Making the right connections

Johannesburg, 09 May 2003

With all the avenues of searching for employment, 54% of the respondents got to know about their current position through a personal contact. Recruitment agencies were responsible for finding 16% of respondents` jobs, head-hunters 12%, while 10% of people found their jobs through a newspaper advert.

<B>Reaching a three-year ceiling</B>

"In general, employees are seeking to move jobs within the one to three range of years of experience. If you analyse a typical bell curve, usually at the three-year range, an employee has gained all the experience and expertise they can in that particular job," says Jo Watt, MD of Softline Recruitment.
"At the point when the experience curve begins to flatten out, the company is gaining the maximum value from the employee - this is the point where the employee has the maximum knowledge and experience for that job and the company is getting the maximum output for the salary paid.
"This is also the time when the company is at the most risk of losing the employee as their experience curve has flattened and they are looking to move on to remain abreast of current technology, latest methodology and skills.
"If companies allowed for movement within their organisations before the time when the bell curve began to flatten, they would lower the risk of losing these employees."
As to the finding that the majority of positions in the IT industry are placed via a "personal contact" method, Watt comments that "this type of network is a viable tool to find the necessary skills".
However, she says small and medium enterprises as well as the larger corporates cannot afford to bring on board people who can`t perform and increasingly the cost of not recruiting effectively overtakes the cost of any recruitment fee.

The statistic is not surprising considering how small and well connected the IT industry is.

M-assignment MD Mandy Gilder says that unlike large corporates, small IT companies are less likely to use HR consultants and are more likely to use a line manager to fill positions.

"A large organisation like Investec Bank or Discovery will use HR in filling a position. However, smaller IT companies are much more likely to want to personally select their employees." She says.

According to Gilder, the fact that the IT industry is so connected means that when a position becomes vacant, "employers will ask around and look for somebody known to them or somebody in the company to fill the position."

The survey also found that employees are likely to remain in their current position until they can no longer advance or are offered a better or more challenging job.

[CHART]The majority of respondents - over 60% - have worked for up to three years at their current employer and 76% have not changed jobs more than three times.

Gilder says that while most people will stay at an employer for a couple of years, in the smaller companies people are more likely to move because they cannot advance in the organisation or they need a fresh challenge, even if that means moving sideways in terms of salary.

But Jo Watt, MD of Softline Recruitment, believes it`s easier to keep up to speed with changing technologies in smaller companies than in large corporate verticals.

"We don`t encourage job-hopping, but the IT market changes quickly, and people with hot skills in huge demand a year ago are suddenly finding they have to take junior positions just to survive," says Watt.

[CHART]She adds: "Staying in touch with the way the markets are moving and gaining the right set of new skills might mean having to work for five different companies."

The survey showed that people who have changed jobs generally receive a higher salary.

Interestingly, those who have changed jobs six times or more are receiving the same average monthly salary as people in a similar position last year. While job-hoppers who have changed jobs between one and five times, are receiving just slightly more than those who filled out the survey last year, the trend remains much the same.

Making the right connections

ITWeb`s survey found that of all the avenues for finding employment, a personal contact is far more likely to get one a job than a recruitment agency or advert in the newspaper.