Year in Review
12/11/2020 by Bailey
Reflections on a Unique Year
Bohan & Bradstreet is thankful for the successful partnerships fostered and maintained throughout a challenging year. Since launching B&B in 1987, our team maintains a sense of consistency in our support of companies that feel the ebb and flow of varying markets and we pride ourselves in our ability to target personnel that will go the distance. We are appreciative of the recognition by Forbes as one of America’s Best Recruiting Firms for that past three years and we are confident that our services will continue to be above and beyond in 2021.
Despite Covid, 2020 was going to be a challenging year due to the fires in the West Coast, hurricanes in the South, and an exasperated political contest at local, state, and federal levels. As we entered 2020, the economy was humming, the stock market was up, and then the wild card happened. Covid impacted all of us in some way whether illness, economics, supply chain, socialization, and/or other.
At B&B we had a strong 1st quarter and then the brakes were put on the economy as everyone tried to measure the short and long term effects of Covid on personal and business lives. Q2 and Q3 were tempered by Covid and then in late Q3 we were slammed with new searches as companies started planning for 2021.
We have a diversified client base that ranges from services to products, from emerging to global, and from privately-held to publicly traded. Clients that grew in 2020 were in beverages, biotechnology, building services, defense, healthcare services, medical products, packaging, personal care, pharmaceuticals, private equity, and residential banking. Clients that were dormant and/or dented were automotive suppliers, commercial aerospace manufacturers, commercial banking, entertainment, luxury products, oil & gas, and transportation.
There is always a reason why a client searches for new talent. In a typical year it is additions due to growth (15%), back fills due to employee leaving (20%), confidential replacements (20%), promotions (20%), retirements (15%) and strategic hires (10%). In 2020 the landscape changed to additions due to growth (10%), back fills due to employee leaving (15%), confidential replacements (35%), promotions (15%), retirements (20%) and strategic hires (5%). Key reasons were stronger scrutiny of business model and organizational structure led to employee upgrades, realignment of personnel, and virtualization.