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HeadRec is our series of interviews with gurus, opinion leaders and innovators within the recruitment industry both in Ireland and abroad. This issue we talk to Declan Collins, Editor of HR & Recruitment Ireland. HR & Recruitment Ireland a leading resource for HR professionals in Ireland, who’s hits recently exceeded 1 Million for the year. Declan is also principal at afr Recruitment, and a qualified accountant. Declan has been moving, shaking and covering the recruitment industry for some time so pick his brains by reading the transcript below.

The recruitment industry in Ireland has undergone much change in recent months, what’s the single biggest challenge facing your organisation for 2011?
I think managing expectations of candidates is key going forward for both HR departments and agencies. There is a perception out there that applications go into a black hole and never get responded to. We need to be cognisant of a very frustrated group of applicants who may well be experiencing their first ever period of unemployment. I think treating people how you would wish to be treated should be at the back of your mind throughout the hiring process.
Additionally, attracting key talent has actually become harder in my opinion. People are less open to leaving the ‘comfort zone’ of a secure job to explore new opportunities. HR and recruiters need to be able to convey the real opportunities of a role and company to a prospective employee to have any chance of attracting top candidates.  
 
How are you adapting to this face this challenge?
HRRI.ie will continue to provide timely and relevant information on meeting all the challenges being faced by our readers. We continually invite readers to suggest topics they would like to see covered and then seek expertise in these areas to provide content, all completely free to access online. Our challenge is to know what HR challenges are being faced, and adapt our content accordingly.
Our recruiting business, afr, has always focused on providing organisations with alternatives to what the job-boards and job-board reliant agencies have to offer, so our approach is pretty much unchanged - extensive networking and direct recruiting of passive candidates allows us to unearth some of the better people for the job, not just who is available at that moment and responds to an ad. The very best people are in demand and rarely need to apply to an ad, so we go and talk to them for our clients.

Is there a person or company that you use to benchmark your future plans?
I don’t think we consciously benchmark our future plans on any of these but the companies I really admire are:
Facebook, for basically changing the world! Groupon for taking a simple idea of coupons and turning it into a c.$5 billion company in 2 years or so.
The people I admire in business are Michael O’Leary, unashamedly self promoting of Ryanair, hated by many but turned Ryanair into one of the largest airlines in the world.
Back to Facebook, Sean Parker had a major influence there but also was a co-founder of Napster (the music download site) – 2 organisations that have fundamentally changed how the world's population does things. Quite the CV!
 
What’s the most exciting tech innovation you've seen in the industry?
I am quite old school when it comes to recruiting so while I embrace the whole social media buzz that is going around, it is yet to be proven to be overly effective when it comes to recruiting talent. That said Facebook, twitter and the like, give unreal opportunities for companies to build their employment brand with little cost.
I think we have all become time poor, so any innovation that decreases the time commitments in any project, without compromising quality, is good.  
 
What’s the next industry event you plan to attend?
Probably NorthgateArinso’s ‘Driving Business Performance and Growth’ event in the Aviva on March 10th.
 
If you had to come up with a one-line prediction for the recruitment industry in Ireland by December 2011, what would it be?
“Mass dissatisfaction from candidates as to level of communication from companies and recruitment agencies they have applied to” – not trying to be negative but the respect shown to candidates can be appalling from some companies and agencies. The good news is we can all make sure it doesn’t happen.
 
What’s the best tip you could offer recruitment agents, HR managers or jobseekers for 2011?
I’m going to start sounding like a broken record now but the need to communicate at every level of the process with candidates is crucial. People are really struggling out there and we all need to try and see the human side of it even where someone has applied for a completely unsuitable role.
For jobseekers, it still amazes me how bad some CV’s are. Get spelling, grammar, and punctuation double checked. A good recruiter will point out any mistakes and help you with format etc so it doesn’t have to cost you anything.

About Declan Collins
Declan is the Editor of HR & Recruitment Ireland and founder of afr recruitment. He started his career as an accountant in Ireland and moved into the financial recruitment area with a large international recruiter before founding afr. afr (Accounting and Financial Recruitment) initially specialized in the recruiting of finance staff but has evolved into a multi disciplined recruiting practice. Human Resources & Recruitment Ireland is a website specifically for Irish HR professionals and provides information on a variety of HR related topics including employment law, staff management, training, recruiting, and compensation and benefits. He can be reached at 01 2542011 or by email.