The long recruitment freeze that ended two years ago already seems a distant memory as recruitment managers ramp up efforts to attract talented and skilled emigrants to come back and take up a range of new opportunities in all branches of the public sector.
So far this year, the Public Appointments Service has assigned more than 3,800 people to jobs in the Civil Service.
“The variety of career opportunities is reflected in the approximately 98,000 applications across 303 campaigns within Government departments, the Health Service Executive, local authorities and An Garda Síochána,” says Olivia McMahon of Publicjobs.ie.
This includes 200 graduates who were assigned as administrative officers, third secretaries, trainee auditors and economists, for which 5,000 applications were received from graduates of all ages and backgrounds.
Two Garda recruitment campaigns, along with general service grade competitions for clerical officer, administrative officer and assistant principal roles, attracted tens of thousands of applications.
“Given the generalist nature of the Civil Service, new skills and competencies in critical areas such as human resources, finance and IT are highly sought after, thereby aligning specialist skills alongside core Civil Service skills to improve focus on outcomes and strengthen performance,” says McMahon.
Irish emigrants
A survey commissioned by Irish Times Executive Jobs on the attitudes of Irish emigrants to the idea of returning home permanently found that jobs in the public sector remain
particularly appealing to many senior professionals for the traditional reasons of security, longevity and the public service pension scheme, but also the workplace culture, says Caitriona Lannen, head of Irish Times Executive Jobs.
A leaked submission from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to the new Public Service Pay Commission stated that all the evidence showed that public service pay levels remained very attractive, but added that the Public Appointments Service – which provides recruitment services for State bodies – had found that any recruitment issues were at senior level and in specialist areas, mainly because pay levels there compared poorly with the private sector.
However, the Public Appointments service did succeed this year in filling a number of top level posts, including a chief information officer, a head of learning and development to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and a director to the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation service.
“There are also opportunities for roles as chairpersons and non-executive directors on State boards. “This is a good opportunity for Irish expatriates to bring their experience to bear on a wide variety of disciplines from financial services to engineering and arts,” says McMahon.
Healthcare jobs
Attracting emigrants back to jobs in healthcare is tacitly acknowledged as more difficult than in other parts of the public sector, with 46 per cent of young professionals and 37per cent of senior executives viewing job prospects in the healthcare sector negatively, according to the Irish Times Executive Jobs survey.
“You’re going to get professional people, such as in the medical field, who left and won’t go back to the conditions here, but having said that they are really, really valuable candidates to Ireland because they’ve worked in the environment, they’ve so much to bring to the Irish healthcare system, so it’s really important that we work on the healthcare system and really sell it as a place that people want to work in,” says Lannen.
The HSE’s national recruitment director, Mary Doran says: “The recession and cutbacks did have an effect on staffing levels in the HSE. In some cases staff that left were not replaced, and remaining staff had to still provide the level of care needed with less resources.”
Healthcare professionals are a very mobile workforce and the recession prompted many graduates to pursue opportunities overseas but she adds that their age profiles were also a factor.
“Many of them are young and mobile and are personally interested in having life experiences travelling the world before they settle into a permanent and pensionable job in Ireland,” says Doran.
“In 2017 we aim to capture as many graduates as we can before they leave on their travels or to gain employment abroad, which means that they will always have the opportunity to come home if they are interested in a job opportunity.”
That said, international competition for nurses and doctors means that the HSE has had to step up its own efforts.
Last year it began to offer Irish nurses and midwives working in the UK a €1,500 relocation package as part of a campaign to woo them back, and nursing recruitment will remain a key priority for the HSE in 2017, says Doran.
Otherwise, it’s a question of tailoring recruitment approaches to the market supply of any particular profession. Doran reports a shortage of radiographers, audiologists, psychologists and qualified social workers, and is also looking overseas for qualified paramedics for the National Ambulance service.
“Many of our overseas staff have fantastic specialist experience gained from providing healthcare to much larger populations than our own and this greatly benefits the Irish health service.
“They bring learning and alternative ways of working into our systems here.”