Organizations Plan to Recruit Project Managers

The Project Management Benchmark Report which was launched earlier this year provides an overview of the lives of project managers in the UK today. There are so many areas covered that we never manage to put everything into the report itself. Next week we’ll be launching the next mini report – The Project Management Salary Guide – which is the most comprehensive view of project management salaries and rates in the UK to date. If you’d like to get a copy you can sign up to receive it at the end of the post.
In the meantime we wanted to take a look at what is happening in project management from the hirers point of view. First of all, it helps to understand how many project managers these hirers typically have within their business. Nearly 45% of businesses have between 5 and 10 project managers working for them:
recruiting-business
The hiring managers were also asked how their project management team may have changed during 2014, the previous 12 months before the survey. The good news was 61% of hirers said their project team head counts increased during that 12 months, with the remainder saying the team numbers remained stable. No hirers were reporting losses to their team which can obviously been seen as a positive especially after a few years of unrest following the recession. The stability in the team numbers also shows that project managers were either happy with their positions or not quite ready to move onto pastures new.
recruit-ppm-team
Recruitment activity went up in 2014 for project managers and we wanted to know how hirers were choosing to resource this demand for further project managers for their organisations. Over 80% of their recruitment activity was focused on hiring permanent resources. It’s a good sign for confidence in a marketplace when permanent roles are being offered yet there are still a large proportion of fixed term contracts being offered (45%) which suggests not everyone is confident about offering a more permanent basis of work. The contract and temporary part of the market also remains buoyant which at the moment means there is plenty of recruitment activity happening in the marketplace. It’s good to see after a tough few years.
recruit-recruit
Hirers believe that 2015 will follow a similar vein to 2014 with more hiring for their project management teams. We want to find out what their thoughts were about salary levels. We are especially interested in the columns to the left. These are the numbers of hirers who believe salary levels will increase above and in line with inflation. With a combined total of 53% it is looking promising. Remember that these figures are in relation to new hires and not necessarily extending to existing staff members.
At Arras People we are seeing a lot more realistic salary and rate offers for project management roles. During the recession there were a lot more sellers than there were buyers so it stands to reason that some organisations capitalised on that. Now the market is shifting and throughout 2015 we’ll be monitoring the salary levels ready to report back at the end of the year.
recruit-inflation
With organisations looking to hire more project managers this year to increase their team sizes, it makes sense that they also have a view of their existing staff and what turnover figures are likely to be for the coming year. There is definitely a feeling of stability as over 70% believe their teams will not be changing. It would be better to see an increase in turnover (replacing the number of people who have left the business) because it creates more fluidity in a marketplace (we’re biased!). Fluidity is the moving of people through an employment market, as one job becomes vacant, another person moves from another organisation to fill it and therefore leaves another vacancy and so on. Yet we can’t complain too much if hirers think their staff are happy and content and have no desire to leave.
recruit-turnover
So the key message for recruiting project managers at the moment seems to be stability. There is a market for both permanent and contract workers; organisations are hiring cautiously and salary levels will hopefully fall at the right side of inflation.
As hiring managers think about their recruitment of project managers we had to ask what was most important to them when choosing the right project manager. There were two areas that were deemed to be ‘extremely important’. The first, project managers must have relevant experience. Second, the organisation must select them for the ‘right projects’ based on that experience.
It’s as clear-cut as that. There is a job there for project managers to ensure they represent their relevant experience throughout the recruitment process. Equally, there is a job there for organisations to be better at selecting project managers for the right projects they have. It shouldn’t be difficult yet both part