UK in danger of losing best talent if jobs aren’t created quickly

• 49% would seek work abroad
• 61% would take a salary cut

Executive job seekers in the UK do not appear to share the vision of Chancellor George Osborne who claimed through his recent budget that Britain is “open for business”.

A  survey conducted in the first week of April by TheLadders.co.uk, the £50K+ executive career services website, with 507 respondents  revealed that  only twenty-two per cent  jobseekers were more confident about the prospects of getting a new job in 2011 following the Budget compared to prior to the announcements.

Fear that the private sector will not be able to create enough jobs to counterbalance the losses in the public sphere is at the heart of this pessimism. Seventy-eight per cent do not believe that the jobs created will match the number of those that are cut.

This lack of confidence has led to the more worrying news that up to half of executive job seekers would be more than willing to leave the United Kingdom to find work because of the state of the local economy. Evidence that further highlights the current mood of job seekers comes in the form of the sixty-one per cent of respondents who said that they would be happy to take a salary cut in order to gain employment.

Derek Pilcher, managing director of TheLadders.co.uk had this to say about the findings,

“Although this survey shows that today’s job seeker is generally somewhat pessimistic, it is equally important to realise that there remains good news as well as bad, within the current UK jobs market. The latest Report on Jobs from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG showed that average starting salaries reached an eight month high. It appears that employers in the private sector are waking up and competing harder for candidates, especially in the IT, engineering and finance spheres.”

Results of the survey

61% would take a salary cut to get a new position at the current time

63% would take a step backwards step in their career (job title) to get a new job at the current time

49% would seek work abroad because of the economy in the UK

67% believe that the employer is in the strongest position in the hiring process in 2011

78% don’t think that the private sector will create enough jobs to counterbalance public losses

63% feel that companies don’t care about their employees

For more information, please contact Philip Cottrell at TheLadders.co.uk, Tel: 0207 939 0607

 or email: pcottrell@theladders.com