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Signs that the global recession is easing were supported by a survey that found 29% of telecom firms are looking to hire immediately while another 31% plan to hire within the next six to 12 months. Just 21% of the respondents indicated that they were definitely not hiring in the next six to 12 months. Eighteen percent were uncertain (see Chart 1).

"We are certainly hearing about pockets of positive news, and our feeling is that if the current rally of the markets rolls through to January, we will be seeing an interesting H1 with a lot more companies looking to aggressively ramp up," said Chris Baker, managing director for Asia Pacific at recruiter RP International, which specializes in telecoms.

"Until then we believe that companies will still be open to looking at up-skilling and hiring high-caliber individuals who can run a larger portfolio of responsibilities and help them build out of the downturn. Particularly in the area of sales so they are ready for the upturn," he said.

Despite record unemployment in most countries, almost 60% of the executives said they are facing difficulties finding people with the right skills. The vast majority indicated that the problem was due to candidates lacking the correct mix of skills (see Chart 2 below).

CSL EVP of HR Wilson Hon told Telecom Asia that the Hong Kong operator was indeed having difficultly finding people with the skill sets it requires. "Salary expectations have not been lowered for candidates with the correct skill sets.  We have a medium- to long-term plan to develop and groom people with the skills we need."

About half of executives found too few candidates. Almost a third of those hiring said they lacked the budget to hire the talent they were searching for. Some 20% said there were too few candidates while a quarter said the applicants were too demanding.

The online survey was conducted last month by Telecom Asia and Robert Walters, a professional recruitment consultancy. Sixty-one percent of the 122 telecom executives who participated said they have input in the hiring process. Some 45% of the respondents work for firms with more than 500 employees and 30% were with companies employing 100-500 staff. Just over 70% of the firms are telecom operators and 22% are equipment vendors.

Strong demand

The skills most in demand are dominated in the technical area, with 80% of those surveyed looking to fill these right now (see Chart 3). Sales and marketing staff were a distance second (34%), followed by product development (less than 20%). Just 3% are looking for administrative people, and 3% have openings for HR staff.

Baker said demand for senior technical staff and subject-matter experts does not seem to have declined. Many projects in the emerging markets are still proceeding and budgets were already committed before the crash. "The first signs of recovery seem to have happened relatively fast compared to previous recessions, and the swing-back of projects and budgets seems to already be happening. The really good highly skilled technical resources were never really out of work and demand stayed high," he said.

The most sought after technical positions are in the project management area (with almost 50% of respondents hiring). Ranking second is networking engineers/managers (38%). Almost a third of the companies surveyed are looking for business analysts. Just 17% are hiring in the OSS/BSS area. With the increased focus on security, it's a surprise that just 10% say security positions are most in demand (see Chart 4).

To find new staff, it is no surprise that the two primary sources of candidates were employee referrals and recruitment agencies by a large margin. Online recruitment sites were a distant third, traditional print media fourth and social networking sites last (less than 15%).

There is an interesting mismatch between what options employers consider useful vs what employees do. While headhunters and employee referrals ranked near the top for both groups, employees rated online job sites much higher - by more than 16 percentage points.

What initiatives are companies taking to find people with the sought after skills? Baker said companies are sometimes looking at different organizations in different segments of the telco space - for example, SI into vendor, operator into vendor, vendor into operator - to bring more new, affordable blood into their organizations. He said there is a lot more cross-pollination between the operators and the managed services businesses of the vendors, and the SIs and the vendors.

Looking at the job scene from employees' perspective, 75% said they faced increased workloads and greater pressure - 37% said their stress levels had increased significantly while 47% said their stress was up moderately. Just 15% of respondents said it hadn't increased.

With job security down, little or no salary adjustments last year and again modest adjustments expected this year, the higher levels of stress are to be expected. Changes in the market have meant that a company's expectations of the performance required for an employee to be retained have risen. Bakers notes that many of the poorer performers have been cut in the many rounds of redundancies. "Until hiring freezes are lifted, people will be expected to work a broader portfolio and work harder to deliver above pre-crunch levels."

CSL's Hon said that in this environment it's "important to communicate with employees so they are aware of the business directions and shared a common goal. Our staff know very well what we need to achieve as a company in order to be rewarded accordingly, thus minimizing the threats and fears."

As employees search for new opportunities, the most critical factor impacting their decisions are base pay, which had an average rating of 3.3 out of 5. Some 87% of those surveyed considered base salary as critical or very important - up from 82% two years ago.

Ranking second was the potential for advancement (3.28), followed by the quality of management and colleagues (3.2). Only slightly less critical in their consideration was benefits and performance incentives and a challenging position (both with a 3.1 rating).

At the bottom were opportunities to travel and flexible work arrangement (telecommuting) - with 32% and 39% of respondents indicating these as critical or very important respectively. Both were down slightly from 2007.

Another factor impacted negatively by the downturn was having the resources to do the job well, which was ranked near the top in 2007. Employees have been forced to be more resilient and enterprising, enabling them to achieve their objectives with fewer resources. The percentage of respondents who considered this factor critical or very important in considering a new job dropped 6 percentage points.