If you're just got your Christmas bonus or are hanging on for a 13th month payment at Chinese New Year, you're not alone. This is the start of the busiest time for job-hopping, and the good news this year is that there are more positions opening up, and salaries are on the rise.
Aruna Alimchandani, Hong Kong sales and marketing manager at recruitment firm Hudson, says now is the time of year that new roles are being filled.
"most employers work on annual budgets from April to March, or January to December, so most of the hiring tends to be in the first half of the year, and now is around the time they tend to be talking to us," she says. A little later comes the task of replacing those who've moved on.
"Going forward, 2007 is still a buoyant market, though it's starting to settle; last year was incredibly active. Most companies are looking at increasing salaries by between five and 10 per cent on average, and for high performers, probably beyond that, but higher salary increases will really come about from moving jobs."
Richard Broadhurst, manager of sales and marketing recruitment at Ambition careers and recruitment consultants, says people are not only changing employers but also relocating, particularly to mainland China, for the experience they believe will put them in the best position for their next career move.
"It's looking very positive across all industry sectors, and media especially is very active," he says. "The economy is buoyant, consumer spending is going up and consumer-focused companies want to cash in on that increased consumer spending and, of course, that feeds back to the B2B market as well."
Most of the movement tends to be at the more junior levels, where a bit of extra money often provides too attractive a lure to resist. As people get to middle-management and beyond, though, they learn that a CV full of one-year stints and constant change doesn't look great to prospective employers, and the movement starts to slow down.
"As people mature, they realise they need to build some stability into their careers and start to consider their moves more carefully," says Broadhurst.
Advertising
If you're in advertising or want to get in, now's as good a time as any, with demand for hot talent strong across most markets and at all levels.
"There's big demand right across the board," says Steven Pang, regional director, Asia, at Aquent recruitment consultants. "We're looking for people from junior-level account executives right up to heads of agencies."
"The creatives that have an interest in both traditional media and new media, and can think through planning, are very much sought after."
Pang says expansion is on the cards for many clients - 90 per cent have reported that they expect significant increases in revenues this year, which will have a positive knock-on effect for staffing levels and opportunities for promotion.
In one of the region's hottest markets, China, Hudson's Anita Landau says local clients are coming to appreciate that in advertising, you get what you pay for, and may be willing to increase budgets this year and be more willing to reward top talent.
"Probably, agencies have been suffering at the hands of clients who are inexperienced and don't know what to ask for," she says. "Now they see that you don't want your communications platform coming out of a sweatshop."
Marketing
This is a sector that's always been extremely competitive, particularly for the prime posts within big-name multinationals, and that hot competition is showing no signs of going off the boil in 2007.
"It's a pretty big sphere and there's a huge array of marketing-related disciplines but, in general, it's safe to say clients are unwilling to take a punt on someone who doesn't have industry or product-relevant experience, and there are enough candidates out there for them not to have to," says Ambition's Broadhurst.
"There's always plenty of recruitment going on within the FMCG or consumer product space because it's so vast, but retail is always a very difficult sector to recruit for. The McDonalds and Cokes of this world aren't always hiring and it's just not realistic to wait for those opportunities. They can also afford to be extremely choosy, and they are."
Candidates with their eye on a regional role will probably need to look at putting themselves in Singapore or Hong Kong, where the majority of multinationals have established their regional bases.
Broadhurst outlines the big factors that determine how well candidates will advance through the marketing industry. "Obviously, a strong education helps, and a stable career path, even if in the first five years of your career you're had maybe one job," he says.
"A strong brand name behind you also helps, because employers know that you'll have been getting all the right training, and having worked for an international brand is definitely an advantage."
Asked whether candidates should consider taking a more lowly role with a big-name multinational in favour of a better-paid role with more responsibility elsewhere, Broadhurst says: "There are so many different factors to think about that it's very hard to say, but it's definitely something to weigh up."
Media planning and buying
The perennial shortage of good media planners persists into 2007, with most media companies having to poach top talent from one another. Steven Pang at Aquent says the problem is so acute that in Singapore some media houses are hiring planners with a so-called 'handcuff contract' one that stipulates that they must stay for at least three years.
So, why the lack of interest? "The media industry is not as glamorous as advertising. It's more number-crunching work and the hours can be very long," Pang says. The shortage of candidates mean that well-qualified media planners can demand premium salaries, though.
There's plenty of movement between employers going on among media buying specialists, and for planners and buyers with a good understanding of new media, it's not hard to find a promotion or a new job.
"We're seeing salary increases across the board, and most clients are predicting between eight to 10 per cent increases in 2007," says Pang.
PR and corporate communications
For people with heaps of talent, there's good news for you in 2007: there are plenty of jobs out there, employers are willing to pay top money for the right people, and there? a steady stream of jobs coming up.
If you're average, though, you're likely to be left splashing around in a big pool of candidates for every job you go for.
"There are a lot of candidates out there, but very few excellent candidates, so companies are always looking for high-calibre individuals and there's a limited pool of them," says Broadhurst.
The traffic generated by PR agency and in-house PR people switching jobs was tremendous, particularly on the agency side, in the first half of last year, and while it's eased off a little since then, there are always plenty of people on the move.
Geographically, while there had been a trickle of skills from Hong Kong to Singapore in recent years, that's changed direction, and Hong Kong talent is increasingly looking north, to Shanghai or Beijing, for the next step on their career ladder.
"We've seen an increase in the number of CSR (corporate social responsibility), corporate affairs, corporate relations-type positions dealing with the community and philanthropy," says Broadhurst.
"They tend to be single-market roles rather than international, and usually Hong Kong-focused. The best candidates for these positions are generally people who?e worked in government departments or non-profit organisations. There's also ongoing demand for people with backgrounds in healthcare and pharmaceuticals."
Broadhurst's advice to new players is to decide early on whether they want to be in an agency structure or in-house, and to stick with that decision unless there's a really compelling reason not to. "I think it's probably safer not to swap from one to the other, just because it? safer to have a linear career path. Otherwise, it's just going to suggest some instability."
Digital and CRM
Anything digital is sexy at the moment, and that won? change going into 2007.
"Interactive skills are in strong demand. Everybody's getting on to new media or digital," says Alimchandani of Hudson Hong Kong. "Digital is growing at a phenomenal rate. A lot of the digital companies are positioning themselves very strongly against broadcasting and publishing, and even within publishing, a lot of the media outlets are moving into digital."
Steven Pang at Aquent points out that understanding how the digital era affects your brand or your client is not just a question of getting your head around the technology. "Every country and every culture has a different way they like to take their media. If you look at websites in Japan, it's all flashing and jumping out at you - not at all like you - see in other markets, but that's what works there."
CRM is becoming increasingly sexy too, thanks largely to technological advances that have made database maintenance and use vastly more efficient than a decade ago.
"CRM is important across all industries now, whereas it might have been just hotels and banking a few years ago," says Alimchandani.
Pang says an understanding of how CRM can be fully exploited is only now beginning to catch on, and there's an appetite in the market for people who can use it well.
"A lot of companies invested quite heavily in CRM solutions and software about four or five years ago," he says. "But at that stage, not many people understood how it was all going to work. Now they have a better idea and they want to make sure they're getting the best out of it."
Media sales and marketing
There's a steady stream of opportunities for people looking to launch a career or take a step up within media organisations, but the positions needing to be filled are not spread evenly. Online media are providing the biggest number of positions, and attracting talent both from outside the media industry and from within.
On the whole, recruitment for print media outlets is drying up as publishers face growing challenges from electronic media, though the new media divisions of many publishers are expanding at the same time.
"Growth for the publishers is coming from China but other than that, recruitment (for print) has been levelling off," says Broadhurst of Ambition.
At the international media houses, sales departments and marketing teams are usually small, with just a handful of people. In sales, they can be even smaller, with one person covering three or four markets on some of the international titles.
"On the broadcasting side, it's a relatively small market, they're very well networked among each other, so any movement seems to be very much by word-of-mouth," Broadhurst says.
For people working in local market media outlets, the obvious next step is to move to an international or pan-regional publication or TV network. The pay is the clearest attraction - the salary gap between local and international is significant, with local operations usually providing only a low basic salary and a largely commission-based pay system. The internationals offer a higher basic salary, usually with an annual or quarterly bonus system.
Broadhurst says the calibre of people working in international versus local market media is similarly great. "If you're going to get into one of the internationals you have to be very, very good. You need to be bilingual or trilingual and have a very international perspective on things. You need to have the ability to integrate into a westernised or international corporate culture, and you need to share some of the same kinds of values as the organisation."
The last word
Of course, climbing another rung or two up the corporate ladder, or just getting a top-up for your pay packet, doesn't necessarily mean looking for a new employer.
But cultural mores governing respect for one's superiors, and human nature's fear of rejection, means most employees would far rather jump ship than ask for a promotion, even if it means going through a drawn-out process of applications and interviews.
"Most people are too scared (to ask for a promotion or a raise)," says Broadhurst.
"They just don't have that kind of relationship with their superiors. It requires a tremendous amount of trust for you to be able to do that, and you need to know them very well. For most people, it's easier to find another job."
