The recruitment industry in Ireland has suffered from something of an image problem over the past few years. During the boom times there was a significant rise in the number of agencies operating in the country as new staffing companies entered the market to cash in on the skills shortage.
However, many HR departments came to conclude that the rise in the number of staffing companies led to a decline in the level of service offered to clients. Moreover, there were suspicions that some recruiters were acting unprofessionally in order to gain business.
In recent years, the recruitment sector has undergone substantial changes, with the downturn helping to force unprofessional recruiters out of the sector. The National Recruitment Federation (NRF), a voluntary body that sets standards for the industry and acts on behalf of staffing companies in Ireland, has also played an important role in improving the image of the sector.
Formerly known as the Irish Federation of Personnel Services (IFPS), the NRF was established in 1971. It currently has more than 120 member agencies with membership only being granted to organisations who meet criteria of excellence and who agree to abide by the federation’s code of professional conduct.
Paul Carroll, the NRF’s newly appointed president and business development director with the IT recruitment agency, CPL, says that the aim of the federation is to improve the quality and effectiveness of recruitment services offered to clients and candidates and to uphold the professionalism of the recruitment industry.
Commenting on the rise in staffing companies during the boom times and the subsequent downturn, Carroll says, ‘there was a perception in the past that it was easy to get into recruitment and that was partly because the barriers to entry were relatively low. The downturn has proved that recruitment isn’t that easy. From a working perspective this is one of the hardest working jobs that someone can ever do. You’re dealing with people at a very emotional time of their life and while there was a lot of bandwagon jumping in the past from people who set up as a company just to make money, most of those maverick companies are now out of business’.
The NRF has been criticised in the past for its failure to regulate the recruitment industry and Carroll concedes that there were times when the federation could have done more to improve the image of the sector. However, he’s adamant that the work carried out by the organisation is having an impact on the way the industry operates. ‘The rule of the federation is to promote better working practices and we’re trying to create a situation at the moment where we want it to be attractive to be a member, not just because the federation has teeth but because as a member, candidates and clients recognise that our members have signed up to a particular way of working and as a consequence, they, their jobs and their vacancies, will be treated with a certain protocol,’ explains Carroll. That protocol is the NRF’s code of conduct which promotes best practices within the sector. The code covers everything from client and applicant handling, to grievance procedures.
As the newly appointed president of the federation, it’s Carroll’s job to increase membership of the organisation. However, although Carroll does want more members to join, he’s only interested in gaining agencies that promise to abide by the NRF’s code. Carroll says, ‘I want the companies who genuinely sign up to our code of conduct to be members of this organisation. In return we want to be a value for money organisation that can help recruiters in terms of education, by representing their views to government and from a networking and technical expertise perspective.
Although the recruitment agency has suffered something of an image problem in the past, Carroll is hopeful that the work carried out by the NRF will change people’s perceptions of the industry and encourage greater professionalism within the sector.
26/06/2003
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