Subdued job outlook for finance workers

FIRMS are still cautious about hiring finance and accounting staff, especially for entry-level positions, despite the recent rebound in the economy and financial markets, a new survey shows.

About two-thirds of the 273 Singapore respondents to a regional survey by recruitment firm Robert Half said that they expect no big change to the number of finance and accounting staff at their organisations in the next 12 months.


But another 31 per cent said they expected their firms to increase the number of such staff in the next year, with only 3 per cent expecting a decrease.

Most - 94 per cent - said that any new finance and accounting staff recruited would be to fill new positions, while 55 per cent said new hires would be to replace staff who left or were fired in the downturn. Only 30 per cent said they would recruit finance and accounting staff to fill graduate or entry-level positions.

Finance managers were the most in demand, with 52 per cent of the Singapore respondents saying they expect to hire for that position.

A slim majority - 51 per cent - said they expect their organisation to increase salaries for finance and accounting staff in the next 12 months, but 61 per cent also said their firms had cut or frozen pay for such staff during the downturn. And any pay increases are likely to be small - 72 per cent of the Singapore respondents said that they expected the increment to be in the range of 2.5-6.4 per cent; another 13 per cent expected even less, and just 14 per cent said that pay increments of 8.5 per cent or more were likely.

The survey, which polled 1,281 human resources and finance and accounting managers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand in the first quarter of this year - found that half the Singapore respondents felt that the economic downturn was not over, against 42 per cent who said it was. The rest were unsure.

'The general market sentiment is that the global recovery is still largely uncertain at this point,' said Tim Hird, managing director of Robert Half Singapore. 'That said, companies are taking the opportunity to rethink their staffing strategies, and many are in fact ramping up their hiring now in order to lure valuable talent to their firms and position themselves for the full recovery.'

- The Business Times