What Recruitment Niches Are Hot?

With the first half of the year behind us, I thought I’d take a look at NPAworldwide placement activity to see which recruitment niches are hot in our network. Compared to last year, we have three notable changes:

Cross-industry placements have increased by 20% year-over-year. “Cross-industry” refers to roles that can “cross over” into multiple industries such as sales, marketing, business development, human resources, C-level positions, etc. Historically, an increase in sales and marketing roles generally leads to an increase in manufacturing and all other roles as well, so that’s definitely a change we like to see! Some of the placements our members have made this year include:

• National Sales & Marketing Manager, Queensland, Australia
• Territory Sales Manager, Italy
• Sales Executive, California, USA
• Business Development Manager, Texas, USA

Chemical Process roles are up 14% compared to last year. This has been a strong sector for NPAworldwide for a number of years. Our members did experience some softness last year with the instability in oil prices, so it’s great to see placement activity normalizing. Anecdotally, we are hearing reports of improved activity within the chemical process area, although some members are still experiencing slow-hiring clients. Within this recruitment niche are placements such as:

• Safety Specialist, North Carolina, USA
• Process Control Engineer, Louisiana, USA
• HSE Manager, New York, USA
• Electrical Reliability Engineer, Wyoming, USA

Manufacturing-related roles have decreased 30% in the past year. I’m not hearing anything specific related to the decrease, but I would say that U.S. economic growth continues to be hit-or-miss which likely leads to skittish employers and slower hiring. With the uptick in sales and marketing activity we’ve seen, I’m optimistic that manufacturing placements will rebound in the second half of the year.

What are the hot recruitment niches in your part of the world? Comment below!