Global brands recruit Irish suppliers to win the war for talent

David Corcoran, global talent management advisor based in Enterprise Ireland’s London office, explains how innovative Irish companies are helping global brands to win the war for talent.

In the war for talent, having an innovative Irish company on your side is a major advantage. It’s a fact some of the world’s top brands know firsthand.

Global names, such as Nestle, Microsoft, Pepsi, and Qatar Airways, have all turned to Irish talent management solutions for help in attracting, managing, and developing their biggest asset – their people.

The war for talent is about more than recruitment, and Ireland’s talent management sector is recognised globally as being unparalleled in its breadth. It encompasses solutions for talent acquisition, workforce management, professional learning, performance management, and workplace recognition.

 

Irish partners are proving a global ally in the war for talent

As Johnny Campbell, founder and CEO of Social Talent, put it at the World Employment Conference, held in Dublin recently, it’s not really so much a war for talent, as a war for skills.

Technology has an increasing role to play in building those skills, developing talent from within. And the world’s most progressive employers are arming themselves with Irish solutions.

There are several reasons why talent management is an area that Ireland excels in.

As the world of work undergoes seismic shifts in terms of skills shortages, diversity, millennial talent, and the gig economy, innovative Irish solution providers are at the forefront of partnering with progressive human resources and recruitment departments around the world to discover, retain, engage, and reward exceptional talent.

Ireland has succeeded in establishing itself as a strategic hub for leading multinational employers, working across sectors as diverse as technology, biopharma, and financial services with Staffing Industry Analysts, the industry’s highly regarded research group, ranking Ireland as the world’s most attractive staffing market in 2017.

The result is that we have earned our reputation by providing solutions to some of the world’s best employers and, in the process, established Ireland as an internationally recognised centre of excellence for talent management.

 

Competing internationally

While it is true that working with world leading multinational companies based in Ireland has helped the talent sector to hone its skills to the highest level, it would be wrong to think Irish companies have grown their exports and reputation solely as a result of those links.

Rather, Irish companies have gone out and won new international customers, often in highly competitive, supplier-rich markets, in which those organisations are not short of choices.

International organisations are increasingly choosing from a growing number of world-class, homegrown Irish success stories, such as TTM Healthcare, who is quickly becoming a healthcare recruitment leader, providing staffing solutions around the world. One in five nurses recruited to the NHS from overseas now arrives via TTM.

Leading organisations are choosing technology company Social Talent, enabling it to become the world’s largest provider of on-demand training and development for the recruitment industry, a niche it pioneered.

They are choosing Globoforce, helping it to become a world leader in employee recognition. Its innovative solutions successfully drive employee engagement and retention in multinational companies in more than 135 countries.

They are choosing software innovator Sonru, developer of the world’s first asynchronous video interviewing solution for candidate selection. Sonru’s product doesn’t just boost efficiencies for client companies, it enables them to tap into previously inaccessible talent pools, wherever they are in the world.

Enterprise Ireland supports 120 Irish providers in this sector to meet their global ambition by exporting to 100 countries. Although these companies are active in different parts of the talent management landscape, the common thread they share is that they work to develop disruptive technologies that provide the kind of innovative and flexible talent management solutions that organisations need, now more than ever.

Irish companies are taking advantage of the fact that there are no boundaries in technology. Good companies are going to the ends of the earth to find good people, and increasingly it is Irish talent management solutions that are helping them to get there.

And once they find that top talent, Irish companies are also helping international brands to retain, engage, and develop them.

This article was originally published in the Sunday Independent.

  • Share this article