It’s an employer market now
The number of jobs available is slowly decreasing. Companies are cutting cost – some do it by freezing recruitment while some do it by retrenching people or “persuading” people to leave. In the end, the supply and demand of the job market takes a drastic change with the demand for job going up, but the supply of job opportunities going down.
Something we need to deal with more during this employer job market?
This has actually transformed the job market from an employee market to an employer market. Employees are no longer in a good position to bargain with the employers unless they belong to those “elite” group of employees which are very rare in this country. If you belong to those “elites”, then good for you. Otherwise, you better start changing your mindset and accept the fact that the job market is now an employer market.
Here are few changes which I can think of when employers take over the control of the job market:
- The amount of increment/adjustment from your current pay to the new pay will be greatly reduced. Rather than the regular 20% jump, you might need to look at only 5% to 15% difference.
- A lot of employee benefits will be removed. New employees might have much lesser benefits than existing employees.
- It is advisable for you not to say “I only do what I am hired to do”. Because if you don’t do something which is outside your job scope, someone else will.
- You might be required to work for longer hours on more projects, with the same amount (or lesser) salary. Again, if you are not willing to do it, someone else out there will be glad to take over your role.
- Job candidate needs to be very impressive in order to land a well-paying job because being average will not give you any advantage over the other 1000 candidates who applied for the same job.
- If you have been an IT programmer for many years, then maybe it’s time to know other things besides your programming stuff. Employers love to have someone who can be good in more than 1 thing.
- You might need to pay for your own training outside in order to skill up on the necessary skills. Most companies would prefer to hire someone who has been trained, than someone who needs to be trained.
- Attitude, attitude and attitude. This has been very important throughout the years but it has become even more important now. A lot of people are feeling demotivated and having a good attitude and motivated spirit will actually give you an advantage over other job candidates.
That’s why if you are looking for a job and you’re thinking you’re the best and deserve only the best company…maybe you should think again. If you are the best, then good for you and I believe those big companies will surely want you. But if you are not the best (which is more likely), then it’s time to wake up and realize that your bargaining power with the employers or potential employers will be greatly reduced due to the supply and demand of the job market.
It’s an employer market now, and it’s not really a good news for us employees. Maybe I should start my own business to take advantage of such opportunity. LOL.
A downturn is a bad time for an employer to make a mistake. One mistake they could make is hiring the wrong guy or hiring the right guy and then losing him by pushing too hard. The employer cannot afford the delays and costs of rehiring, retraining, etc, not when his fortunes are hanging by a thread. So I see it going both ways. The employee has to go the extra mile and the employer must be careful not to sabotage himself by being overly unreasonable to the staff. In other words, they need each other to survive.
@ Damien
). In every situation, there will always be pros n cons. In this case, the employees need to perform better or be more remarkable in order to get noticed. And at the same time, there will be a lot of nonsense people out there looking for jobs….and employers really need to filter out because the last thing they want to do during this recession period is to hire someone useless. Terminating someone is expensive but keeping someone who is not productive in the company is even more expensive.
You’ve got a point there (you always do
I was told of a story of a young woman who recently got a job in a multinational. So she and the whole bunch of new hires went for an off-site orientation program. The agenda included teambuilding exercises such as paintball and canoeing. Guess what the girl did. She refused to join the activities, citing that a) she’s Chinese, b) she wants to be alive when CNY comes. So she spent the orientation days watching tv in her comfortable room.
In cases like this I don’t blame the candidate. I blame the company for being stupid enough not to vet their new hires properly. By such carelessness they probably deserve each other.
@ Damien
That’s why recruitment process and candidate filtering are very important. Once these people are in…it’s hard to force them out. =_= So the next problem is to find a suitable role for this unsuitable employee.