by admin | Jul 8, 2016 | Economy, General Interest, Industry, Jobs in Ireland, Uncategorized
Collins McNicholas has seen a 4.8% growth in registered job vacancies in the first six months of 2016 compared with the last 6 months of 2015. The number of candidates registering with Collins McNicholas has increased by 2.8% in the same period. The unemployment rate currently stands at 7.8% (MAY 2016), having fallen steadily from 9.8% over the last 12 months. The unemployment rate will continue to decline over the next 12 months, albeit at a slower pace than the previous 12 months. The Irish economy continues to grow and job creation should rise with it, but the consequences of Britain’s departure from the EU will have a negative impact on the Irish economy, slowing growth and job creation. A weakening sterling will hurt Irish exports to Britain, particularly in the agricultural sector. Tourism will also be affected as British holidaymakers will find it more expensive to visit Ireland. Issues surrounding the rights to residency of the roughly 400,000 Irish people living in the UK will also need to be resolved. This could benefit Ireland if even a small of number of skilled professionals choose to return to the country. “However, despite the uncertain consequences of Brexit on the Irish economy, foreign direct investment (FDI) is strong and should grow as investors seek to maintain access to the EU markets and avoid the uncertainty over Britain’s status post-Brexit,” said Niall Murray, Managing Director of Collins McNicholas. High technology sectors, in particular ICT, biopharmaceuticals and medical devices, are doing well. Graduate output has increased significantly in the STEM subjects and excellent progress has been made in retraining people for jobs in these sectors. “Springboard alone provided 41 ICT courses in 2015 and will provide 1,800 places in its new selection of ICT courses beginning in September,” said Mr. Murray. Ireland is also an attractive option for some of the brightest international tech talent. The recent launch of the Tech/Life Ireland initiative, aimed at attracting 3,000 top tech professionals to Ireland per annum, is an example of the creativity and resourcefulness employed to grow the tech industry in Ireland. There have been some significant job announcements over the last few months. Medtech company Zeltiq’s will open a European manufacturing centre in Galway, Eurofin Laboratories, in Dungarvin, plans to increase its staff to 500 by 2021, Nexvet Biopharma opened its development and manufacturing facility in Tullamore, and Amazon announced the creation of 500 jobs. Jobseekers will skills in software development, quality or process engineering, or lab analysts will continue to be in strong demand over the next 12-18 months. Commenting on trends in the Irish labour market Managing Director Niall Murray stated: “The outlook for Ireland’s labour market is positive. I expect that by the end of the year the number of people in work will exceed two million for the first time since the recession began. Demand for high skilled workers, such as those with experience in software, medical devices, and biopharma, will remain strong going forward, but the challenge now will be to provide training and employment opportunities for the long-term unemployed.”...Read More
by admin | Jan 25, 2016 | Economy, General Interest, Recruitment
The number of job vacancies listed with Collins McNicholas increased by 24% in 2015, and the number of candidates registering increased by 14%. Managing Director Niall Murray commented, ‘Collins McNicholas had a strong 2015 in terms of placements with vacancies rising significantly compared with 2014. This reflects the broader improvement in the national economy. Employment fell from 10.2% to 8.8% over 12 months to December 2015. This drop in unemployment and the expected GDP growth of, according to the OECD, 5.6% for 2015 and 4.1% in 2016, will lead to continued growth in job vacancies.’ According to Niall Murray, ‘we are seeing improvements in job prospects across a broad range of sectors, with the strongest growth being seen in IT, medical devices, human resources and biopharmaceuticals. However, there has also been an increase in a variety of professions due to Ireland experiencing multinational investment in shared services centres. These centres often provide multilingual customer service support, as well as a host of back office systems, creating demand for a wide variety of skills.’ IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland both enjoyed record years in 2015 and this has had a considerable knock on effect for the overall economy. The IDA created 11,833 net jobs, a 66% increase compared with 2014. Enterprise Ireland had a net increase in jobs of 10,169. What is most important about these figures is that the gains were not confined to Dublin, as in previous years. 64% of the jobs created by Enterprise Ireland were outside of Dublin. Similarly, the IDA, which has emphasised the importance of creating jobs in different regions, had 53% of the...Read More
by admin | Jul 29, 2015 | Economy, Jobs in Ireland, Recruitment
Collins McNicholas has noted an increase in the number of job vacancies advertised, and in the number of job candidates registered with our company, in the first 6 months of 2015, compared with the same period last year. There has been a 13.7% increase in the number of vacancies available, compared with the same period in 2014. We have also seen a 12.9% increase in the number of candidates that registered with us. This progress comes on the back of strong job growth in 2013 and 2014. The encouraging rise in vacancies supports recent economic data showing steady economic growth and a declining unemployment rate. The unemployment rate for June stood at 9.7%, unchanged from May, and down from 11.4% in June 2014. A strong export sector, led by the thriving ICT, pharmaceuticals, and medtech industries has been the driving force behind recent job creation. There has been greater demand for professionals in the biopharmaceutical, medical device and ICT sectors. Specialist and technical skills have been particularly sought after in these sectors. Multilingual skills have also been in demand and public sector recruitment has begun to rebound as well. Despite the current turmoil in the Eurozone, demand is strong in Ireland’s principal export markets, the US and UK. A resurgence in domestic demand has further supported economic growth. Progress will continue throughout the second half of 2015 and into next year. IBEC expects GDP to grow by 5.4% and unemployment to fall below 9% by year’s end. According to General Manager Niall Murray, “we are seeing strong regional demand in the medical device and biopharmaceutical sectors as well as...Read More
by Niall Murray | Apr 13, 2015 | Economy, General Interest, Irish Market, Jobs in Ireland
Collins McNicholas Job Market Review Q1 2015 The economy has continued to improve in the first quarter of 2015, with noticeable benefits in the job market. Unemployment in March stood at 10%, down 0.1% from February and down 1.9% compared to March 2014. More positively, we are seeing a greater contribution to the economy coming from domestic sources of growth. The work of IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland led to the creation of 15,500 net jobs last year and their work remains critical to the economic recovery. Collins McNicholas have seen jobs registered with our agency increase by 29% in the first three months of 2015 compared with Q4 2014. Similarly the number of candidates registering with our website has increased by 28%. This reflects a broader optimism in the jobs market and suggests that candidates are now starting to look at their career options again, after an uncertain few years. Unsurprisingly, the ICT sector continues to thrive with strong demand for programmers with .Net and Java expertise as well as professionals with data analytics skills. Increased output of IT graduates, complemented by several retraining and upskilling programmes, has gone some way to alleviate the strain on labour demand in this sector. However, with demand likely to expand over the coming years more work needs to be done to ensure the labour market can supply enough skilled professionals to sustain the growth of the sector. This is particularly important when it comes to attracting multinational investment. Collins McNicholas would expect that the increased numbers studying ICT would start to have a positive impact on the labour supply by 2016....Read More
by Niall Murray | Nov 13, 2014 | Economy, Event, IT, Recruitment
Last week’s Dublin Web Summit, or ‘The Summit’ as it is now called, was a tremendous success. In just its fourth year, the three day event has grown to encompass 22,000 attendees. This includes 100 tech CEOs, 1,000 investors, 2,000 start-ups and 500 guest speakers, not to mention celebrities such as Eva Longoria, Bono, and Ryder Cup Captain Paul McGinley, to name a few. The event was reported on by as many as 800 tech journalists who covered all of the action at the RDS and its 200+ satellite events. With such an influx of people from across the tech world it was a great networking opportunity. I couldn’t believe the buzz around the lobby of the Herbert Hotel on the second day as I sat there having my morning coffee. It was like an epic version of speed dating with business cards. In a way the rapid growth and success of the Web Summit mirrors the remarkable expansion of the tech sector in Ireland. There has been over 17,500 jobs created in the last three years and there are now over 105,000 ICT professionals working in Ireland. Demand is expected to grow at 5% per year through to 2018, and a further 44,500 job openings will be created in the sector in the next four years. This represents an incredible opportunity for Irish people to create an exciting, challenging, and financially rewarding career in this dynamic industry. There are a range of skills in demand in the ICT sector and Ireland benefits from its involvement in many different types of activity. Everything from software engineers, to systems administrators,...Read More
by Niall Murray | Sep 16, 2014 | Economy, Entrepreneurship, Event, General Interest, Irish Market, SME's
Julie Sinnamon the CEO of Enterprise Ireland addressed the SCCUL Mentors Group which I chair and I thought some of the following comments she made at this seminar might be of general interest. Julie is extremely optimistic about the prospects for the food sector and anticipates a 50% growth in that sector over the next 5 years. She sees much of the growth in this sector being located in the regions. This ties in with a broader objective to ensure a balanced distribution of EI support across all parts of the country. She is very optimistic about the future of EI companies generally and this optimism is positively influenced by the recent PMI data (Purchasing Manager’s Index) which is at its most positive in the past 6 years. One thing Julie would like to see is more female entrepreneurs and she made the point that of the 250 senior management personnel in 100 companies that EI have recently supported only 8 of the executives were women. Julie puts this down to a lack of female role models, an unjustified lack of confidence and the fact that the average age of the entrepreneurs EI supported is 32 which is an important age in a woman’s biological cycle. Julie also said that 50% of inward entrepreneurs are now people with no Irish connections at all but who want to locate here because of Ireland’s strong entrepreneurial culture. Julie described the challenge of scale facing Irish companies which is seen in the fact that Ireland has a small number of very big companies and a very large number of small companies. She...Read More
