So is there any form of recruitment downturn occurring?

its the word that dare not speak its name but lets not be shy of at least looking at it. I am going to talk about our narrow world - so no mention of credit crunch or macro economic factors that the media are bombarding us with at present.

My answer is a qualified Yes and No - and please remember this is based on an incredibly short period of time

• Q1 2008 was OME's most successful quarter in business by a long way- so thats rather good isnt it
• None of our clients have stopped recruiting - announced a recruitment freeze etc
• Our most recent launch (OME Search) is getting huge client interest

However

• Feb and March were not quite as active as January
• The extra campaigns from our clients are not as prevalent. So all our contract work is occurring but additional spend is absent
• The job boards seem to have been hurting in March and deadline deals were dramatically attractive to get something/anything signed off
• Our new business is not signing off as quickly as i would like (statement of obvious) - in my paranoid mind - is this a sign of caution/an unwillingness to commit
• the phones don't appear to be ringing as much

Am i worried? not particularly - its end of financial year - we are still growing and as we all know - even a mild downturn will make clients look really carefully at their costs/cost per hire and that is fabulous news for online in general and OnlineMediaExperts in particular.

So in a way - a potential scare like this could be the best thing to happen to us!