2025 will see more young people entering the print industry predicts Matt Hanley, Managing Director of MTWO recruitment
2024 has had its fair share of challenges, not just for the recruitment industry but for the whole world. Recessions, riots, elections and the threat of WW3 all mixed together resulted in very fluctuating conditions. We fared alright considering!
Recruitment is directly related to general optimism and growth. Whilst my personal business was steady (It didn’t go backwards at least) I am not overly optimistic of huge amounts of growth in 2025 either. Especially after the recent budget.
Less of the doom and gloom but more of the positive controllable stuff… Regardless of external factors, the industry is always short of talented people. I struggle to remember a time other than covid where there are more people than there are opportunities. So as a recruiter, my job is 2 fold.
1 – Take opportunities to these passive people
2 – Be ready and waiting and proactive for these people when they approach me.
Matching talent with opportunity. It’s what we do.
One thing I think will continue to progress is the development of young people in print. It’s essential. We will see more people ‘taking a punt’ on youth over experience and developing them internally. I believe that there will be opportunities for people external to our industry given greater opportunities too. An Account Manager is an Account Manager so coming from a parallel world (Packaging into print and vice versa for example) will be more of a thing too.
With not enough available talent to go around, what won’t change, (or if it does, then only for the better) in my opinion is the need for organisations to have the best go to market strategy, the best and most robust onboarding and professional development programme for those joining and progressing in the business and a huge focus on retention and development internally.
Overall, 2024 was, given the world around us, ok. My forecast for 2025… More of the same. A number of organisations are going for it, some in survival mode and unfortunately some will have the rug pulled from underneath them. I hope I’m wrong and it is more buoyant than this but I think that is dependent hugely on external factors and ones outside of the control of the printing industry.
New job anyone?