Recruiters in the media and creative industries are painting a positive picture for the immediate future of employment in the sector, despite a damning set of results from the latest Monster Employment Index.

The index has shown that job opportunities in the sector fell by 13% in May as job demand hit its lowest point since August 2005. On top of this, marketing PR and media — previously one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry in terms of online recruitment — has experienced
the steepest rate of decline among all industry sectors in the last three months and is now down 56% year-on-year.

Despite this, agencies and job boards are determined to look on the bright side, with a recurring theme being an improvement in business over
the past few weeks, if not a spectacular one.

Toby Thwaites, managing director of recruitment agency Purple Consultancy, based in Islington, London, has told Recruiter he is optimistic about the future, although his fee income was down almost 50% on the same period last year.

“Things are starting to pick up,” he said, “and we’ve noticed an improvement over the last four to six weeks.”

Thwaites said he thought this was due to new recruitment budgets for the coming tax year being finalised, particularly among blue-chip companies. “Clients are feeling more comfortable about recruitment,” he added.

However, he also suggested he was unsure about when creative recruitment would see a sustained rise in the number of placements.

“If we can get an increase of small amounts in fees month-onmonth, that will be something, but there is more optimism around our sector than there has been in a long time — more than the last nine months, I’d say.”

Sam Webb, head of the advertising division at Major Players, told Recruiter that “no one is taking a gamble on candidates”, and in the contract
market, clients were “pulling contracts earlier”.

She offered advice to recruiters operating in the sector. Webb said: “Everyone has to look at every brief as an opportunity.

“We are getting the same brief every time — ‘we want the ‘star’ candidate’.”

She did add, however, that some placements were not coming to fruition through no fault of the recruiter. “I’ve had candidates get to the verbal
offer stage and then their position has been put on hold since January.”

Job boards are also attempting to be bullish about the future, despite a lull in the last few months. Ross Nichols, marketing manager at Creativepool.co.uk, told Recruiter: “There has been a slight upturn [in the number of adverts placed] over the past month. We are optimistic
because we did a lot of work when it was quiet to prepare for when there was an upturn, and we are adding new features to the site.”

Nichols did say, however, that fees were well down on the same last year — almost 40% down.

In the print media, recruitment advertising is seen to be at a “consistently low” level, according to Jessica Garland, recruitment advertising manager at industry magazine Design Week.

“It is slow, but it hasn’t really got any worse since January,” Garland told Recruiter. “Of the people who are advertising, there’s not really one set role which people are looking for; there’s just a general decrease in the number of them.”

However, some firms were recruiting as they “were down to bare bones and needed to replace people”, added Garland. This view was shared by Hugo Sellert, head of economic research at Monster Worldwide, who told Recruiter: “Although the overall job market for creative professionals has slowed, many companies still need to hire because of a higherthan- average turnover in their workforce.”

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