The employment market has changed beyond recognition over the past 10 years with an oversubscription of applicants for positions as the economic downturn continues to hit businesses hard.

That is the view of Kelly Francis, president and senior consultant at Performance Solutions, who celebrates her company's 10th anniversary on Monday having started out on her own in a client's lobby and built the business into a five-strong team based in a smart office in Paget.

During her time in business, Ms Francis and her team including immigration manager Candace Marshall, office manager Tamisha Williams, training manager Nea Dixon and senior consultant Adrienne Cobbs, who specialise in human resources (HR) consultation and immigration management, have seen a number of trends in the market, most recently a move towards cost containment as companies look to get the best value for their money.

"Gone are the days when you could leave a job on Friday and start a new one the following Monday," she said. "Ten years ago there was work for everybody, but now, for example, we had 140 applications for one administrative position, 130 of which were all viable candidates on the Island, so the competition for positions has gone through the roof."

Having worked as a consultant at Ernst & Young prior to launching the company, Ms Francis admits that she started during an interesting time in November 2000 when the Immigration Act had just come into effect and a lot of businesses did not have any human resources departments or managers and were required to put a proper structure in place.

"I started literally working in a client's lobby," she said. "It gave me a chance to grow and the business and get myself established."

She worked out of her base in Victoria Hall for about two years before moving into her own office at the site where Latin now is on Victoria Street and taking on her first employee.

Relocating to Parsons Road for another four years, the company moved to its current premises on Berry Hill Road a year ago with a staff of eight. But due to the recession Ms Francis decided to downsize with two staff leaving the company and not being replaced.

"One of the downsides of HR is that it can be a nicety versus a necessity," she said. "But the upside is that there is still a lot of growth on the immigration management side."

Indeed one of the biggest parts of the business currently is immigration management with a number of companies outsourcing the whole process to Performance Solutions to enable them to be more efficient and focus on growth, according to Ms Francis.

She has also maintained another core component in HR management, running that function for a host of clients, particularly those with up to 200 employees, while working on in house professional development with existing HR departments, and offering training services.

A common theme Ms Francis has noticed has been a rise in the number of discussions with companies about downsizing through natural attrition or formal redundancies and looking at carrying it out with the minimum of pain from the initial redundancy to helping those affected find new jobs.

Meanwhile she has also seen an increase in employers searching for applicants with broader experience outside of the job specifications.

To have been in business for 10 years is no mean feat, the success of which Ms Francis attributes to being a boutique shop with a personal relationship with its clients over that period of time, providing a top service and really understanding their business and fitting with their model depending on their needs.

In a place as small as Bermuda, word of mouth has been key to attracting new business, she said. Ms Francis reckons that the Island is in a Catch 22 situation with the need to create opportunities for Bermudians at the same time as the availability of locals shrinking.

Speaking on the issue of work permits, she said that in some cases Bermudians were not applying for jobs and companies were releasing talent only to have to go to the trouble and expense of replacing them with someone else from overseas.

Even positions at the lower end of the pay scale which had been advertised in the paper and other places such as the Bermuda Industrial Union, Ms Francis said, had received little or no interest.

But she said that the Department of Immigration had been doing a better job in terms of scrutinising applications and looking at the training opportunities for Bermudians with a mandate for accountability among firms for their development.

Mr Francis said that due to the economic climate many people had been forced to be more realistic about their expectations in terms of salary in order to maintain stable employment and the time taken to find new work, with companies looking to performance related pay packages.

"Our immigration applications 10 years ago were either from Canada, Britain or the US," she said. "But now it is truly global with applicants from far afield as Africa, Eastern Europe and the Philippines."

In the future Ms Francis aims to expand the company and take on another member of staff in the next year, while on a personal level focusing on her strengths such as the advisory side of the business in succession planning, restructuring and performance management as she looks ahead to the next decade.