By Daniela Aroche

The job market in Asia is on track to return to health and lawyers looking for work have much to look forward to, according to a recent survey by Hudson.

The Hudson Report, which surveyed nearly 1,600 key employment decision-makers in China (Beijing and Shanghai), Hong Kong and Singapore, in several industries including legal, revealed that hiring expectations are on the rise across Asia.

"The job market across Asia is recovering compared to a year ago. Employment expectations are on the rise at varying paces and the legal job market is picking up pace steadily," said Chrys Leong, consultant at Hudson Singapore.

"However, recovery is more sluggish than we predicted and interestingly, slowed down from encouraging kick-start that we saw late Q4 09 and early Q110. However, in Hong Kong [which reported a fall in hiring expectation this quarter] no respondents anticipate staff cuts - and a number of legal firms hired aggressively in the first quarter, notably for IPO specialists, so it indicates that demand is falling now."

The survey also revealed that the majority of employers are willing to make counter offers when employees resign to join other companies - 76% in China, 67% in Hong Kong and 61% in Singapore - with an increase in base salaries seen as the most effective counter measure.

According to Leong, in-house hiring is also on the rise. "We have observed in-house opportunities surfacing across various sectors after the past year of austere hiring," she said.

According to the survey results, law firms are most likely to transfer staff internally to fill gaps, but this is not necessarily bad news for lawyers still looking to get their foot in the door. "Best practice recruitment involves a combination of internal and external channels and is always based on hiring the best candidate for the job, regardless of candidate source," says Leong. "There will always be instances where internal candidates cannot fill the role at hand for a variety of reasons."

Percentage of employers who forecast headcount growth this quarter

Source: The Hudson Report