Marketing recruitment to pick up in quarter two

Hiring activity within the marketing sector remained slow in the first quarter of 2009 but will pick up in the second quarter as new recruitment and marketing budgets are signed off, according to recruitment consultancy Robert Walters.

The recruiter says hiring activity for marketing professionals in the first months of the year “remained slow” but that the start of many companies’ financial years in quarter two has already driven a “noticeable” uplift in recruitment in April.

John Robinson, associate director of the marketing division at Robert Walters, says the uplift is due to a traditional “freshness” in the market at the start of a new financial year but could also be a realisation among companies that they have “left themselves short” after making redundancies last year and in the first quarter.

The recruiter also found the level of hiring activity for marketing contractors picked up in the latter weeks of the first quarter with an expectation that activity will continue to increase through this quarter.

Robinson says some companies remain cautious about committing to a permanent resource and may find it easier to get sign-off for contractors to complete “business critical” projects.

The expectation of an upturn in hiring activity comes a month after the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising latest Bellwether survey found that the decline in marketing spend slowed in the first quarter.

The net balance of the marketing professionals surveyed reporting an increase in marketing budgets was -34% in quarter one, compared with the -42% dip in the fourth quarter of last year.

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