The sales & marketing sector in 2021 has certainly been busy and exceeded predictions & expectations. It feels like we have not long come back from the Christmas holidays and all of a sudden, we are popping our head up for air and it’s the end of June already. Our team is coming off some strong months with high job numbers and activity, however, our biggest challenge is that candidate application numbers are reducing and top talent is in demand.
Lets take a look at the numbers
Seek/market stats:
- March saw the highest number of jobs ever advertised on Seek, with job ads up by 55% when compared to March 2020.
- Marketing & communications job ads grew by 23.4% from Feb 21 to March 21.
- Sales job ads grew by 13.8% from Feb 21 to March 21.
Applications per advert fell 7% as a result of a tight labour market and candidates not necessarily moving.
Tribe stats:
- From what we are seeing, a large percentage of the job activity and demand is sitting at the $80-$120K level where there is a real talent shortage.
- Top talents are getting multiple opportunities/offers and getting snapped up quicker than ever before.
- 90% of our current sales & marketing work is coming from NZ businesses in growth where we are continuing to see newly created positions.
FMCG Sector
- Job activity in the FMCG sector continues to be steady with an even split across sales & marketing positions. The BIG concern, however, is the low number of candidate applications in an industry that has significant talent shortages already.
- Only 20% of our Kiwis returning home candidates have FMCG experience, so we aren’t seeing the numbers coming home that we need in the industry.
- We are seeing an increase in export sales positions with NZ-based companies continuing to see and experience growth opportunities offshore.
- Lots of FMCG businesses continuing are facing ongoing supply chain issues, which is having an impact on P&L’s supply chain update.
- With the rollout of Project Leaf in FSNI, many suppliers are considering their current approach to their field sales strategy and what changes need to happen.
- Many are considering moving toward specialist territory managers for Pak ‘n Save and potentially lower level sales reps for New Worlds and Countdowns - it will be interesting to see how things progress as the rollout expands across all categories within FSNI.
Services Sector
- We have seen a significant increase in contract marketing opportunities over the past few months. Lots of businesses have been running lean teams since the COVID outbreak and are now starting to resource up where needed but with caution.
- Post-COVID and particularly in the last few months, we have seen a resurgence of brand & comms positions in the services sector at all levels, MarComms junior to mid-level roles have also been popular.
- We have seen a massive drop in the BDM roles that were popular last year and are now seeing more territory and account manager roles.
- We are seeing lots of talented senior level candidates available and interested in opportunities, however the job demand at this level in the market just isn’t there.
- It continues to be essential in today’s market that marketers need to understand and have strong data & analytics experience in order to be considered for top jobs and to keep progressing.
If you would like to discuss any of the above further or know more about what is happening in the NZ sales & marketing recruitment market, then please get in touch with the team at salesandmarketing@tribegroup.com
