Agents scout for talent in tight market

Informally, high-technology employment agencies are rather unpleasantly termed headhunters. Certainly, they are the companies with the contacts, adept at tracking available heads for empty jobs.

A brief conversation at an afterhours reception at an industry product launch; a discreet phone call; a quiet word in the ear, and they have coaxed an executive out of one company and into another.

But those are the few and far between assignments. The less glamorous truth is that agencies are the workhorses of the industry, sourcing employees in a tight employment market, acting as counsellors to industry and individuals regarding salaries, contracts and benefits packages, and in general, labouring to keep their databases full of the tech job candidates companies are looking for.

An insatiable demand for IT personnel comes not only from the hardware and software industries, which continue to crowd into the State, but also from other business sectors which have a high dependence on computers. Many of those companies turn the search over to agencies, which can function in a variety of roles.

Sometimes they do the first trawl of CVs in response to a job advertisement, handing over a shortlist to the company, which carries on from there. Sometimes the agencies are approached to search their databases and work the phones for suitable candidates for a specialised or executive position. And sometimes the agencies handle mass hirings for newly-locating or fast-expanding companies, such as Silicon Valley firms opening a base here.

"We're basically an appendage as such to a personnel department," says Mr John Doupe, director of the Marlborough Group agency and the man who oversees its information technology division. They screen CVs and do initial interviews, then pass along the narrowed field to the client company for the second and final selection.

Sometimes this can mean hiring in whole divisions. Some companies, like Boston Scientific in Galway, were hiring in up to 50 new people a week at one point of intensive growth; IBM has been looking for hundreds of new employees for its Mulhuddart extension. In addition, foreign technology companies opening offices here typically need to hire in a workforce - usually dozens of people - before they've even acquired an Irish mailing address.

Agencies do the initial groundwork, although Ms Liz Neligan, managing director of Computer Staff Recruitment (CSR), says taking a company from zero employees to full staff can be "quite onerous with the volume of phone calls and the volume of CVs that have to be handled".

"I wouldn't like to do too many start-ups in a year, because it can make you take your eye off the ball in terms of servicing your other clients," she says. And agency work is all about relationships. "It's almost like being a marriage counsellor," says Ms Neligan.

Agencies such as CSR and Marlborough have seen the job market change dramatically for IT employees. While there were always jobs of some sort, Irish graduates often found themselves overqualified for what was on offer, typically manufacturing or service positions. Now, the technology industry wants everything from call centre help to high-level research and development employees, and the agencies are always scrambling to find suitable candidates.

Nonetheless, not everyone agrees that there's a serious skills shortage in Ireland. "To a certain extent, that's scaremongering among the agencies," argues Mr Doupe. "The market might not be as full of C++ or Cobol programmers, but I wouldn't have any problem in putting together an appropriate set of candidates."

Ms Neligan says that while the job market is tight, Ireland has more quality employees available for companies than many other areas of the world. She thinks companies may see a shortage here when contrasting the current situation to the past.

"Ten to 15 years ago we did have a glut of graduates and not enough jobs to put them into," she says. "A lot of companies which set up then thought there would be an endless supply." She feels strongly that companies often recruited over-qualified candidates into positions which had no advancement prospects.

Now, as salaries are rising and employees look for ever more impressive perks, some companies still haven't recognised that the market has changed. Some baulk at paying the salaries that now go with the qualifications and skills they're seeking, so the perception of "skills shortages" can "depend on how realistic the client is in relation to a job. Client companies are used to having been spoiled a bit," says Marlborough's Mr Doupe.

But they're increasingly willing to not only pay the going rate for technology workers, but also to pay the typical agency fee of 15 per cent of the employee's first year salary - including any signing bonuses. Certainly demand for employees is not about to ease off, and the Irish technology boom hasn't gone unnoticed across the Irish Sea either.

Computer Team Group, a large British agency with nine offices across Britain, has found the market attractive enough to choose Ireland for its first expansion office outside Britain.

"We looked at a number of countries and regions inside and outside Europe and really decided that the first opportunity for us was in Ireland," says Mr Peter Smith, chief executive with parent company Hutchinson Smith Ltd.

Computer Team Group already works with major IT players like Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and Informix, and thought it made sense to locate where many of those companies have major European operations.

Smith believes that the demand for IT labour can't be met by the educational systems of Britain and Ireland, and notes that they're looking at ways of "reskilling" people, non-IT graduates who want to get into the market as well as women who left the job market to raise families and want to return.

"Upskilling" is another option for increasing the employee pool. A recent initiative aims to "upgrade" employees already in the technology industry by retraining them into high-demand areas.

CSR and Siemens-Nixdorf's IT training division, CATT (Centre for Advanced Training Technology), will take job candidates who want to move into new IT areas and match them to companies who have specific skills needs. Companies go to CATT to design a training programme, CSR sources the employees, and job candidates get trained into their area of interest and have a new job.

Acquiring employees through agencies is a significant cost for companies, but that doesn't seem to be a deterrent in the current market, where finding skilled candidates is a continuous headache. "They just want someone to come in and take the pain away," says Mr Smith.