Zaun Bhana saw the carnage of Western Australia's mining downturn firsthand.

As clients folded, cut back on spending or sold out, Mr Bhana's IT firm Leap Consulting was forced to adapt.

But in the past 12 months, business has taken off — as more companies seek advice on how to cope with digital disruption.

"Customers are wanting more than just someone to fix their printer or tell them what they should do with cloud," Mr Bhana said.

Leap Consulting managing director Zaun Bhana (r) hired experienced chief information officer, Adam Soudure. ( ABC News: Emily Piesse )

"We cannot keep up with the amount of customers that are asking us for those [advisory] kind of services."

Founded in 2004, Leap provides IT strategy and support services to small and medium-sized businesses.

In order to meet client demand, five new workers have been added to Leap's payroll in under a year — one-quarter of its entire staff.

That hiring spree was considerably easier for the Subiaco business than it would have been previously, due to the downturn in the resources sector.

"In the boom, we really were challenged with affording just basic engineers," Mr Bhana said.

"[The downturn has] created opportunities to hire people with skills and experience we never would have had access to before, and that's leading to more business for us."

Adam Soudure is one of those recruits who would have been out of the company's reach a few years ago.

A redundancy from an ASX-listed mining services company led him to take up the equivalent position — chief information officer — at Leap.

"With where the market was going, not only in WA but globally in the resources industry … certainly there's more growth in the consulting space at the moment, and for me personally that was the right thing to do," Mr Soudure said.

Resources driving employment growth

It is not only the IT sector where a stagnant job market has given way to active recruitment.

For 12 months, WA job advertisements have been on an upward trajectory, driven by higher commodity prices and renewed optimism in the resources sector — with the flow-on effects being felt across the economy.

Exploration geologists, drill and blast specialists and underground engineers are among the most sought-after professionals, along with digital specialists and health workers.

Chris Kent — who heads the WA office of recruitment firm Hays — believes the local job market has finally reached a state of equilibrium.

Hays state regional director Chris Kent says the job market has reached a state of equilibrium. ( ABC News: Emily Piesse )

"There was a lot of 'leaning up', a lot of shedding jobs and managing head count and trying to do everything efficiently and doing more for less," Mr Kent said.

"We've got to that tipping point where essential services — whether it's private sector [or] government — is starting to be affected, and therefore there's some natural job growth."

While online job ads have been climbing steadily for months, Mr Kent said a more recent trend was the decline in the number of views recorded for each advertisement.

That decline may be a lead indicator of a tightening job market, because it suggests there are fewer people competing for each position.

"Wage pressure always comes from skills shortages," Mr Kent said.

"We're thinking that that will start to move the dial a little bit over the next 12 months."

Building industry playing catch-up

Some industries like construction, continue to lag behind the resources sector.

Residential and commercial building remains slow, after years of strong demand for housing and new office space.

It is hoped projects mooted by the Government may help absorb those blue-collar workers in the years ahead.

"The big growth generators, the big projects like Metronet and things, we're really waiting with bated breath for those to kick off," Mr Kent said.

"The jobs will probably be in the private sector, but it's government-facilitated [growth]."

As WA waits for the sod to be turned on Government projects, it's getting harder to find workers in the state's Goldfields.

Underground drilling company Perseverance, headquartered in Boulder, last month recorded its strongest monthly revenue since it was founded 21 years ago, and managing director Andrew Smith said the current market had all the tell-tale signs of a new boom.

Andrew Smith says his company has been "absolutely flat out" for the past six months. ( ABC Goldfields: Nathan Morris )

"Since January, we have been employing about two people every month just to try and keep up as the workload increases," Mr Smith said.

"We saw it 12 months ago, we started seeing more work come through and certainly the last six months it's been absolutely flat out."

Drillers and maintenance workers — especially fitters — are in short supply, so the company is investing heavily in training.

"We get either people with underground experience and we train them up in drilling, or we get people with other drilling experience and we train them up underground," Mr Smith said.

"We can't get the people with the skills we need."

This week, ABC Radio Perth, News and Online are investigating How We Work Western Australia with a series of reports on the jobs market and the future of employment. Tomorrow, we look at the impact of workforce casualisation on businesses and employees.