IT talent pool drying up, as financial services spreads its wings

13 Jul 2016

The latest report from Morgan McKinley shows the continued difficulties companies face when hiring IT professionals. Elsewhere, financial services companies are leaving the capital.

The IT talent pool is still pretty dry, something we’ve seen regularly in the past few months.

According to Morgan McKinley’s latest jobs monitor, the IT sector remained buoyant in June and the continued under-supply of quality talent remains an issue for employers – big data, security and Java being the areas where the demand for skilled workers is highest.

An interesting shift, though, came in the financial services industry, with growing costs in Dublin seeing companies look elsewhere in Ireland.

Jobs in Ireland

Noting that newly-qualified accountants are wanted in various companies, the findings show the top 10 practice firms continue to move and build teams outside the capital, moving into Cork, Limerick and Galway.

Multilingual jobs in Ireland are still booming, with German, Dutch and Nordic languages in hot demand. These are primarily for business roles such as support for international clients of firms based here.

Jobs in Ireland

“Hiring activity in June was stable but cautious, reflecting both seasonal factors and the uncertainty generated in the run-up to and immediately after the UK’s referendum on EU membership,” said Morgan McKinley’s COO Karen O’Flaherty.

“The complexities arising from the UK’s decision to leave the EU are not yet fully understood and we anticipate this may impact company forecasting and resource planning activity in the short-to-medium term.”

Indeed the Brexit uncertainty – which is hitting the scientific community in a big way – emerged almost instantaneously. Last month, a “level of inertia” was reported in the hiring market as many waited to see what happened before announcing more jobs in Ireland.

“There is also positive sentiment. Within financial services, Brexit may increase the flow of candidates and jobs from London back to the Irish market,” said O’Flaherty.

“Within IT there was no evidence of hiring uncertainty, though we anticipate there may be a rise in project and contract opportunities over permanent roles as the year progresses.”

Jobs in ireland

Empty pool image via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt
By Gordon Hunt

Gordon Hunt joined Silicon Republic in October 2014 as a journalist. He spends most of his time avoiding conversations about music, appreciating even the least creative pun and rueing the day he panicked when meeting Paul McGrath. His favourite thing on the internet is the ‘Random Article’ link on Wikipedia.

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