Jennt please reach out to her on either 0117 284 0066 or drop her an email at [email protected]

Comments