In our employer insights series, Richard Eardley, managing director of Hays Ireland, discusses the tech jobs market in Ireland and how it could do with being a little more European.
When looking at the Hays Global Skills Index, particularly in Ireland, there’s evidently a talent mismatch. We already know that, in the tech industry, the demand for staff is higher than the supply.
But of all the 32 countries surveyed by Hays for its report, Ireland still stands out as having the biggest discrepancy.
Eardley thinks the job of educators is to broadly point people towards STEM subjects really early on. “But also to make sure that they develop a culture of learning. What businesses want now are agile people with an appetite for learning,” he says.
“Europeans do education better. We’ll interview candidates here at Hays in their late-20s/early-30s who are still studying. If you are in France, doing an MA, you will spend as much time in business as you will in college. So when you come out of the course you are job ready.
“Over here, the complaint that employers often have about the graduates is they are fine from the technical and theoretical point of view, but they are a little bit clueless when it comes to what things are actually like in the workplace. It can take two years to get up to speed.”
Hays sees a broad spectrum of possibilities for employees in Ireland. From established multinationals in Dublin to start-ups emerging everywhere, the opportunities are massive.
Eardley’s wish list is to see the growth explosion in Dublin replicated elsewhere. “I think it will (happen),” he says, which would make for an “absolutely fabulous year for Hays.”
