Things are better, but it's still not really that good

Just like mkwlao I went for a govt job with test and 2 interview.Only at final stage when they would let me know the start date, they put my offer on hold due to staffing requirements.

A Recruiter is right.

I personally went for a role which took 1 technical test and 4 interviews. Only person in final round and they said "no".

The recruiter said at my stage they looked at 90 CVs post my 4th interview they had gone through 190 CVs.

In Jan and early Feb the Financial Services sector was swamped. I got interviews at all the big banks. Seems to have dried up now.

Commerce and Industry is going to pick up around mid March I think (with some input from recruiters) until late April. It comes in 3 month cycles.

i can confirm that things are going ballistic on the hiring front. i am so far past swamped it's not funny.

It would be wise to post the ratio between candidates and vacancies, together with absolute numbers. According to the chart in the article, now the ratio is about 2 and it's much worse than mid 2008, when the ratio was 1. It's also not much better than december 2008, when the ratio was about 2.5. The more I read all the optimistic articles about new hiring, the more I think that banks just fired too many people last year. And maybe all the high bonuses we're hearing about simply come from a lower number of people among which the bonus pools are shared.

Just a clarification on the Powerchex survey. The research reports on offers confirmed. Powerchex conducts background checks for people who work in financial services and therefore the candidates tracked have accepted an offer and have filled out the background check form.