Scary times for recruitment.
What should designers do when supply outweighs demand?
Tumbleweed blew through our office as companies put design and branding projects on ice, and our design clients cut back on freelancers and stopped recruiting. Along with the rest of Britain, we went into shock and feared for our survival. The rest of 2008 was a blur, meeting designers every day who had been made redundant. It was a tense time, because we had to make two people redundant, too.
My hope for 2009 was that the innovation continuum would kick in. This relies on the notion that to innovate in business you have to make things better or make them different. In theory, this means more work for designers.
January got off to a bad start with more redundancies and less work; innovation was stagnant.
Thankfully February has been better, with more projects taken off ice, which gets the qi moving again, however slightly.
The situation as we perceive it is as follows:
Some freelance design is still being commissioned, though everyone is being asked to reduce their fees, and there is less work around – about 30 per cent in our experience.
Full-time work agency side is really hard to come by – very few studios are recruiting.
Many brands, especially some of the high-end fashion brands we work with, are bringing their graphic design / branding / digital work in-house, to cut agency costs. Our in-house vacancies have increased by 50 per cent, and with many brands developing brilliant studios, designers are increasingly likely to consider taking a role in what was once regarded as a less creative environment.
Supply still outweighs demand – we are finding that the designers who are getting work are not only very creative but, perhaps more importantly, have the right attitude.
Our business has had to change, but for the better. We’re concentrating on our core activity – design – and have stepped away from account management. I’m teaching and mentoring more, and using the slowdown to turn the agency’s attention to increasing the quality of designers we take on.
Scary but exciting times!
Mike Radcliffe has run the London recruitment agency Represent for the past five and a half years.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:06 pm | by Maja B. Jancic
Dear Mike,
thank you for this insightful report.
I am though very curios about the “right attitude” of the designers who nowadays get work. What exactly do you mean by it? What’s the attitude which is the right one?
Thank you.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:29 pm | by Paulo Periera
In the States its pretty much the same thing. I have alot of friends who freelance for magazines. They usually jump from magazine to magazine - when work runs out in one they jump to another. They were told 2 months ago that they wouldn’t have work for them until around June. Now they are looking for full-time jobs and want to stop freelancing. Except now they are competing with recent graduates & other designers- who were let go when magazines & companies closed down.
I have heard, that it is worse in the England in general.
For a while I kept hearing that England was going to become the next Iceland. But lately haven’t heard much about the economy there.
-P
March 13th, 2009 at 7:54 am | by Mike Radcliffe
Hi Maja
Thanks for your comment.
When I talk about ‘right attitude’ I mean positive, enthusiastic and good to be around. Hope this helps.
BTW Paulo, I don’t think the UK will become the next Iceland, at all. The press in the UK have a great ability to whip everyone up in to a media frenzy and tend to over report and play up the negative side. Things feel a littler calmer and we have a great Economist at the helm at the moment.
Best,
Mike
March 13th, 2009 at 3:44 pm | by Maja B. Jancic
Thank you, Mike. I thought so.
And I agree. I think the positive attitude is the only attitude which can bring up fine ideas. Not just on the side of designers but also on the side of clients. It is time to turn the tables to a more purposeful, environmental friendly, visionary, truthful, socially responsible, non-generic, emotional and back-to-basics communication.
March 15th, 2009 at 6:35 pm | by Alex Crovetti
Hi Maja,
Your comment is spot on: ‘it is time to turn the tables to a more purposeful, environmental friendly, visionary, truthful, socially responsible, non-generic, emotional and back-to-basics communication’.
This recession will prompt a much needed cultural revolution, driven by people with innovatioin and ethics at the core of their business models.
One example is Playfair & Noble, http://www.playfairandnoble.com, an innovative company which removes the restrictions imposed by traditional recruitment, by providing a platform which allows employers, professionals and referrers to communicate directly and discreetly, without the burden and prohibitive cost of a ‘middle man’ and with the benefits of an ethical business model.
Further, when a professional changes job through the website, Plyafair & Noble gives 50% of their fee to the professional and 10% to the person who has referred the professional.
They have just launched and their database is still growing, but professionals, employers and referrers have recognised the opportunity and are joining.
Change has come.
All the best,
Alex
March 19th, 2009 at 8:39 pm | by Thursday, March 19, 2009 | shiner.clay
[...] What do designers do when supply outweighs demand? [...]
March 24th, 2009 at 9:15 am | by Mickey
What do designers do when supply outweighs demand?
Take the power back.
Mickey.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:31 am | by Eye blog » Think positive, add passion. Despatches from the frontline of designer recruitment
[...] is bright, filled with hope and, dare I say, green shoots are appearing. In February, as I wrote in my last blog, freelance design was still being commissioned but agencies were asking talent to reduce their [...]