Tech firms are looking for talent beyond specific roles and are increasingly creative in seeking out skilled workers, writes ADAM MAGUIRE

IRISH-BASED firms in the Information Communications and Technology (ICT) sector say it is as hard as ever to find the right staff for the thousands of vacancies currently in the sector.

“It’s still a challenge,” according to Liam Ryan, managing director of SAP Service and Support Centre, Ireland. “We have to put an awful lot of effort into working with the universities. We have an intern programme, a graduate programme, we do regular guest lecturing and we always have to keep our options open as regards the source of new staff.”

Ryan said the constant demand on a limited pool of talent means SAP must be creative in its approach to seeking workers. He said their aim is to hire people with “logical minds”, which includes teaching graduates as much as those from more typical areas like computer sciences, engineering and programming.

Intel, which announced new jobs at the start of the year, has also taken a broader approach in seeking staff, according to Brendan Cannon, corporate affairs director at the company.

“We advertised the jobs and they would have been targeted at a particular type of skill set but as we went further down the process we’ve started to look at those who are close and could have their skills converted through something like a bridging course,” he said.

Cannon said there are currently about 47 of its jobs still to be filled, though he said the company was always on the look-out for talent beyond specific roles.

SAP, meanwhile, currently has about 105 open vacancies, having already hired 106 people so far this year. Ryan said it too had a constant need for new staff – a trend that was echoed across the ICT industry.

While it is hard to pinpoint the scale of the current demand, ICT Ireland, the representative body for the sector in Ireland, estimates there are 3,500 ICT jobs available.

According to Gary Mullan, co- managing director of digital recruitment agency Prosperity.ie, a lot of this demand is coming about because of the wider shift by business to digital platforms.

“Recently people have started to see there is much more value from things like online and mobile, so more and more of a budget is becoming available.”

He said his company has seen skill sets around web and mobile development, e-commerce and social media become particularly sought after. It was crucial this demand was met, he added, as a failure to do so could ultimately make Ireland less attractive to overseas investors.

Indeed, importing talent is standard practice for many ICT companies in Ireland, particularly the big players. However, the thin spread of technical skills is not the only driver in this; a dearth of other skills like languages is also a contributing factor.

“Due to our need for native language speakers in as many as 45 different languages, being able to attract skilled and talented people from abroad is very important to us,” said Helen Tynan, human relations manager for Google Ireland. “We are very fortunate that Ireland is still seen as a desirable location for people to relocate to.”

According to Tynan, Google currently has about 170 vacancies in Ireland covering software engineering, support sales and less technical areas like finance.

“You have cases of people coming from other countries with multiple languages and more needs to be done to help people here compete with that,” said Martin Murphy, country manager at HP Ireland.

HP has had about 300 vacancies in Ireland in the past 12 months. According to Murphy, many of those hired for language skills are based in Ireland but not of Irish nationality, while a handful might be relocating from overseas.

If companies like these are finding it hard to fill roles with local talent, it might be assumed that smaller companies and start-ups are having an even harder time.

However, for Fidelma Healy, chief operating officer of The Gilt Groupe, the presence of big multinationals is more of an advantage than anything else.

“The cluster of digital companies operating in Dublin means that there is a pool of talent here which will help drive our needs,” she said.

The Gilt Groupe is an online merchant focusing on high-quality brands through Gilt.com.

According to Healy the company expects to create between 100 and 200 jobs, 60 of which will be filled this year.

With new jobs coming on stream all the time, those in the ICT sector see no sign of demand for skills slowing.