IT recruiters are finding it more necessary than ever to practise their networking skills. As finding suitable candidates for high-level positions becomes more challenging, new avenues have to be explored. “Recruiters have to network more than ever, whether online or face-to-face,” commented Declan McNiff, managing director with RealTime Recruitment.
It’s a point with which Aidan McKee, head of BluePrint Appointments (part of The Grafton Employment Group), concurred. “The process or principles (of IT recruitment) have not necessarily changed, but recruiters are looking at their own skill-set and have improved. They will look to improve their networking skills on different levels in order to attract candidates.”
The reason for upping these skills is the relatively low numbers of Irish candidates around to fill the growing number of high-level IT positions on the market. Cormac Moore works with Abrivia Recruitment Specialists as manager for IT recruitment. He made the point to ComputerScope that, “it’s more difficult now than it was during the height of the boom to find the right candidates for some IT positions.”
SOCIAL MEDIA
Moore continued, “You’ve to look to new ways to source the candidates – for instance, social networking is a big thing that wasn’t there in 2006 or 2007, or at least not to the extent it is now anyway. So the likes of LinkedIn and Twitter are being utilised to get the message out there or find the right people.” Facebook, he added, is “a more difficult one” to utilise effectively, but he did comment that “it’s an avenue that’s being looked at by some people”.
CPL Resources head of ICT, Robert Daly noted that the difficult economic landscape of the past few years have seen the company advise clients to revisit their “talent and recruitment strategy”. He’s asked them to focus on articulating a “strong message about what their company offers potential candidates”.
The CPL man added, “The economic conditions have impacted the IT sector in a variety of different ways and one of them has been around the expectation in the increase in the availability of talent. The reality is that the IT sector has healthy employment figures when compared with the general average. The IT sector would be at five to six per cent unemployment compared to 18% across the board.
“The knock on effect is that companies have expected with the downturn to be inundated with IT talent. They thought that they would have queues of people down the street looking for jobs. This is simply not the case for this sector. IT candidates in particular software engineers have a very wide variety of jobs to choose from.”
RADICALLY ALTERED
Sonya Curley, director with recruitment agency Harvey Nash spoke to ComputerScope about how the IT recruitment landscape has changed in recent times. “The expectation of what service a recruitment firm needs to provide, in order to offer value, has radically altered,” commented Curley.
“Contingent recruitment is, in effect, now more of a search and selection model in terms of processes. Recruitment organisations need to offer comprehensive quality-driven services with a focus on advanced search techniques to provide top talent.”
Speaking along similar lines, McNiff would add that the economic downturn has highlighted the need for greater IT efficiencies in companies nationally. “All these companies are chasing the same small pool of high-calibre candidates,” he added.
“These high quality candidates will have multiple offers whether contract or permanent. IT recruiters have had to become more proactive to attract ‘passive’ candidates. These are high-calibre candidates that are not necessarily looking for a new job but are interested in moving when their ideal role is put in front of them.”
MOTIVATIONS
CPL’s Daly noted that during economic boom years, or even reaching back to the dotcom era, “people changed jobs with more ease”. At the moment he said, recruiters are working with their “candidate community” to understand current motivations to change jobs and help them assess that decision in an open manner.
In the last year with demand for IT staff growing, the sector has seen a significant increase in the ‘counter-offer’ he added. “This is where the exiting employer looks to retain staff who are potentially leaving by offering a higher salary or new title, job, or project. Our IT recruiters are working with candidates to help them explore this option before they start any recruitment process. Accepting a counter offer, is frustrating for everybody concerned as potential new employers feel time is wasted and the incumbent employer feels the gun was to their head.”
This has, he said, added extra layer to the recruitment processes because it’s something “people don’t stop to think about when they do leave” particularly in the IT sector where certain skills are demand.
Abrivia’s Moore weighed in on this topic, saying, “At the minute you have a situation where no one is leaving their job; they want security that’s still paramount in people’s minds. But there are nearly as many jobs on stream now as there was in 2006 or 2007. All we hear on a daily basis is negative comments about the economy and of course there are some industries that have been obliterated like the construction industry.
“However,” he continued, “IT is in a huge boom and we need people. If we don’t get these people there’s a danger that major foreign companies will leave these shores. You’d be amazed the amount of times we speak to a talented IT candidate who can’t get over the amount of opportunities out there. That has to be addressed, if you’re not happy, look around.”
SURVIVORS
Having adapted to the rigours of the past few years, how do IT recruiters intend to keep moving forward? If anything, said CPL’s Daly, the industry is full of survivors. “IT Recruiters have a long tradition of adapting to new technologies or challenges in their sector,” he commented.
“In the late 1990’s newspaper advertising was seen as the death of the recruiter, and then came job boards and now the advent of social media. On each occasions recruiters tend to become the predominate users of these technologies,” he said. “In terms of recent technologies such as LinkedIn this is heavily geared towards recruiters and has been leapt upon by most IT recruiters to build up their network and connections. Good recruiters develop a multi-faceted approach to technology and tend to use a mix of everything to achieve their objectives.”
Harvey Nash’s Curley added that “social media is the obvious area” where there will be developments in the next 18 months. Though, she also told how “video interviewing and related technology” will impact IT recruitment during that period as well.
McKee of BluePrint Appointments commented on developments in the year ahead by saying “latent talent is currently the name of the game” with a large emphasis on social networking and “social cloud sourcing” being brought to the forefront. The advancement in mobile and web based technology has greatly allowed improved communication to happen across a number of web based mediums, he also noted.
CAREFUL BALANCE
RealTime’s McNiff talked along the same lines, saying that as candidates make themselves “more visible to the business world online”, most IT Recruiters are now active within the social media space to prove that “they have a voice and an opinion” on what is happening in the IT market. A careful balance needs to be struck, he warned.
“A lot of recruiters overdo it and think they have to have an opinion on everything, which no one really cares for and a lot are placing too much emphasis on social media as their main communication tool, as opposed to face-to-face contact. Due to recruiter overkill, already we see a number of professionals de-listing their personal details from professional web forums. People sell to people, and people buy from people. Nothing beats face to face representation to build rapport and client or candidate trust. The advancement of social media is an important tool but is not the ‘golden ticket’ yet. Maybe it will be for the next generation.”
At present IT recruiters are still at the early stage of development with social media channels such as Twitter, and Facebook, commented Daly. LinkedIn, however, is much more advanced to suit the needs of recruiters, he claimed. “Facebook and Twitter are not set up primarily with the focus of helping people change jobs or look at their career so understanding how these technologies evolve and play a role in the recruiter’s life will be a key development for the IT recruitment community.”
Interestingly, Daly would tell ComputerScope that process improvement from a client standpoint will be an area of interest over the coming year as well. IT recruiters, he said, have to work closer with their hiring partners to greatly improve the recruitment process. Given budget constraints and time delays of having people involved in a recruitment process, “some of the future developments are around having people look at their process in all its entirety”. This is, he said, to ensure that everybody in the organisation is ready and set up for any hiring process.
Recruiters need, he said, to help clients understand that demand for IT talent is high and that good candidates go off the market quickly. “One other interesting development is centres around the use of cloud computing, mobile technology and apps,” Daly added. “This means recruiters can work more from any location which may make recruiters more available to work from anywhere or potentially any geography. This will lead to more central sourcing teams potentially sourcing candidates from one European hub.”
COMMUNICATIONS
On the topic of being more available, McNiff commented that “when you see Microsoft buy a company like Skype you just know the trend for speed and ease of communication will continue unabated”. Recruiters’ daily activities, he said, will continue to evolve so that they incorporate all the latest technical tool advancements. “Many Recruiters are looking to find the next attention grabber, the race has already started to produce the best recruitment iPhone app in Ireland, with them beginning to hit the market,” added the RealTime MD.
Abrivia’s Moore threw the net a little wider, commenting that hopefully the message from IT recruiters that more top class talent is needed might strike a chord at national level. “There’s figures that stand out like a near 80% drop in people going to study computer science degrees,” he said, “that has be addressed at second and third level education.”
Coming from yet another angle, McKee would note that an important change that has already started to stimulate growth in the industry is the shift in the “sectoral composition of the economy”. This, he said, favours growth in office- and knowledge-based industries. McKee would add that this leads to more demand for support staff to help end users operate IT systems. “On top of this will be important technological changes, such as the continued growth in networking, the technological convergence of IT and telecommunication technologies and the introduction of new operating systems.”
He continued, “New media is playing a role and it’s not just about the opportunity to find candidates, it is also about the sharing of information that consultants and candidates can use to improve their knowledge, how they prepare a CV, interview preparation, how a company can improve its presence/sell themselves in the market or how a person can find themselves a job. Work patterns have changed to satisfy employer demands for a more flexible workforce, involving more temporary contracts, part-time working, subcontracting, flexible shift patterns and self-employment.”
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