Most Executives Have Hiring Plans Thru 2004

The hiring plans for the rest of the year represents an increase of 10% from the number of executives planning on adding to headcount at the start of 2004. Another 37% plan to maintain their current staff sizes, down 8% from the first half, while 4.8% of the 356 executives interviewed plan to decrease their staff in 2004, down close to 2%, according to study conducted by Management Recruiters International, Inc (MRI).

The projections for hiring increases are especially heady in pharmaceuticals, where 80.0% of the executives polled had plans for hiring in the remainder of 2004. This was followed by aerospace (54.0%), finance (64.3%) and automotive (27.8%).

“We believe that there is pent-up demand for new hires,” said Allen Salikof , president and CEO of MRI. “Many companies that have held off on filling open positions for the past two years are now seriously addressing their needs. They are seeing opportunities to increase market share that will be lost if they fail to staff up adequately.”

In addition to hiring, mostUS businesses are planning to increase the efforts to retain employees in the second half of the year. Of the executives surveyed, 60% said that they intend to increase their retention efforts with almost an equal balance of salary increases (32.9%), recognition programs (39.9%), enhanced training (35.4%) and additional benefits/perks (34.0%).