60pc surge in demand for staff in key industries but salaries stay flat

Next Generation a Dublin specialist recruiter today said that there has been a massive 60pc surge in demand for staff in key industries but salaries offered have flat-lined.

There was a surge in recruitment demand in sectors including IT, telecoms, insurance, pharmaceutical, finance, marketing, sales, food across the vertical of IT and supply chain in 2013 by Next Generation Recruitment, the Dublin based specialist consultancy.

Next Generation’s turnover was up 40pc in 2013 to E5m, with expansion in both national and international recruitment.

The company is targeting 50pc growth for 2014, as it grows its own business to meet market demand for recruitment.

Cloud, social media, and mobile are currently the ‘hottest’ areas in IT. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) is gaining confidence and being adopted by larger enterprise clients, with cloud computing, agile software development, DevOps, the collaboration between development and IT operations, and software QA and testing becoming the biggest IT recruitment areas.

Companies are also looking to add virtualisation-skilled IT staff, those experienced in building and managing virtual IT infrastructures. BI (Business intelligence) and analytics are coming to the fore too, seen as key contributors to driving healthier business revenue; as well as data management, managing the IT system to provide a ‘real view’ of an organisation, it said.

In financial services, compliance and risk are driving tighter controls, resulting in considerable IT innovation, and a greater emphasis on managing these IT based systems and processes. Demand for IT security roles is also prevalent, as organisations from retail to manufacturing are moving to more commercially sound online models, opening excellent job opportunity. ‘Mobile consumerisation’ is contributing to a wide spread of technological innovation across all industry sectors, with huge demand for experienced people in this area.

Across all industry sectors, salaries have largely ‘flat-lined’ in the last three years, particularly in general management positions, Linda Davis the Next Generation managing director says.

“There is some upward movement in salaries for senior leadership roles in the past year, and, as always, the bigger salary increases tend to come in to play when enticing a candidate from his or her current employer. Those in the E60,000 to E100,000 management roles have seen little or no movement in recent years,” she said.

Benefits packages have also been slashed in the current economic climate, as organisations in general seek to reduce the cost of employment.

“Pension contributions and paid maternity leave are no longer norms, so job candidates on the market today need to be realistic in their approach to the softer benefits negotiations, and weigh up potential benefits loss when moving jobs,” Linda Davis said.