Guest Comment: talent war on horizon as hiring heats up across the Tasman

Banks and financial institutions in New Zealand need to put their recruitment plans into place sooner rather than later because the country's talent pool is rapidly drying up.

Over the past year there has been a surplus of job hunters available, with many people out of work and struggling to find new roles.

But the market is now recovering and it won't be long before things are turned on their head, with demand for talent outstripping supply again. Firms should act now to recruit new people, because if they leave it too much longer, they will have trouble finding quality employees.

There is still a reasonable amount of talent around, but it is diminishing. In six months' time there is likely to be a real shortage again, particularly of people with overseas experience, who are the ones that most large employers are looking for.

Many New Zealand professionals are regaining their confidence in the global economy and are heading overseas to try their luck in countries where the market has been warming up.

And this looming shortage is being compounded by a drop in home-coming Kiwis. Many of those working in London, who had previously planned to return to NZ in 2009/2010, have been put off by the strong NZ dollar, which would decimate their UK earnings if they converted from sterling at current rates.

Some are also locked into the UK and US because of falling residential property prices, which are yet to return to pre-boom levels.

Others returned home during the recession, spent nine months looking for work and ended up going back to their original employers overseas when business picked up there.

That began happening six months ago in London in certain areas of investment banking, and the same is now true with regards to Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong.

As deal flow starts to recover in New Zealand, small teams are getting stretched. Financial institutions need to be aware of the candidate honeypot drying up. If they know they have hiring on the horizon, they need to act now to attract quality people before it's too late

As we move out of the recession, institutions who laid off some of their best people are going to want to plug those gaps. It took them a while, but many of those retrenched staff have now found new posts. The talent pool isn't as big as it once was.

Debbie Graham is the director of Debbie Graham & Associates in Auckland