Employers more happy to wait rather than pre-empt contract need
Transport and logistics sector employers have stopped feeling the employment pinch in most regions functions, recruitment specialist Hays reports.
Despite that, there are pockets of high need in regional and remote areas, as well as for experience forklift drivers being sought for temporary positions in the lead-up to Christmas, its latest quarterly report states.
In South Australia, it sees vacancies for container forklift drivers with exposure to busy interstate terminals and container yards where volumes are much higher.
Beyond the big cities, flexible senior branch or operations managers with sales experience are in high demand in the Northern Territory.
Heavy- and multi-combination drivers specialising in transporting oversized machinery and equipment for the mining and agriculture industries are also sought, as are inventory controllers open to working regionally.
More generally, vacancies are up for fleet controllers, public sector warehouse staff in healthcare and import /export officers.
“The jobs market in Western Australia is following many of the trends set by the resources sector,” Hays says.
“Feeding off both expansion and new construction projects, recruitment can now often be reactive and based on contract awards, as opposed to hiring people in advance in order to win projects.
“The pool of available candidates in logistics is still fairly large, especially at operations manager level and above, where we have seen an increase over the past six months.
“Temporary recruitment continues to dominate the lower level roles where demand for experienced inventory controllers is increasing.
“With the arrival of Spring, organisations are looking to build their casual labor pool of store persons and forklift drivers.
“We anticipate an increase in temporary recruitment to meet cyclical demand across retail markets in the build up towards Christmas.”