Marketing recruiters are seeing demand for digital skills intensifying as the downturn forces budget cuts and threatens employee numbers.

In response, agencies and their candidates are focusing their resources and hoping to ride out the recession by capitalising on the demand for digital.

Kevin Hosie, director of media recruiter Media Types, told Recruiter: “A lot of our major clients are dragging themselves slowly and surely towards more online delivery. The need for those online marketing skills reflects that. The financial pressure on media companies is definitely going to increase that trend. Most of the major companies are shedding jobs on the print side, and if they’re not at the moment, they will be soon.”

Candidates with the relevant skillsets are hard to find. Dean Bartle, director of marketing and sales recruiter Better Placed, told Recruiter it was tough to find the right people. “The digital sector has strong demand because that’s a relatively new sector; there are constant changes and new technology,” he explained.

The Monster Employment Index, which monitors online advertising, has remained at around 200 index points, indicating little change in demand for marketing personnel. However, recruiters are reporting falling placement numbers.

Toby Thwaites, director at marketing recruiter Purple Consultancy, told Recruiter clients had made a “knee-jerk reaction” to the current economic climate, putting hiring freezes in place and firing temporary staff. However, Thwaites added there were still opportunities in the market and Purple Constancy had recently hired consultants.

Kim Hassan, recruitment and advertising director at Marketing Week, had also found the sector to be “optimistic and robust”.

Bartle said that over the last six months he had seen a downward trend in terms of numbers of organisations recruiting, redundancies and marketing budgets being cut. He added the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and food sectors, which make up the core of the business, were still performing well and Better Placed had been able to focus on these areas.

The fall in confidence over the last six months is demonstrated in the responses to a survey by marketing trade body the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). In April last year, when the financial crisis began to grip the labour market, 10% of marketing professionals expected the number of personnel in their functions to be reduced; six months later this had increased to 16%.

The attitude of candidates is also changing as confidence in the market declines. Clients are more interested in taking on temporary and contract staff, and jobseekers are more open to this way of working. The CIM survey found 31% of workers were either very or quite worried about their employment prospects for 2009 and recruiters reported an increasing willingness to consider contract work.

Bartle said: “There are a lot of candidates out there and they are fighting for fewer jobs. Clients and candidates are looking at potential contract work. There’s more of that around because people find it easier to justify internally, as it doesn’t have an effect on headcount.”

Thwaites has noticed a similar trend: “The move to have more temporary staff has been client driven; clients do not want to commit. In response, candidates have been more open minded.”

Uncertainty and redundancies has also led to an increase in job board applications. Felix Wetzel, Jobsite’s marketing director, told Recruiter the site was now receiving an average of 16,000 marketing applications a month, compared with 13,000 last year.

Salaries in the sector have remained level over the year, according to recruiters. Hosie said the amount of competition in the sector is depressing salary increases. However, research from the CIM found marketing professionals expected an average of 3.1% increase in pay over the year, although it was exactly half of what they expected at the start of last year.