Recession need not mean unemployment
With so many redundancies happening every day – is anyone safe? Is there such a thing as a “recession-proof” job?
Redundancies seem to be happening at every level, senior people, junior people, accounts departments, HR teams, marketing divisions, IT support, administrative teams. The list is never-ending.
ProGrad work with over 500 companies in Australia, and recently employers are using the description “value-adders” when refering to the key positions that they’re retaining. The key employees that add value, are the ones which companies will work hard to retain during an economic downturn.
In a tough marketplace, where companies are watching their costs – there is more and more emphasis on organisations to continue selling. The corporate sales team are key “value-adders” to companies in a recession, as they are the ones working hard to continue revenue generation. Ultimately, this carries even more importance than ever before.
At ProGrad, we are seeing an increased demand for organisations to recruit business to business sales people, especially at the junior level.
Yeo Gek Cheng, director for IT and telecommunications (IT&T) at recruitment consultancy Hudson Singapore, said all IT jobs that are non-sales in nature will be the first to be scrutinized by employers. Payroll is the largest cost on any corporate spreadsheet and as such will be reviewed against the returns, Yeo noted in an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia.
“Sales roles will also come under the microscope, and sales people with a healthy ‘pipeline’ and activity will be more recession-proof than other tech positions,” she said.
“It is even more critical than ever for management to expect salespeople to pull through deals and bring in the money” she noted.
So whilst there is no job that is seemingly “recession proof” – they key message is to ensure that your role is one of adding value to a business. If you’re a revenue generator for a business, increasing sales opportunities, and maintaining high activity – you’re definitely adding value.
Davinia
