While newspaper headlines may be filled with job losses and
company closures, it looks like IT staff working in
consultancies don't have to worry about job security. These
days, it seems, there are few IT projects in the pipeline that
aren't critical to future business success, and there is no fat to
trim when it comes to companies' spending on consultancy
services.
Mike Garlick, managing director of recruitment firm MBA, says
consultancies are still recruiting IT staff despite the downturn.
"It's maybe down 5% or 10% on last year," he says.
"While there's
less work in the banking sector, there's more demand for
consultants with experience of utilities, health, government,
pharmaceuticals and telcos."
This is in stark contrast to the last economic slowdown at the
start of the decade.
"The last downturn after Y2K and the dotcom bubble was much
bigger and more dramatic for IT," Garlick points out.
"While things will get a bit tighter, consultancies and systems
integrators can still make a profit and see their business through
the slowdown."
Justin Gaydon, chief operating officer at consultancy expw:
consulting, confirms this trend. Founded six years ago, expw now
employs around 50 staff and focuses on CRM and billing for the
telco and media sectors.
"We did see some impact in September when the initial reaction
from one of our largest clients was to rein in their budgets,
including some of the projects we were working on," he admits.
"However, after about a month, it became clear the client
couldn't take its foot off the gas on key projects. We ended up
carrying on with the project plans much as before."
As a result, growth at expw has been solid in 2008, while Gaydon
expects to increase turnover and headcount by a quarter in 2009,
with a particular requirement for business analysts, project
delivery managers and consultants with experience in salesforce.com
in telco and media clients.
"We see ourselves being able to sustain our current consulting
resource levels with our existing clients and markets," Gaydon
explains.
"But we're not sitting on our laurels. Over the last four
months, we've been looking at new products, such as software as a
service, using staff who are currently 'on the bench' to put
together solution prototypes that can be used as collateral during
the sales process."
It's the same story at consultancy
2e2, which employs around 1,000 staff supplying a broad range
of IT services, from communications and data management to security
and end-to-end provision of managed services. The company continued
to see revenues grow in 2008 despite the economic slowdown.
"Business has been reasonable and we're going into 2009
optimistic but realistic," says Martin Healiss, group HR director
at 2e2. However, like expw, 2e2 has seen the source of its revenues
shift, moving away from a previous strong focus on financial
services and media to picking up more work in the public sector,
healthcare and defence.
As a result, 2e2 is currently recruiting vertical industry
expertise in these new sectors, as well as looking for staff with
experience in security, especially risk and compliance in unified
communications as local government provides more rich media content
to citizens and in technologies such as Microsoft Sharepoint and
Active Directory experts disaster recovery data management and
virtualisation. Healiss is also always on the lookout for good
project managers. "No one can afford overruns or failure to
deliver," he points out.
In fact, despite the economic slowdown, there are likely to be
some key areas where consultancies will struggle to recruit the
skills they need. Garlick warns, for instance, that there are too
few junior and mid-level consultants with two to five years'
experience to meet demand.
"Employers haven't done much training of new people in recent
years, so there's a gap there," he says.
Colin Minto, managing director of Recruiting Technology
Solutions at
Brainhunter, which runs
a number of online job boards, including JobboardIT, adds that
there is also a severe shortage of people with Web 2.0 experience
in a business context, with just 2% of the candidates registered on
JobboardIT listing Web 2.0 among their skills.
Skills shortages are being compounded, Garlick adds, by the fact
that European IT professionals are returning to their home
countries as the strength of the Euro makes working in the UK much
less attractive. For the same reasons, MBA is now placing more UK
nationals in contract roles in Europe than previously. The net
effect can be seen in the
positions advertised on JobboardIT, says Minto, where salaries
and contract rates for consultant roles are holding up well
overall.
However, despite these skills shortages, consultancies are still
being extremely choosy about who they employ. The emphasis now,
says Healiss, is on "headcount growth in the right areas. Unlike
the old days, when consultancies hired people and then looked for
business to come in, we're now more circumspect about who we take
on."
Consultancy is certainly not a refuge for anyone seeking shelter
from the chill winds of the recession. Gaydon warns that "career
contractors" in particular are unlikely to receive a warm welcome
from consultancies, even if they do have the right technical
expertise.
"We're looking for permanent members of staff who've had a
number of years at a big consultancy firm, and who are good
all-rounders able to demonstrate they can adapt and fulfil
different roles," he explains.
Consultants, too, need to become more choosy when deciding which
job offers to accept, Minto says.
"You need to ask more searching questions about the stability of
the consultancy and its client base," he advises. "It only needs
one big client to fall into difficulties to create ramifications
for the consultancy itself and its own viability."