SBWire

Procurement is a critical part of any business. It allows companies to secure the right materials to provide their services, from sourcing raw materials and services to managing contracts and relationships with suppliers. Procurement and supply management is a complex, strategic, challenging, and ultimately rewarding sector to work in. Professionals in this industry enable an organization to operate in a profitable and ethical manner. As the talent pool becomes tighter, businesses can recruit ambitious procurement professionals, capitalising on the high demand for skills.

As a cutting-edge location for industrial engineering jobs, it's no surprise that Singapore is leading the way when it comes to innovation, such as climate-neutral aviation. The first steps have now been taken towards a hydrogen hub and decarbonised aviation industry for Singapore. A cooperation agreement has been put into place between Airbus and key players from the city state's aviation sectors - including Changi Aviation Group and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore - that will study how to bring this climate neutral vision for the city to life.

Cross-boundary fintech initiatives are being prioritised in Hong Kong thanks to the arrival of the Greater Bay Area Fintech Pilot Trial Facility. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the People's Bank of China have announced that financial institutions can now submit applications with respect to pilot trials for cross-boundary fintech initiatives in the Greater Bay Area (GBA).

A mass movement of workers through the employment world has affected every sector in the past year. Labeled 'The Great Resignation' this shift is making it even more difficult for organizations to fill recruitment requirements. This is a particular problem for fields such as biotech, where there are already skills shortages.

Over the past year, we have begun to see many talented people moving roles to look for new challenges. In 2022, those in jobs such as forensic engineering could find that they have even more to look forward to via a new employer, as these are set to be some of the top 10 paying jobs of the year. This data comes from a January 2022 report that identified how skills shortages in many areas are creating significantly increased demand.

The same mRNA technology used in Pfizer-BioNTech's and Moderna's Covid vaccines is being trialed as a unique new medical engineering cancer treatment. The way that the vaccines have worked for COVID has been to teach the body to target the virus - now the same approach is being focused on cancer cells too. The company behind the vaccine is BioNTech, which is the German pharmaceutical business that partnered with Pfizer in 2020 to produce the first vaccine that was authorized for use against COVID in the US.

Gene therapy is a vital field and one generating a wealth of R&D jobs in pharma today. Companies such as Pfizer are keen to capitalize on progress, as this represents the next phase of innovation for patients currently living day-to-day with rare diseases. In order to push forward its progress in gene therapy, Pfizer has now announced the opening of a new clinical manufacturing facility in Durham, NC.

The demand for clinical operations staff has soared during the pandemic and in most locations, this has created some serious skills shortages. As a result, many US hospitals have turned to overseas hires to fill the gaps. One agency recruiting clinical operations staff from overseas to place in US hospitals saw demand surge from just 800 places a year pre-pandemic to 4,000 today.

Like many industries, the insurance market experienced issues during 2020, as the pandemic affected growth. A new report has identified that, following a better year in 2021, the specialty insurance jobs market is going to experience stunning growth in the coming years up to 2026. Both the fastest-growing markets and the largest-developed markets offer opportunities for specialty insurance business - and this is going to cause the demand for new talent to spike. In particular, the report identified significant momentum coming from the emerging markets in the APAC and Latin American regions.

After the challenges of 2020, the boom year of 2021 was a welcome relief for financial services jobs. Many recruiters described it as the busiest hiring market in recent times with huge demand for candidates across the financial services sector. Hiring cycles and recruitment windows in banking and financial services seem to be a thing of the past, replaced by the constant ongoing challenge that firms face to find the best people.

Sales and trading jobs growth looks positive for firms all over the USA in 2022. Most investment banks and financial services professionals weathered the storm in 2021 with some ease - and for many, this year they will see a spike in activity that helps drive up growth. Factors such as the slowing down of quantitative easing, shifting interest rates, changes in client activity and market volatility are all going to create the need for hiring in the sales and trading sphere.

An incredibly tight labor market means that recruitment pressure is heavy for US law firms at the start of 2022. The need to hire and keep talented people was a building theme during 2021, as recovery from the pandemic started to drive up market growth. The legal recruitment talent war that has ensued has meant that starting salaries are shooting up and firms are considering a range of other benefits and incentives to ensure that they do not suffer from skills gaps.

The shock of the pandemic caused a serious slowdown for legal hiring, including with respect to legal compliance jobs. However, recent figures show that the job market is returning with a huge increase in demand. There are currently tens of thousands of open positions across the country and, given that many openings for counsel and partners aren't posted online, this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Cyber security remains at the top of the agenda for many organisations today, as the threat landscape continues to evolve and change. Now Darktrace has announced that a European media giant has expanded its use of the self-learning AI provided by Darktrace in order to better protect its operations. The media company is one of the largest conglomerates, serving tens of millions of consumers and businesses all over Europe.

Colt Data Centre Services recently announced that it was refining its portfolio to focus more on hyperscale and large enterprise strategy. And, following on from the sale of 12 of its colocation sites in 2021, the provider has now revealed that it has bought up a number of sites to be used as greenfield hyperscale data centres in locations across Europe, including in London and Paris.

The past two years saw a rapid increase in the pace of tech adoption across many sectors, with large numbers of organizations adapting strategies to keep up with change imposed by the pandemic. This created something of a seismic shift in the skills market, especially with respect to upskilling and reskilling to help cope with an increase in tech integration. In 2022, the demand for data analytics skills is forecast to increase significantly, as this initial wave of upgrading goes to another level.

The deployment of the cloud in the healthcare sector has been a key driver in infrastructure market growth. That's according to new research that estimates the healthcare cloud computing market will reach $70 billion by 2028. In 2020, the market was worth $28.5 billion so the figures show a significant shift.

December 2021 concluded another year in which those with pharma job skills were in high demand. Data from the jobs site of a leading provider of educational webinars showed that there is currently huge competition when it comes to attracting the best talent in the pharma industry. Thousands of job postings demonstrated that this is an industry where there is a lot of activity. Medical device, biotechnology and pharmaceutical spaces traditionally tend to have the biggest problems when it comes to attracting the best applicants, especially without the right support, such as that provided by specialist pharma recruiters.

Derby-based Gardner Aerospace is the latest business to look towards the Asia Pacific region when it comes to expansion and growth. The company, which supplies components to some well-known manufacturers, including Rolls Royce Holdings and Airbus, is tapping into the emerging aviation market in China.

Infrastructure and tunnel engineering is a highly specialised area of civil engineering jobs and one that is increasingly in demand. In Singapore, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) have now entered into a collaboration to help develop this expert field. The partnership is called the Centre for Infrastructure and Tunnel Engineering (CITE). It is focused on increased collaboration in research and development with respect to infrastructure and tunnel engineering, as well as establishing educational and training programmes focused on this area of civil engineering jobs.

Digitisation of supply chains is a hot topic in end-to-end supply chain today with some big industry names investing in evolving workflows and systems. Tufail Chemical is the latest enterprise to sign up to a digitisation programme. The firm is partnering with Maersk to help streamline and manage supply chains more efficiently, using the digital tool 'Maersk Flow.'

Prospects for industrial engineering jobs in Singapore look set to be bright once again as growth forecasts for the sector are positive for 2022. Predictions are that investment activity is going to be pushed forward by the demand for specialised, high-quality warehousing and manufacturing facilities that can meet the increasingly complex supply chain demands of many businesses today.

Much of the proportion of federal funding that is going to be heading towards Nebraska is going to be poured into roads and highways. The $2.5Bn Infrastructure Bill funding will arrive alongside a billion-dollar slice of federal pandemic recovery funding and the two combined could have a huge impact on the state. Although it has yet to be decided how the money will be allocated, there are already ideas that focus on repairing Nebraska's roads and bridges. For example, the completion of the Heartland Expressway, which reaches through Alliance and Scottsbluff on its route from Rapid City, South Dakota, to Denver.

Technology is vital to optimizing the process of clinical operations trials in the near future - and this has been brought one step closer by the news that Pfizer and Amazon Web Services are now working together to make this happen. The collaboration is designed to create innovative, cloud-based solutions that will improve how medicines are designed and delivered for clinical trials, as well as how they are distributed for testing in clinical trials.

As a procurement headhunter, we are always focused on incoming trends that could affect the landscape of procurement in the years to come. For 2022, there are some key developments to watch, including much more of a focus on risk management in order to protect supply chains going forward. Another big trend for this year is increasing investments in IT solutions, something that is being prioritized by businesses keen to ensure that the IT infrastructure in place is resilient enough and able to support swift change.