Trends in Employment and Recruitment in NI

Guest speaker member Alan Braithwaite, Business Director, Abacus Recruitment gave a most interesting talk on the changes and future trends in Employment and Recruitment in NI and the attitudes of young people to the more traditional ways of recruitment.

He advised that the nature of jobs was evolving and changing away from manufacturing to service industries and that the world is getting smaller with previously underdeveloped countries catching up, notably India. There is a growing trend towards working in smaller offices and there are more people with degrees in the market and women in leadership roles. He noted that NI is an evolving and maturing economy some NI people are returning and it is the 1st destination outside London for Foreign Direct Investment jobs. It is seen as a centre of excellence with strong growth in tourism and back offices. He revealed that the market for recruitment had changed, no more looking for jobs in the Belfast Telegraph but people were ‘headhunted’ and expected jobs to find them. Jobs are increasingly reward driven and personal movement tends to be linear rather than in swim lanes. He stressed that it was the employers’ challenge to keep staff involved, informed and happy so they did not look elsewhere.

For the future he maintained that employers will lead education development, management will be flat not pyramid styled and the workforce will be multi-generational. He stressed the importance of Social Media – Facebook, websites, twitter and instagram and the openness of information on both sides from information on how companies operate, ratings of companies by individuals even to questions asked at interviews! He stressed the threat from robots quoting Bill Gates who has said they will take over in the next decade with many professional jobs affected and noted that ⅓rd of jobs are at risk. He also advised that 60% of the jobs in the next decade are not invented yet! He concluded that NI is in a good position with an excellent pool of quality labour though not cheap. His talk was very well received and he answered several questions.