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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 Fitzgerald, Global Sourcing Manager with Microsoft. Declan is a technology evangelist for the recruitment sector, read the transcript below or better again see the video on our  Sonru Ezine page. Contact us to be one of the first 20 readers to access the video interview.

Tell us about yourself Declan, where you work and your role.

I'm the Global sourcing manager for Microsoft based in Sandford, and I work in a team called Central Sourcing Team. We try to up- skill the capability of our recruiters all over the world so I travel a lot mainly to Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and India teaching people how to do Boolean, social media campaigns, and a variety of other techniques especially around technology. The team is currently working on social media recruitment strategy and I’m heavily involved in that.

The recruitment industry in Ireland has undergone much change in recent months, what’s the single biggest challenge facing your company for 2010?

I think the Irish recruitment industry is definitely going through a lot of change in the last few years, it’s a bit like pressing a reboot button on a pc, technology has changed so drastically in the last few years we’re still not sure what’s going to happen and what’s going to change.

There are segments in the market particularly in IT, media and marketing that are going through radical change in terms of the ability of recruiters to source these people and that’s the biggest challenge: How to adapt to these new technologies and how to up-skill to take advantage of them.

How are You/your Company adapting to this face this challenge?

In Microsoft, we’re a big believer of using technology to recruit. How are we reacting? We're investing in putting teams together to explore technology and actually make recommendations on how we can apply some of these techniques into our recruitment process. We’re trying to adapt to the 'new decade in connectedness' (that's what we call it) and we’re a big believer of putting together a scaleable social media and governance team so we can centralise our efforts in that space.

Is there a person or company that you use to benchmark your future plans?

We track a lot of companies in terms of learning from them so we can improve ourselves.

My personal favourite is Oracle, they have done a fantastic job in putting a central sourcing team together, I think Siobhan Corcoran and her team should be commended.

I also like what Intel are doing in this space. There are pockets of recruitment talent – mixture of people in US and China, also interested in what’s happening in Brazil around social media particularly QR codes.

What’s the most exciting tech innovation you've seen in the industry?

Woa there really is so much, it's hard to pick one but I think Social Media has changed the way a lot of recruiters operate now. It’s all about creating flows of information that you can participate in. Also direct sourcing is an innovation that is radically changing the industry, we’re getting more proactive in sourcing talent rather than relying on a reactive model – that’s a big shift. There's also huge innovation around mobiles and cloud computing, I love the idea around Multiple Apps and Multiple APIs in Mashes, we’re going to see a lot more of that, I’d love to see one for the recruitment industry.

What’s the next industry event you plan to attend?

The next event I plan to attend is The Irish Recruiters Tuesday Club, the next one is on the 11^th May in th Radisson Blue hotel and I’m looking forward to it.

If you had to come up with a one-line prediction for the recruitment industry in Ireland by December 2010, what would it be?

I think we’re going to see a lot more recruiters up-skilling themselves to become a lot more technical across the sourcing and screening paradigms.

I also think we’re going to see a lot more people investing time in their own personal branding online which is going to be important.

Overall, I see an uplifting of the market in terms of skills for a large percentage of the market.

What’s the best tip you could offer recruiters, HR managers or jobseekers for 2010?

Try set aside at least 1 hour per week to try and understand what’s happening with technology and how it can make your day-to-day job much more successful. There are some wonderful technologies out there particularly learning how to use search engines properly is so important. So give yourself a little bit of time to learn because there’s a lot to be learnt at the moment.

And finally about Irish Recruiters, seriously what’s in it for you and what’s in it for Microsoft?

I like this question! There are a lot of things in this for a lot of people. I think from a Microsoft point of view we’re very much thinking about creating some recruitment leadership in the market. We’re invested in trying to help other people to think about how they recruit. We think there’s much potential for the country to become a hub or site of excellence for recruitment particularly in learning how to recruit outside of Ireland to Ireland and we want to play a central role in that. 

For me, I hope I can be remembered as one of the people who helped stimulate the debate on up-skiillng the market and catching up with some of the technologies and techniques our friends in the US have been using for years. I’d like to think that at some point the industry will come together and form a more dedicated recruitment course that will help provide those skills that the market needs and I’d like to be remembered as someone who helped drive that forward.

About Delcan Fitzgerald

Declan has over 14 years experience in HR and recruitment and is currently a recruitment evangelist and global sourcing manager in Microsoft. He currently specialises in creating sourcing initiatives to support the companies move to distributive development in India, China, Israel, Denmark, UK and Ireland. He is the author of Ireland's premier recruitment blog: Irish CyberSleuth blog and founder of the Irish Recruiters LinkedIn Group which is the fastest growing recruitment social network in Ireland. He has designed, consulted on and lectured on social media and Internet sourcing strategies, tools and tactics all over the world including recent sessions in Europe, Israel, China, Singapore, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia. Twitter @irishrecruiters and LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/irishrecruiters