A report published earlier this week from Forfas entitled “Future Requirements for High Level ICT Skills in the ICT Sector” made for interesting reading. It is well known that the ICT sector is a significant player in the Irish economy, with approximately 70,000 skilled professionals working in this area, with many of these employed by global giants like Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and IBM to name but a few.

However this industry faces many challenges in the coming years and one of those is the availability of skilled professionals for this industry. According to Anne Heraty, Chairperson of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (EGFSN) the challenge is threefold:

(i) boost the supply of high level graduates

(ii) up-skill those already working in this sector

(iii) attract highly skilled individuals through migration where necessary.

A number of recommendations where laid out on the report which is accessible from www.forfas.ie. One of the recommendations was that there should be better communication of the career opportunities and skills needs of the ICT sector. This makes perfect sense. I believe that ICT Companies, and second and third level colleges should work together to actively communicate to the next generation of hires what the Industry is about, what skills you need, and what opportunities are on offer.

Shouldn’t it be possible for the larger organisations to identify approximately 10 people from their company to speak to 2nd and 3rd level students and to tell them about their career to date, choices they took at third level to progress in this career and perhaps choices they might have made with hindsight.

The SME/SMB businesses could also combine their strengths to identify a number of key individuals to promote this message on behalf of a number of companies in this segment.

Let successful people explain their career and what they do on a day to day basis.  Let the students know the career opportunities available, the challenges, the earnings potential of the role or the opportunities it offers for travel and the skills required to be successful.
This should be happening but it is not.

Three weeks I was having a lunch meeting with a Talent Partners client, the CEO of an Irish ICT Company. The company has made significant inroads in recent years and the CEO had a very impressive CV, working with global blue chip companies before assuming his present role.

I remarked to him that he had a great story to tell and he should be telling this to students at second and third level.  He responded by saying he contacted his secondary school to let them know about his career to date and present role and if they so wished he would give a talk to the leaving cert students about the ICT industry. His offer was politely declined.

This is a level of career guidance that needs to be incorporated in the school programme. Schools should be tracking the success stories of successful students and bringing these people back to give real insight into the industry and business in which they work today. What’s the expression, a little help goes a long way!

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Last week I had the pleasure of travelling to Venice to attend the Networking Venice ‘08 meeting which was organised by Trond Larsen from The Scandinavian Search Group in Norway and Wim Hernalsteen and Lieve Goedefroy who run the highly successful Talent Gallery in Belgium & The Netherlands.

Delegates from MRINetwork offices in 18 countries attended this two day event , and we were joined by the CEO of MRI Network, Michael Jalbert who travelled from the US to attend this meeting.

The meeting allowed those present to gain a deeper insight into the recruitment trends and practices in local and international markets and also allowed us to share best practices and local initiatives that have been successful throughout our network.

European speakers included David Roots and Juan Manuel Romero, from The Netherlands and Spain who discussed success stories in Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). Stephen Kennedy from Talent Partners in Ireland, John Steele from Switzerland and Roman Falkowski from Germany.

Our US friends took to the stage to update us on the recruitment activity Stateside and the indicators are very positive with strong hiring trends and a constant demand for highly qualified and talented professionals. US speakers included Mickey Kampsen & Ed Provost, both from the west coast, Todd Dawson, Bob Meissner and Rick Sinay, Jeff Heath andDave Campeas and Gary Suskin from the east coast.

There are also a number of global accounts that MRINetwork offices successfully deliver top talent to year in year out, and the success of these accounts was also discussed.

Last year MRINetwork opened their first office in Israeland David Gantshar gave us an update of their success to date.  Our business in the Middle East continues to grow under the guidance of Jacques Ashkar and Jacques was able to outline further expansion plans for this region over the next two years. Carlos Rivera outlined the successful growth of MRINetwork in South America and the plans to grow and develop our network in this part of the world.

As you can see MRINetwork truly have the power and capability to deliver impact players to businesses on a global scale. Our meeting in Venice was a huge success and has followed on from previous meeting held in Barcelona, Nice and Rome.  Come October we will be packing our bags and heading to our global conference in Las Vegas where 600 plus MRINetwork industry professional will come together to discuss best practice and drive business throughout our network.

If you a client looking to hire top talent internationally or a candidate looking to use a global network to identify your next role then contact us and we will be delighted to talk to you. By calling us, you are opening a door to 1100 offices and 4000 plus business professionals worldwide! We can help you identify top talent in any location.

 Stephen

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Talent Partners recently conducted an online survey which was completed by 120 professionals from the Irish marketplace. Of the 120 respondents, 85%had 10 or more years industry experience, with 75% of respondents being employed in the ICT sector in Ireland and the Banking & Financial Services sector accounting for approximately 18% of respondents.

With talent management being of one the buzz words of today’s marketplace and many companies invariably claiming that people are their greatest assets, Talent Partners wanted to gain an understanding from a candidates perspective as to well their career is being managed in their present company.

Q. How effective has your present employer been in managing and developing your career in your present role?

Of all the respondents, 48.4% had three years plus experience in their present role, (19.2% had 6 years plus experience). From this group, 43.2% deemed their company to be effective in managing and developing their career with just 8.5% stating that their company was very effective. With effective and very effective having a combined score of 51.7% one can say the glass is more than half full and that’s encouraging but in the two industry sectors (ICT and Banking & Financial Services) where it has been constantly acknowledged as to how difficult it is to recruit high calibre candidates one would have expected a better percentage score to this question. Are we biting the hand that feeds us?

20.3%of candidates interviewed felt that their company was ineffective in managing their career with 4.2% stating their companies were very ineffective. Again this is a worrying statistic as it is 24.5% of all candidates interviewed expressing negative sentiment about how their present employer is managing their career. 23.7% of candidates expressed no opinion to this question.

If you are looking for talent management tips refer back to our blog from april 18th – top tips for talent management – where we outline our findings from our White Paper on the Competition for Talent in the Irish Marketplace – that we commissioned in 2007.

An additional source of concern from the research conducted was that 44.9% of candidates responded that they had no formal appraisal in the last 12 months with no clear objectives set for them in their current roles. If there are no clear objectives set for our employees then how are we managing performance, how do we know what is good and bad business performance and why are the appraisals not taking place. What kind of message is this sending out to the candidate.

As discussed at the top of this blog, talent management seems to be thew buzzword and people are actively talking about it but it certainly needs to be implemented as opposed to being preached. It is the Talent Partners opinion that high performing candidates are a company’s greatest asset, if you are not looking after them someone else will. Be warned!

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