The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning that the U.S. economy had its second straight month of less than 200,000 jobs created at only 142,000 in September. These consecutive months ended a streak of 16 out of 17 months where 200,000 net, new jobs were created. Many economists expected payrolls to rise by 200,000 and the jobless rate to remain 5.1%.
The job-market slowdown appears to be driven by factors tied to weakness in the global economy rather than weakness within the U.S. Those factors include a strong dollar and an economic slowdown in China, which have hurt demand for U.S. exports and might be damaging business confidence.
Technical Engineering Recruitment Growing
On a bright note, the September jobs numbers marked the 60th consecutive month of job growth, which is an all-time record! The longest stretch on record. Additionally, the jobs gains occurred were across many sectors including:
- Professional & Technical Services, which rose by 31,000, jobs in September and has as risen 45,000 per month in 2015.
- Health Care employment rose by 34,000 jobs.
- Retail Trade added 24,000 jobs.
- Food Services and Drinking Places added 21,000 jobs as well as 349,000 over the year.
Within all sectors there has been a major increase in technical recruiting. As more industries push to automate, the need for increased technical staffing is paramount. This includes R&D (research & development), scientific, engineering, IT (Information Technology) and all sorts of technical talent from service to manufacturing fields. For example, software engineering hiring is at an all-time high. Other technology talent is also in high demand and short supply.
This has pushed companies seeking to recruit key technical talent to try new techniques to try to secure this scarce talent.
Technical Talent Recruiting Tool
One tool our technical recruitment staff recommends is our 6TH magical interview question, “Why did you join?” We recommend that your technical recruitment team ask this interview question for each job a candidate lists on their resume. This is a companion interview to our previously suggested technical recruitment interview question, “Why did you leave?”
This will help you gain even further insight into this job candidate’s mindset and prevent you from making an employment blunder. So remember to ask, “Why did you join” for each job a candidate held. This will help save you time and money during your technical talent search.
Please go to our 12 Commandments of Recruiting and click on #6 below my introductory video to view a short instructional video on this tool.
Can you recommend any other technical recruiting tools or techniques that have been helpful to you?
