I recently met with a representative of a well-known online career portal that specialises in the Banking & Finance sector. Knowing this sector is recognised as currently being in a slow recruitment cycle I was surprised to hear that things are busier than ever. So I asked myself why?
In my opinion the difficult market conditions in Europe, USA and to a lesser extent Australia, has pushed recruitment companies to look elsewhere for growth prospects. With so many new recruitment companies looking to establishing operations in Asia, Singapore is an obvious choice as it the most developed of all Asian cities, making the environment not too dissimilar to their home market. A large part of Singapores’ appeal for those companies looking to start up is the relative ease with which the process can be undertaken. The regulatory environment is conducive to business and this in a large way affects both recruitment start-ups, and just as importantly the client companies that they will be looking to do business with.
What does this mean for the industry in Singapore? Well firstly extra competition should bring a greater choice for companies and candidates, thus pushing recruitment companies to improve their level of service. While we have seen some evidence of this I am still surprised by the lack of innovation in the types of service provided.
It would seem many permanent recruitment companies have not moved on from providing a choice of traditional contingency search or retained search services, usually based on a technical specialty. Having more than 10 years’ experience in South East Asia, Monroe knows that Asias success has largely been built on its willingness to innovate. That is why Monroe has strived to create a service that offers companies a slightly different choice to the traditional recruitment model.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with our service, we offer a blend of retained and contingency search. We provide companies with the speed of database and advertised recruitment, combined with direct search (headhunting) to give companies access to high performing passive candidates. Whist traditional retained search requires upfront staged payments; our service is provided on a success basis.
As a recruitment professional I continue to believe a focus on quality and innovation will lead to success. Hopefully the recent influx of new recruitment companies in Asia will lead to increased levels of service and innovation as I believe that is what Companies and Candidates appreciate.
Written by Mark Taylor, MD for Monroe Singapore