HOW IS THE JOB MARKET IN THE THIRD QUARTER OF 2007? As a third party recruiter in the plastics industry, the most commonly asked question is "How is the job market?". Overall, the job market has been pretty good in the manufacturing industry for the last year or two but I believe the market is starting to slow. I base this belief on several leading recruiting indicators:
- THE GRUMPY CANDIDATE INDEX. The Grumpy Candidate Index is based on the number of frustrated candidates that take the time to call me to ask why I have not found them a job yet. This is a completely unscientific index that I have found to be pretty accurate over the years when trying to answer the "How's the Job Market?" question. The index is at a fairly comfortable 6 at this time but that is up from 4 a few months ago. The index scale is from 1 to 10 where a one is at least one call a week from a frustrated job seeker and a ten is where at least one candidate shows up in my office with a gun each week. Recruiters really do not like either extreme.
- THE GRUMPY HR MANAGER INDEX. The Grumpy HR Manger Index is based on the number of HR Managers that call demanding that I e-mail them at least 3 candidate resumes by sundown, matching the job requirements listed on a document they have not sent me yet. Unlike the Grumpy Candidate Index, the lower the index number the slower the Job Market. The Grumpy HR Manager Index is also based on a scale of 1 to 10 where a one is getting at least on phone call per week from a HR manager threatening never to work with me again if he does not see three excellent candidate resumes by sundown, to a 10 where HR Managers will not even return our telephone calls. This index is at a fairly comfortable 6 also but that is up from 3 a few months ago. This means we are at somewhat of a nexsus in the third quarter because dividing one index by the other equals one. By combining these two unscientific indexes, one gets a much more accurate unscientific answer to the "How is the Job Market?" question.
- The July, 2007 MONSTER Local Employment Index. The MONSTER Local Employment Index is compiled each month by the researcers at Monster Worldwide, Inc., owners the Monster Job Board. This Employment Index provides a monthly analysis of online job demand in the top 28 United States metro markets. The index is down from a year ago for almost all of the 28 metro markets but the drop is not statistically significant for most of the metro markets.
Obviously, the Job Market is still pretty good but it is starting to cool. The Job Market is also in quite a bit of flux with certain displines being hot one month and fairly cold the next. I believe this reflects United States Manufacturing trying to react to pressure from China and India. Stay tuned because things are going to get a lot more interesting. Just remember the ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times".
3:34:24 PM 
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