It started the first day of the New Year when my company got in more hiring inquiries in a day than we have since I was working out of an apartment. We totaled in at the double digits.
This is great, but the most telling thing was the types of jobs that were coming in and what they were paying. All of the sudden, the "70k's became 90k's and the 90k's became "We'll pay market price if the person is worth it."
What Is the Effect?
For the most part, a heightened employment rate brings positive change, but for many it can also bring a heightened amount of urgency, thus creating a heightened amount of stress and tension to get the right person hired.
Moreover, it can also change the scope of many sales, sales management and marketing jobs.
What Are the Changes?
Sales - A better economy obviously means more sales opportunities, but it also means that small, cheaper competition is going to try to push itself into the market.
Also, sales professionals typically deal with bosses inflating their expectations, usually in the form of a quota much more than what is humanly possibly.
After all, many sales managers feel the pressure from above and are not economists. I cannot judge, as I slept through economics in college (if it was such as perfect science, world hunger would not exist).
Regardless of quota changes, sales personnel are going to make more money both in base salary and in gross take-away.
Marketing - Marketing personnel are one of the last to be hired and first to be fired, and consistently ignored during bad economic times. Companies who are short on cash need quick fixes via hiring sales professionals with a Rolodex, not reprogramming their website.
I am an outlier who believes marketing should always be at the forefront. But if you have to choose between marketing and sales, marketing is not going to pad a bank account during tough economic times.
Marketing jobs are not popping up readily as of yet, but my firm is working on a few high level marketing jobs, which is a lot better than last year which was all sales.
Management (Sales and Marketing) - If the job market continues to improve, then management is going to shift from hybrid sales and sales management roles to more pure management positions. The more subordinates a manager brings on, the more need for day to day management functions than if the individual is only responsible for a handful of people, thus needing to moonlight as a sales or marketing rep.
Therefore, in this type of economy, many management jobs and, subsequent day to day activities, shift towards recruiting employees, training new employees and ensuring proper management of the ones that are under him or her.
In the End
I do think that hiring will continue to improve just yet, at least not drastically. But then again, I'm not an economist. But even yet again, does an economist know better than someone who lives and breathes the job market for a living?