Rise in vacancies signals end of ‘doom and gloom’
A YORKSHIRE recruitment executive believes “the doom and gloom” of the recession may be lifting after seeing the number of vacancies at major firms increase.
Alison Tait, director at Leeds-based Georgiana Head Recruitment, said: “We saw a dramatic decline in vacancies between the beginning of 2008 and Summer 2009.
“We had circa 750 tax vacancies nationwide in January 2008 and this had fallen to less than 50 by the second quarter of 2009.
“However we are now seeing the green shoots of a revival as vacancies have increased by 50% and clients are definitely being more optimistic about the future.”
Georgiana Head Recruitment is a niche tax recruitment consultancy that specialises in placing tax professionals in accountancy firms, laws firms, niche tax boutiques and in the tax departments of banks and plcs throughout the UK.
Ms Tait said the increase in recruitment activity had been particularly noticeable over the past month as accountancy firms start preparing for what she said was known in the tax sector as “the busy season”.
“The majority of vacancies are for permanent positions, however some firms are looking to start people off on a temporary contract and providing the work is still there in six to nine months time and that the individual is performing well, will then look at making the position permanent,” she said.
Ms Tait said that Georgiana Head Recruitment had recently had 12 candidates interviewing in a week and the last time that level was seen was more than 12 months ago.
She added: “The decline in the number of transactions has undoubtedly affected many areas of tax recruitment in particular corporate tax and this has accounted for many of the redundancies that we have seen.
“There was a period during spring and early summer when every day brought news of more redundancies. Whilst firms are still implementing a four day working week for some teams we are now seeing far less people being made redundant which is obviously a positive sign.”
