My take on market conditions

Hi All

With the end of March near and the new financial year almost here I thought I would give you my insight into where I see the development market.

March has been one of the best months in recent memory for our contract sector across the board. This is an extremely good sign as this is typically how recessions recover with a lift in the contract market followed by a lift in permanent resource demand that trails 6 months later on average.

I have certainly seen strong demand come from the interactive/web market in the first quarter of 2010. This has really been a continuation on from 2009 where the web market was one of the strongest growth sectors in Auckland. From a candidate perspective I am noticing a lot of expression of interest in the contract market but at this stage there is still not a steady enough stream of requirement to meet this demand. Hot technologies have been the usual suspects in .NET and front end tools like HTML/CSS/JavaScript but there has also been a strong demand for senior PHP resource.

A good sign for the overall IT community is the continuing charge of the financial services sector. AbsoluteIT has experienced strong demand for resource from this market during the first quarter of 2010 and with new budgets leading to new project growth this can only bode well for all concerned.

I am hearing a similar story from a lot of my client base recently and that is that they are getting a lot of nibbles but few committed bites. The positive side of this is that these "bites" are likely to come with the turning of the new financial year and this is likely to lead to a massive scramble for top quality resource. Employers will need to have strong foresight and planning around their prospective resource needs so they can act swiftly when conditions do change as they are forecast to do.

That is my 2 cents worth. Any thoughts and comments most welcome.

Have a great weekend.

Cheers
Chris