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Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that the festive season is a time to pause, reflect and set goals for the year ahead. It’s been a turbulent few years, but the South West jobs market has remained strong, and it’s that drive and resilience that will see us through into 2023 too. We asked some of the team what they hope to see in 2023 – and without further ado, here’s what they’ll be wishing for this Christmas…

One of the reasons we love doing what we do is seeing people’s lives change because of their career choices, and the opportunities they have taken. We recently caught up with Sarah Jane Smith, who returned to work after taking time off to look after her children, and is now thriving in her chosen career path.

Global competition for talent is seeing employers navigating new territory to attract the vital tech skills they need in a post-pandemic era. With the South West fast becoming a haven for new tech firms hungry for software engineers, programmers, network security specialists and data science experts, dipping into the international talent pool is a logical next step.  

Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed the lowest unemployment rate across the UK for 48 years, at 3.6 per cent nationwide, and the lowest in the entire UK in the South West at just  2.7 per cent.

Employee benefits have always been important to employees, but since the pandemic shifted the way we work and the way we think about work/life balance, the benefits employers have to offer matter more than ever.

Over the years, having a degree has become somewhat of a 'standard requirement' for many jobs – and not just graduate ones! So, we conducted a survey on Twitter and asked Exeter-based employers whether or not they would hire someone without a degree... and the results are in!

More than 6.5 million workers are expected to quit their jobs in the next 12 months with many seeking out better pay, increased job satisfaction and greater work life balance. As a result, the number of open vacancies has also increased rapidly in the past few months.

The job market has been a swinging pendulum for the past two and a half years and it’s caused a lot of uncertainty for clients and candidates alike. However, we’re now entering an era completely led by candidates.

I think most businesses will agree with me when I say that the past few months haven’t been the easiest. As we predicted, economic uncertainty continued; inflation rose to a record-high of 9.1 per cent, yet we had surprise growth. Additional turbulence occurred in the UK’s political landscape with a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Boris Johnson launching in early June.

In March 2020, businesses were thrown into turmoil, facing situations no leader had ever faced before. Overnight, teams were forced to work remotely, and businesses lost huge sums of revenue. In the following months, mental health began to decline, redundancies spiked, 11.7 million people were furloughed and leaders were leaning on HR more than ever before in an attempt to keep their heads above water and to ensure that their teams felt supported in this incredibly turbulent time.

When Boris Johnson said that working from home isn’t productive because of the ‘distractions of cheese and coffee’, and when Lord Alan Sugar came out and said that the pandemic has ‘unleashed a workshy, entitled culture in which people demand — and are allowed — to work from home’, there’s perhaps no surprise that the business world divided into two.

Let’s face it, recruiters and recruitment agencies don’t have the best reputation in the eyes of some. Apparently, we’re CV pushers with our eyes only on the commission prize. Of course, there may be some individuals that warrant such bad press but, overall, it’s a myth!