September’s Media Buzz at Hays

This last month we've seen an influx of international journalists and media types around our office. We’ve had from Swiss Radio to French Television stations in! Why? Mostly to discuss job migration and the Irish jobs market. We’ve snapped a few photos of Paul O’Donnell, one of our senior recruitment managers, being interviewed on migration and Irish emigration for France 3. The glamorous life of recruitment in Hays!

Paul O'Donnell getting interviewed by France 3.

How this all came about…
In the summer we did a survey on migration in the construction industry, moreover, emigration from Ireland, which resulted in a report and press release which received considerable coverage in the Irish media.

At the start of September I received a call from a journalist in Switzerland, she worked for the highest rated radio show in the country on Radio Suisse Romande. She had found our story via independent.ie and travelled to Dublin to interview our senior recruiting experts on recent emigration from Ireland and the jobs market.

This was followed up by a call from a journalist who worked for Avenue de l'Europe on France 3, one of the French public service stations who also saw our story online and wanted to discuss the same topics emigration from Ireland and the jobs market. They arrived earlier this week with a crew of four and interviewed Paul O’Donnell who was the spokesperson for the migration survey.

If you are an Irish company wishing to increase trade internationally, don’t underestimate the global reach of the local media with a strong PR story.

Recruiters need to act as brand ambassadors for Ireland

The Berlin Language Fair was great to attend and a good eye opener for me in terms of European candidates’ perceptions of Ireland at the moment. While it remains an attractive destination for a number of reasons, negative press surrounding the banking crisis abounds and can cause potential candidates to pause for thought. The coverage is lop-sided and focuses little attention on the strength of our service export market here (up 6.4% in H1 2010) and the excellent selection of multinational companies with operations based here.

The disproportionate analysis damages the Ireland brand and can create difficulties in our attempts to attract candidates here. As recruitment professionals it is up to us to act as brand ambassadors to ensure that the negative coverage is effectively counteracted, emphasising service export as the shining light of the economy that’s full of further potential. Our ability to do this effectively will have a strong influence on the continued success of the SSE market in Ireland. Multinationals will only establish and maintain a presence here if they have confidence they can fully meet their staffing requirements.

Despite our current woes, our country has a lot to offer – we need to work to get that message across and ensure Ireland’s negative press is effectively counter-balanced. The Berlin Fair really served to underline this and it was great to see the warm response to Ireland but it was a reminder of the importance of recruiters as brand ambassadors for our country.

Ireland remains attractive for multilingual job seekers

Hays Ireland has embarked on a number of initiatives to find the difficult multilingual candidates that are currently so sought after by large multinationals across Ireland. One of the most exciting is attending events in the candidates' native countries.

German is a popular and difficult language to source for our customers so we decided to sign up for the Bilingual People Specialist Expat and Language Recruitment Fair in Berlin. We had attended a fair organised by the same people in Dublin, back in March which was a great success.

We were slightly concerned that the slaying of the Celtic Tiger had scared people off coming to Ireland so it was important to get a real feel for what the rest of Europe was thinking about us, or in this case, the Germans. We were relieved to find that there were many people, not just Germans, still interested in working in Ireland. Nearly all the people we spoke to were interested in applying for the jobs we had on offer or presenting their CVs for other jobs.

Paul O'Donnell and Martin Kelly from Ireland with Anne Payarolla from Germany

Professionals across Europe are interested in moving to other countries to improve their careers by polishing their second language - in most cases English. Ireland still has huge appeal. When you add in the number of major multinationals who have chosen to locate in Ireland, it is very easy to see why young professionals would locate here.

The multilingual fair in Berlin was a huge success for us, based on the quality and quantity of CVs we received. Since networking in Berlin 4 days ago, we've already arranged numerous interviews and look forward to seeing our first candidates in new roles by the end of the month.

The next multilingual destination is Amsterdam, for the equally sought after Dutch candidates. One good thing about working for a large international company is the support you receive from your native colleagues in the countries you are exhibiting. Our German team were fantastic in supporting us, 'Danke schön!' and we look forward to another wonderful collaboration in the Netherlands.

International assistance from our German colleagues

IT skills in demand in Ireland

The last 6 months has seen a large number of announcements from the IDA in relation to the creation of new jobs in the Information Technology sector. Some of these come from established companies including IBM, SAP, Google, telfonica o2, Citrix, Servicesource, AOL and Hewlett Packard whilst others come from newcomers to Ireland including Riot Games, MFG.com, Electronic Arts, Webroot and Lumension.

In 2010 we have seen a significant increase in demand for IT contractors, mainly from IT Consultancy based companies who are now getting the opportunity to bid for contracts in the Public Service and Financial Services sectors – a major shift from 12 months ago. Permanent recruitment has also started to pick up over the last 3 months with demand increasing in niche sectors.

As ever it is always hard to find good people and skills in demand include: Contractors with Java, C# and .net development. On the infrastructure side VMWare, Unix and SAN Specialists are all highly sought after. The permanent recruitment market has different dynamics and whilst Java is still in demand, so is C#. The permanent market sees industry experience just as important as skills and any one with Financial Services backgrounds, particularly in insurance and life and pensions, will find options in the market.

Salary levels and Contractor rates are still in line with 12 months ago, but if demand continues to increase, it is likely that we will see some pressure on these over the next 6 months.

In summary, the market looks optimistically healthy and the important investment from international organisations continues. But we should take this with a note of caution, there are warnings that if Ireland is not able to produce the calibre of candidates these type of organisations demand they could take their investment elsewhere.

If you are an established professional in the IT industry or a graduate looking for your first role you could do worse than becoming proficient in some of the above skills.