canadian headhunter

What's Hot in the Job Market?

How do you spot the next trend in the job market? Easy just read the business news or better yet just scan the headlines. Like this one:

Nortel fires seven beancounters

So what? Well every publicly traded company is now scrambling to make sure that their books are squeaky clean. CEO's don't want to go to jail so they are focusing on internal accounting procedures like never before.

The result? A big spike in the demand for Auditors. That's right good old boring internal auditors are needed like never before and compensation is already starting to climb as demand increases. How long do these trends typically last? Until the education system starts kicking out enough skilled people to saturate the market.

A good example is networking technology. In the early 90's if you had expertise in Local Area Networking and better yet if you were Microsoft or Novell certified you were a rare bird and could command a high salary and your pick of jobs. Now these types of people are a dime a dozen. Why? Schools recognized the demand and started giving more courses. People heard that there were plenty of jobs in this field and flocked to get certified. Pretty soon there was more supply than demand.

The good news on the audit front is that it takes a while to get a designation so there should be a good 3 year window (or more ) before the supply starts to catch up with demand.

That means if you are an auditor you should be scoping the market to find out what you really are worth. It could be more than you think.