General State of Hiring

1. Technology is considered to be of core importance to most companies. Despite other areas of recruitment suffering because of the macroeconomic slowdown, hiring with technology has still very much continued to happen, albeit at a reduced rate
   

   1. Permanent placements
      

      1. This is where we saw the slowdown. Given the tumultuous times in Hong Kong, both due to domestic politics, and the global backdrop of COVID, companies started to limit agency spend on permanent hires and several roles were put on hold
         

   2. Contract placements
      

      1. This is where we saw a jump. Since permanent hires started requiring extensive approvals ‘from the top’, contracting started to pick up
         

2. During the beginning of the quarter, we observed that candidates without strong push factors were not so keen on changing jobs as the general sentiment was to avoid any sort of job-switching risk during uncertain times. However, this sentiment began to shift in June and more candidates were willing to explore better opportunities
   

3. No one has a crystal ball but despite all the political turmoil, Hong Kong could very much become a major player in technology as China is looking to invest more in this region. Please see this article which talks about China’s blueprint for the Financial Sector in Hong Kong
   

Finance Technology / Insurance sector

1. April and May were quieter for banks on the permanent hiring front but June saw some more demand across permanent hires within Finance Technology. The demand continued to be for Python/Full Stack Developers and Java/C++ Trading Systems Developers
   

2. Standard Chartered Virtual Bank branded itself as Mox and will soon launch their Virtual Banking offering for retail clients 
   

3. COVID has highlighted the fact that everything is going to be digital in the future. DBS is going to be hiring 2000 people with a significant number of those positions in technology as “everything is going digital”

We hope you found this information useful. Please do contact us should you need more information.

Best Regards,

Vince Natteri, Managing Director

(on behalf of the Pinpoint Asia Recruitment Team)