What we are seeing.

The Tech labour market in Wellington remains extremely tight and the shortage of skilled Tech talent is high across the sector.

Candidates in both Contract and Permanent roles are spoiled for choice in the market and organisations are having to be very creative to attract the best talent. Candidates are chasing higher salaries and contract rates as well as a demand for flexibility in both workable hours, and where they can be based to do the work.

The borders have re-opened, and we have started to see an increase in applications from overseas (May 2022) candidates, however the reality is they are a long way off starting their Visa application process with Immigration New Zealand. We do not expect there to be any throughput from these international applicants until quarters 3 & 4 this year.

Contract Market – Wellington Tech

The demand for skilled Contractors in Wellington is high across all areas we recruit into, it is particularly tight in technical roles such as Developers, Dev Ops Engineers, and other specialist areas (Salesforce & SAP).

We are seeing frustration from businesses that are being forced to let Contractors go once they have done 2 years within the organisation. This is usually an HR driven policy but one that is costly to Projects having to then compete in this market to secure a new Contract resources who take time to get up to speed and deliver the same outputs as the existing Contractor.

In May and June, we are seeing more Contractors coming available due to the end of the Governments financial year which is a common occurrence. Most are getting sucked back into new contract roles given the demand is so high across both Private and Public sectors.

Rates for most Contract roles have been creeping up with certain skillsets e.g. Business Analysts, Developers, DevOp Engineers, commanding significant hourly / daily rates.

Permanent Market – Wellington Tech.

Permanent employees are also spoiled for choice. They often have multiple job opportunities on the go if they are actively in the job market. We are seeing substantial hikes in base salaries to get candidates interested in moving from their current job into a new one.

The other factor weighing heavily on the number of job seekers turning down job offers is the “counter-offer”. We have multiple examples of candidates being offered significant increases in their salary or bonuses to stay put in their current roles. This is fine if money is their only driver, but more often that not there are other reasons an employee is seeking a new role, and they will often return to the market several months later as the higher salary will only go so far in satisfying their original drivers for looking for new opportunities.

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