2009 has been a rough year in transportation. Virtually every carrier and freight forwarder has had to tighten the belt in some form. Office consolidations, revised business services, reduced product offerings, layoffs, you name it, its happened.
Just this week CGM sent a letter to its major customers explaining the creation of a financial governance board to supervise its strategic direction and to secure the financial backing to survive. Hapag-Lloyd meantime has announced that it has secured financial backing from the German government.
I started in the container shipping business in 1983. It seems like container carriers have been both cutting rates and dying like flies ever since. I used to keep a list of the names of the carriers. When it got to over 30 I stopped. It was too depressing. The maritime history that was simply dying was too painful.
I get data from a couple of consultant firms that show that while the market curves have been precipitously downward in direction for well over a year, some rebound is happening. Freight volumes from Asia for retail are up in a mini-peak, trucking volumes are weak but also on a slight uptick. Year over year retail store figures are still down, but sales are up over the last quarter.
The point is, there is a pulse. The patient isn't dead yet.
The shipping business has never been heavy on people. Its an asset heavy business, but the largest shipping company in the world might still be only 15,000 people. Try explaining that to somebody who works for Oracle, whose US organization is over 80,000. Its just not a big people business. Having said that, the industry still needs people. I'm talking about the entire transportation business, not just the parts I've personally touched. Jobs still are out there.
I get calls from executive recruiters all the time. Since I run this blog, people assume that my Rolodex is pretty fat. What I hear is that good jobs are still out there. Our industry still needs good employees and even better management. What I am also hearing is that the position that paid 100K two years ago is now 80K. Simply put, there are a lot of candidates and with corporate income depressed, so are the resources to pay job candidates.
I'll write an article soon on strategies for job networking in the shipping industry and also how to use some online tools. I'm not a fan of social networking generally, but there are some resources that are professionally focused. Stay tuned!
Eric
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Gday Eric, Simon here from Australia plenty of import / export and courier quotes still happening down under, btw nice blog keep up the great work
Posted by: Simon Church | October 08, 2009 at 06:34 PM