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Here is our market update for the month of May.

In April, we recorded the biggest fall and also the lowest jobs ever since we started recording these updates but thankfully the numbers have started to rise again. 

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Transcription

James MacDonald:

– Hey, James MacDonald here and welcome to another episode of, the “Newy Tech Jobs” update. This time we’re looking at May, 2020. And it is a more positive story than last month. So in April, we recorded the biggest fall and also the lowest jobs ever since we started recording these. So very good news that it’s an uptick, if it wasn’t we’d really be doom and gloom. But it’s nice we’re seeing, a 60% rise month on month. So it’s a pretty significant rise. But we are still down 32% year on year. So 32% year on year, just shows that, hey, COVID-19 is still having an effect but there is some more positivity where it looks like we’ve seen the worst of it from a job activity perspective and there are companies starting to see some confidence in hiring again.

Overall, there was 88 jobs posted in the Newcastle tech scene, during May. The type of jobs being advertised are predominantly permanent, so 90% of the roles being advertised were permanent. Again what we’re seeing is, if companies are prepared to hire at the moment they are hiring in a permanent fashion, they’re looking to get people on board for the longer term, the exceptions to that, are the 10% of roles that are advertising in the sort of contracting or temp space are predominantly in the help desk space in around trying to get some support in for the now, getting some tech support to come and help people during this period. So that would be the one exception but predominantly permanent roles across the board in the Newcastle tech scene.

When it comes to who’s advertising roles, the trend has continued for an uptick with private advertising, advertising more than recruiters. Back in last year, and there was definitely a trend to probably skew 60/40 to the recruiters and now it’s sort of flipped, it’s 68% of the roles were being advertised by private advertisers and 32% roles by recruiters.

Again, I think that ties in to a couple of things we were talking about last month, cost cutting, for one, companies are trying to hire themselves at the moment. And cut their recruitment costs down. If possible, I would be interested to sort of see how this trend continues as the market becomes more and more competitive.

We have had some candidates come onto the market through redundancies and things like that. So maybe it is a little bit easier to recruit some roles at the moment. But I would say across the board, the Newcastle tech scene, is still candidate short. I would say there’s more opportunities than there are really quality tech talent in Newcastle. But we are seeing a little bit of a trend for some people coming out of Sydney back to Newcastle as well over the last month. So that’s an exciting story for the Newcastle’s technology scene bringing more talent back to our market. So let’s hope we can see some more of that.

When it comes to the type of roles being advertised. 27% of the roles were advertised in the help desk and supports space. So I think it just continues the trend and a lot of companies are working remotely at the moment. A lot of companies trying to set up and support their staff during this period. So making sure that their staff is supported to work remotely does require quite a bit of intensive time from a technology perspective, and companies are hiring to sort of build up that tech support capability within their businesses.

The second most popular roles being advertised were software developers, they never fall away in Newcastle, software developers are in such a talent shortage in Newcastle, especially in the 80K to 120K mark. So in that sort of mid to senior mark, there’s less opportunities for senior developers over 120 K, in that sort of 80 to 120.

There are more companies advertising, more companies looking than there is talent available at the moment. And that has been the trend over the past six to 12 months at least. The only sort of outlier, I guess, for the jobs being advertised last month were security roles. We had six security roles being advertised. So, there is more companies starting to look at that sort of security, cyber security as a very real need for their teams.

We’re seeing more and more, still speckled, but more and more security needs in the Newcastle scene so it will be nice to see that continue I know the cybersecurity group launched last year and that’s continuing to build as well. So it’s a nice little trend to see security being valued within the Newcastle technology scene. That’s the summary for the Newcastle scene across the month of May 2020. Definitely a positive story. Positive uptick from the depths of April.

Let’s hope it continues throughout June. June and July tend to be really strong months from an advertising perspective and companies trying to hire, either they are trying to use what budgets left from last year or the current financial year? Or when July hits new budget’s hit and approvals for new roles can come on board and July tends to be one of the biggest months for hiring just in general but definitely in the technology scene. So let’s hope for some more positivity over the next two months.

Hope you’re taking care of yourselves I hope working from home. If you’re still doing that is treating you well and you’re managing to get through this period.

If you’ve got any questions about anything that’s going on in the Newcastle Tech Scene, feel free to reach out 0427 107 796 is my mobile number or [email protected]

Thank you, speak to you next month, cheers.

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