Here we are starting the second month of 2023 and I hope all of you are doing great, career plans on track, training mapped out, goals shining bright in front of you. A very happy Lunar New Year to all who are celebrating the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit!
Some of you may be thinking about finding a cool new job, and with that in mind, this two-part article is going to offer you some thoughts on upping your interview game.
But before we do that, I want to set the scene with a look at the job market, and very critically, how the state of the job market dictates how honed your interview skills need to be. (Spoiler alert: In today’s market, VERY SHARP.)
The beginning of the year is the time when hiring customarily picks up after the lull during the holiday season. And hiring is definitely going on. I see postings on LinkedIn from hiring managers with much greater frequency now than a month or so ago. But there is also a lot of news, from the World Bank and other reputable sources, about the world economic growth forecast that might give one pause.
Lay-offs, hiring freezes … How’s the job market for Digital Trust?
I am going to focus on the US for now because the US job market is the one that I know best, and the one that, to some extent, is a bellwether for other job markets globally. That being said, it is best to go to your local sources to gather information and do your own assessment of how employers in your specific job market are responding to current economic trends and global events.
On 7 January 2023, Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in his New York Times “Deal Book” column the following scary stuff: “… most economists expect more layoffs and fewer job openings in the coming months as companies rethink how they operate. This week, Amazon said it would cut 18,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of its corporate work force, and Salesforce said it planned to lay off 10 percent of its employees, or about 8,000 staff members. Goldman Sachs is preparing to lay off as many as 4,000 people.”
My initial thought was “Holy Smokes, this is not good!” My next thought was, hang on, these are across the board numbers. I started to reflect on what we saw happen with digital trust roles during the 18 months of the Great Recession, from December 2007 to June 2009. We did see the Big 4 rescind offers and pare down their hiring and teams as the great reckoning took hold and fewer industry firms were using consultants.
Some internal audit functions were asked to “share the pain” and let a few people go. And, there was some outflow from financial institutions that actually went belly up (think Lehman). But, by and large, we didn’t see a flood of newly unemployed IT auditors. Moreover, experienced IT auditors that did find themselves on the market, especially those with 3-5 years of experience, were re-employed quickly.
For managers and senior leaders, as always, there is simply a smaller number of jobs in the upper tiers and more competition for those roles. When hiring slows (and cost-cutting is top of mind in the C-suite), the number of leadership roles decreases, and the competition increases even more. Depending on experience and level, it could take six months or longer to find a role. We definitely saw that in the 2008-2009 timeframe.
A look-back to historical data is useful, but not predictive. So, what is the real scene with the digital trust job market in the US now? To find out, I called a couple of trusted colleagues who have long been in the digital trust recruiting space to get their take on how things are looking for jobseekers as the year opens up.
Jarrett Fenlon, principal recruiting officer and co-founder of Fenlon, Hayward and Associates, a well-established executive search firm in Technology Risk & Governance that serves large clients in the eastern US, noted that he has seen hiring freezes go into effect at a number of the large financial services firms. He is also seeing companies turning open manager roles into senior staff roles where a lower-cost resource can be hired and groomed for growth into management. With regards to layoffs, Jarrett said that “The cycle for layoffs (within a company) is typically 1st Line of Defense, then cuts in the 2nd Line. BUT we are not seeing IT Auditors getting let go.”
Todd Weinman, president and founder of The Weinman Group, an executive search firm with nearly three decades as a specialist in the audit and GRC space with clients across the US, offered this perspective on the hiring outlook: “We are seeing some signs of slowdown, but what I think we have to remember is that we have been in a highly overheated market for several years. So, while the market feels slower, it is really just downshifting into a more normal pace – much like a giant semi-truck that has been barreling down the highway at 120 mph and now it has slowed to 80 mph. So hiring is slowing but slowing from insanity to a still pretty hot market, and overall, unemployment in the digital trust space is still very low.” Todd says he does not anticipate any material impact on the internal audit market overall from this slowdown.
Since Todd has particular expertise with the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, I asked for his take on the tech layoffs, and here is what he had to say: “Tech has always been very cyclical. The sector was way overdue for a downturn by perhaps five, or even seven years! So, these layoffs are coming on the heels of a multiyear hiring binge. Many of the companies that are laying off are still above their pre-pandemic numbers. While some individuals in the audit/GRC space have been impacted by layoffs, overall the numbers are not huge as a percentage of digital trust workforce. We are seeing more downsizing in other areas, such as Sales and Talent Acquisition.”
The takeaways:
- The job market is still pretty favorable for digital trust professionals.
- But competition has increased.
- This means that your interview skills and interview strategy need to be tuned up and on point in order to be a finalist and win offers.
Now that the scene is set, in next month’s Career column I will address the essentials of great interviews and what you can do to up your interview game.
In my next column, I will address another key piece of this picture – the interview. In the meantime, assessing the economic climate in your city/country/region, as well as your industry, your company, your role – with respect to whether it is time to take the plunge into the job market or hold back – is something you will want to do. For more on the Stay-or-Go decision, see last month’s @ISACA Careers column.
And stay tuned for the March, 2023 Career Corner … you are not going to want to miss it!