KEY POINTS:
The skills shortage that has plagued New Zealand businesses will continue despite redundancies and downsizing, recruitment companies warn.
The slew of pre-Christmas redundancies will not be the answer, with "top talent" still hard to come by, said Roman Rogers, Auckland general manager of Hudson New Zealand.
"The talent and skills being released into the market aren't those that organisations have been looking for," he said. "We will still have an ongoing skills shortage for the foreseeable future."
He said technical-specialist roles in engineering, construction and IT were particularly hard hit.
Kate Ross, owner of Kinetic recruitment, said candidates were "lining up at the door".
"They're ringing up and saying 'please find me some work' especially on the temp and contract side. When it comes to candidates there is certainly no shortage."
A lower number of career-related departures for foreign shores is contributing to the tight job market as the global recession narrows choices.
Bede Ashby, managing director of Momentum Consulting Group, said fewer people in New Zealand were moving abroad to pursue career ambitions than in previous years.
"There aren't huge numbers of people coming back either," he said.
"They [candidates] have to be able to compromise on their salary expectations and ... we don't have the economies of scale in this country to allow people to specialise like they do offshore."
Mr Rogers said in a global recession, there was no benefit to moving countries.
"We are seeing a greater number of inquiries but they all want to do their due diligence before they move countries," he said. "When they see there is less opportunity here they are staying where they are."
Candidates would need to compromise on the level of authority they enjoyed and to accept less specialised roles. "They need to be more of a generalist and have a greater depth of capability. There aren't as many large organisations here ... it's a scale issue."
But it was not all doom and gloom.
Megan Alexander, senior manager at financial services specialist Robert Half, said contract work was likely to pick up in the new year as cost-conscious companies realised they still had to grow their businesses. "Good people are being held on to and are still highly sought after," she said.
Pete Macauley, associate director of Michael Page International, said he expected the flow of Kiwis from Britain to increase in 2009, and financial services jobs would be the most competitive area.
"It will be highly competitive because many of the candidates coming back to New Zealand [will be] the result of the financial services downturn in the UK. In saying this it's still not as challenging as it was in 2001, when everything was on hold."
