Opportunities exist in tough times

Sunday Business Post - Recruitment Section - Apr 05 2009

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This year’s National Recruitment Federation (NRF) annual conference takes place against the backdrop of troubled times for an industry halved in just two years. NRF president Frank Collins said the event - billed as ‘Facing the future with ease - education, enterprise & enthusiasm’ - would promote a positive outlook among recruiters who remain active in the Irish market.

‘‘As an industry, we are suffering, but we would rather dwell on the positives,” said Collins. ‘‘There are small signs of growth in the industry, and we felt that we need to position ourselves for the inevitable turnaround and to lift people’s spirits. There are still a lot of good things happening out there - a lot of good things that we can do.”

The one-day conference takes place on Thursday, April 23 at Citywest Hotel in Saggart, Co Dublin.

Chaired by career management expert Rowan Manahan of Fortify Services, the event will also feature speeches from Minister for Labour Affairs Billy Kelleher, Alan Haugh of the National Employment Rights Association (Nera) and Ann-Marie Muntz of the world employers’ body Euro CIETT.

Lucy Gaffney, chair of Communicorp and formerly director and chief operations officer of Esat Telecom, will talk about managing a company through the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

Management consultant Bill Braining will outline his 13-point ‘Tin hat strategy’ for business growth, while Tempy Cummins, of Vision 2 Reality, will advise agency owners on motivating and encouraging staff through a difficult period.

Collins said the conference would help recruiters to improve service levels in a tight market. His presentation at the event will introduce the NRF’s new education strategy, which includes the launch later this year of a continuous professional development certificate.

‘‘We need, as a body, to ensure we give a certain standard of service, and we want to have a qualification that all recruiters should have,” Collins said. ‘‘Most of the people within the industry are professionals in their own sectors - they are accountants or engineers, qualified in the area they are recruiting in. This gives them the extra background they need to know in terms of the recruitment side. There has been a demand for this for quite a while, but it has taken time for us to get a course written and off the ground.”

Leveraging new technology can help recruiters to maximise available resources, said Collins.

‘‘Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications will be giving a live demonstration of the latest technologies in social networking. We will see how sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can be used in a firm’s day-to-day activities to help them recruit the right candidates,” he said.


Collins said he expected a high turnout from the NRF’s 120 member agencies at the event. He said non-members were also welcome.

‘‘This is the first year we have opened up the conference to all recruitment professionals,” said Collins. ‘‘There are a lot of people who recruit people who do not necessarily work for a recruitment agency. We want to spread the word to as many people as possible who are involved in recruitment activities.”

The last two years have, he added, been ‘‘traumatic’’ for the recruitment sector in Ireland, with the number of people employed by recruitment agencies falling significantly from a peak of just over 12,000 in 2007.

‘‘We are probably somewhere around 7,000 or 8,000 now,” Collins said. ‘‘We did a survey in autumn 2008,which found that 2,000 people had lost their jobs in the recruitment industry in the previous twelve months. I would have little doubt that another 2,000 have lost their jobs since then.”

The number of recruitment agencies operating in Ireland has also dropped sharply, Collins said.

‘‘Atone stage, there were 450 agencies here,” he said. ‘‘The number is now probably somewhere between 350 and 400.

Some agencies have shut down, particularly multinational agencies that had opened offices in Dublin. Other agencies are closing regional branches, which were costly to run. Some purely specialist sectional agencies went out of business when demand dried up.”

There has been some consolidation in the market, Collins said. ‘‘There are not necessarily more mergers and acquisitions than previously, but there are more agencies now looking in an opportunistic way to get agencies on the cheap, whereas before it was more about expanding into new sectors,” he said.

Collins said that a lack of confidence in the Irish economy was just as detrimental to the recruitment sector as the lack of new positions to fill.

‘‘Currently, there are more people losing jobs than there are getting jobs. That means there are less jobs for us to be filling,” he said.

‘‘There is also a knock-on effect, as people are not confident and are not moving jobs.

They are looking for stability and do not want to take a risk, especially as they will not be covered for redundancy if they are less than two years in the new job. If everyone stays where they are, there is no recruitment happening.”

Collins said that the latest live register figures - which showed the national rate of unemployment had increased last month to 11 per cent -were bad news for Irish recruiters, but he also pointed to the fact that 30,000 people came off the live register in January and February this year.

‘‘There are jobs out there, there are people getting jobs every day of the week. There is a lot of despair around, and a lot of misinformation, but there are opportunities out there,” he said.

‘‘Last week alone, NRF members placed over 400 people into permanent jobs, and filled 550 temporary roles. Other people started jobs that they found in other ways. We are not deluded, but it is important to acknowledge that there are some jobs available.

‘‘Construction and financial services have been hit badly, but certain parts of the services sector, particularly international traded services, are doing quite well.

‘‘Pharmaceutical is also doing quite well, and there are still retail and marketing jobs going. The healthcare sector and catering are not doing too badly either.”

Collins said the recruitment sector acted as an early warning system for the economy. There is some evidence of positive trends in the industry.

‘‘We lead economies by six to eighteen months. We saw the downturn in Ireland well before others, and we will see the upturn too,” Collins said.

‘‘A number of our members say they are starting to see some small pick-up. January and February were dead, but they are starting to see some movement now. With a bit of luck, it might accelerate a bit towards the end of the year.”

For more information on the NRF Annual Conference 2009, phone 01–8161754, or e-mail: director@nrf.ie. The cost of entry for non-members is €75