Shipping jobs - market update and improving your chances of success

The global economy continues to struggle and its impact on the shipping community frequently brings depressing news. In the last couple of week Tradewinds reported that the Royal Bank of Scotland is facing a large cutback in its lending business, possibly as much as 10 billion dollars. Apart from the immediate impact this will have, it also weakens confidence even further in the industry and, from a recruitment perspective, is likely to mean more recruitment freezes taking place.

At Halcyon, we fortunately continue to remain very active with regular client requests for new recruitment projects. At the same time, it is undeniable that a great deal of uncertainty remains and some big names in shipping have put a freeze on recruiting, one major tanker player recently putting a halt to even replacement recruitment.

Recruitment within the technical sector remains buoyant and the commercial market has also picked up. An example is the established yet small shipbroking firm with offices worldwide who appreciates that now may indeed be a perfect time to recruit. Salaries remain competitive too – another company in the Far East looking for a Commercial Director is prepared to offer a very good salary and a great package to ensure they find the right person to manage and drive the business. It just goes to show that good opportunities do still exist.

The major change when it comes to recruitment attitudes is without doubt that employers are becoming more demanding about finding high calibre candidates. This is largely because they are now able to do so with more people looking for new jobs now than in the past 2 or 3 years.

So what can you do as a candidate to improve your chances of success? There is no single answer, it is a package. The starting point is naturally to work to the best of your capabilities in your current position and to be professional at all times. It is worth bearing in mind that when references are taken about you, it is likely questions will be asked about your working relationships and your approach to work including the amount of sick leave you take.

A strong CV is essential and detail on this can be found on the candidate pages of our website, www.halcyonrecruitment.com. It is worth taking the time to develop a good relationship with a recruitment agency as well. Obviously this doesn’t mean you need to inundate them with emails or phone calls but it is worth having a chat about what you are looking for and asking for their input. Agencies should be more than happy to tell you if your expectations about your next job are realistic, be that with respect to job content, seniority or salary. A realistic candidate means a great deal to a good recruiter and will automatically gain confidence.

Another thing you can do to support any applications you make, whether directly to employers or via recruiters, is to include good written references. This will further strengthen your application but send only 1 or 2, people don’t want to be over-burdened.

Most of the advice we give to candidates is based on common sense. When it comes to working with potential new employers or recruitment agencies, the best way to approach it is to put yourself in their position and envisage the type of contact and approach that would be best. We will continue to explore this next month.